eBay Lowers Listing Fees to Boost Sales

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In an effort to boost listings, eBay said today that it will lower listing fees by up to fifty percent. The catch? The company will take a bigger commission on items sold to make up the difference and increase profits.

To balance the fee cut, the company plans to increase its commission on items that do sell, a method the company says sellers prefer because it lowers their risk if items do not sell. The greatest fee increase will come for goods selling for less than $25.
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This makes me less likely to list something that I don't know will make me a lot of profit now. I don't list things that won't sell and I'm not going to now just because they cost me less money.
 
So list items but put "contact me if you want more, many available", that should reduce your closing costs for multiple of the same items :D
 
its amazing how profitable ebay could be if it didnt cost 5 dollars to list an auction for a broken sharpie marker. (bold,border,highlighted,reserve price,buy now price,add larger pictures, list the auction)

and that was just off the top of my head, i know theres twice as many fee's. dont forget after all those fee's 2.9% goes to pay pal
 
This is REALLY going to put a dent in my profits on selling MTG cards. Almost every card I sell ends under $25.
 
The catch-22 is that the final value fees are already exorbitant. eBay keeps just jacking up their prices and at some point people are just going to get fed up.
 
This is REALLY going to put a dent in my profits on selling MTG cards. Almost every card I sell ends under $25.
 
Except that they seem to have the people's full trust, and there's actually no alternative to ebay. Or is there? yahoo auctions closed down. And the likes of ubid, don't register in the radar.
 
Zinn said:
The catch-22 is that the final value fees are already exorbitant. eBay keeps just jacking up their prices and at some point people are just going to get fed up.
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This is ultra-lame...

The way you put it is EXACTLY the way I feel

What's also lame is that they already freaking take a huge ass cut out of every auction that uses PayPal, because they OWN PayPal and PayPal ALSO takes a cut out
 
A good, reputable alternative is sorely needed. eBay reeks of no competition. Of course you have things like Craig's List and individual For Sale forums, but that's not putting much of a dent in eBay since lots of things will only sell on eBay. Amazon competes with them on the half.com front with their Marketplace, but nothing can compete with the actual auctions that I can see.
 
Wouldn't lowering the fee by 50% also attract scammers posting 50% more fake items?
 
Azhar said:
Wouldn't lowering the fee by 50% also attract scammers posting 50% more fake items?
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Scammers can already post now without worrying about fees. You do not have to pay the fees anyways until the billing cycle comes by. So you can post 100 things online, sell them and then ditch your account without ever paying.
 
Ockie said:
Scammers can already post now without worrying about fees. You do not have to pay the fees anyways until the billing cycle comes by. So you can post 100 things online, sell them and then ditch your account without ever paying.
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Gotcha. I've bought a bunch of things from eBay but I never sold. So I wasn't aware.
 
i'm no ebay expert but i beleive they already are doing this

its called an ebay store

the upside to actually having a store is that you can list items for cheaper and longer

the downside, ebay takes a higher cut

so now, instead of having a choice they just force everyone into the "store" option basically.

lame lame lame

but, as it has been sugested already, i hope they keep doing more things like this, then maby someone will think to give them a bit of competition.
 
i like the changes, especially the feedback ones.

After the changes - I'll go to 100% again. :)
 
soulfoot said:
but, as it has been sugested already, i hope they keep doing more things like this, then maby someone will think to give them a bit of competition.
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Google Auctions-- Request it frequently and often. Ebay will go under in 7 quarters.

Seriously, Ebay has the best search functionality and most eyeballs because of volume-- no competition because nobody wants to dig through multiple sites. If you had a search function across mutiple sites, there might be a chance for competition.

I haven't sold on eBay (after selling close to a thousand items) since they terminated an auction for saying I would accept Google Checkout as payment.

Their terms of service say I can't offer to accept a PayPal competitor for online payment? Anticompetitive practices FTL.
 
SolidBladez said:
And this is why I do most of my business on Amazon rather than eBay. :/
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QFT

Amazon doesn't exactly have low fees, but it's a lot cheaper than ebay now for everything but books, prerecored media and game related stuff.

About the only stuff I have sold on ebay during the last year was on $0.10 or $0.20 fixed price listing days. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of discount for the efficiency of an online auction? Between listings fees, final value fees and paypal fees, it comes out more expensive than a real world auction.
 
Sounds like any non power seller is hosed. My perfect feedback will go to near 0, because I don't sell very often. I'll pay a bit less for listing fees,but more for selling an item (or so it seems).

All in all, I don't see this driving me to sell more stuff on ebay.

I looked at it last night. If I got a 8800gt for 230.00. I'd have to sell it for 245 + $20.00 shipping to break even. you can lower it a bit if you have a paypal account that doesn't accept credit cards (assuming you can use those with auctions).

Like others, the only time I even bother to list items is if they're 10 or 20 cent auctions. The risk of an item not selling is always there (unless you're willing to sell for any price).

The one good thing about this article is it made me think I should look into Amazon.
 
Wow, what a scam. I love how ebay cutting fees entails a 5 cent lower listing fee combined with an increase of 75 cents on the final value fee for a $25 item. I'm selling everything I have stockpiled before this garbage goes into effect, and after that I'll only sell through forums and craigslist.
 
I think after I sell some expensive items on ebay, I will just ditch my ebay account and no longer use ebay.
 
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