Bye bye, eBay Auctions. It's been fun. Really. :|

[vesivus]

Hi all.

This is a posting that will hopefully garner some attention from eBay (doubtful, but worth a shot), and to recommend all of you to rethink your auction strategies if you haven't already.

Vesivus has scaled down our almost 2000 auctions a week to about 50-100 a week...

Why?

EBay used to be a profitable place to do business -- we could post up auctions for $0.20 per auction and after a final closing fee we'd be paying usually between $0.30 and $1.00.

With todays current fee system, auctions now cost a minimum of just under $0.50 -- JUST TO LIST. Sure, $0.50 doesn't sound like a lot, but its a 250% increase to our listing fees. When your business revolves around cheap items ($.99 - $2.00 on average per auction), this becomes a HUGE cut into profits -- not just a pain like it was before. Multiply that by 1000-2000 auctions a week, and your looking at $2000 a month and more to just eBay fees.

What did we do, as a business, to fight this? We moved our auctions into our eBay store and took much less exposure to increase profit margins... the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the 'eBay fee changes' were supposed to encourage. Sure, we are not selling as much, but we are also not working like mad to post auctions, process auctions, and ship auctions, and I've scaled down the hours my employees work to accommodate this -- just so we can make a little money on eBay.

This is a sad, sad, direction that eBay has taken. Businesses are finding it more difficult to 'make a profit' on eBay and are moving away, or just using it as a clearance area to clear out old stock. (I'm intentionally generalizing... I understand that some business are still making a decent profit margin on eBay -- just not the ones with 'cheaper' items to sell).

Was this eBay's intention? I do not know. All I know is that I can no longer 'afford' to sell a lot of items by auction on eBay.

Sorry -- bye bye Gold Powerseller status, hello Silver, or even Bronze. 🙂

Thanks for hearing me. See you all around.

John

[katiusciav]

Hi john;
what a sad message. i'm very sorry for your situation...money makes the world go round, and is a great motivator for many...especially huge companies like Ebay that continually raise fees...and why? because they can. its that simple. for all the sellers leaving ebay, i'm sure (guessing) there are more and more jumping on board to make up for the loss (or at least some loss)...also, as ebay becomes more and more popular, more buyers are jumping on board too, continually making more and more money for ebay. there WILL be a levelling off in growth for ebay...EVERY company naturally has its climb, peak and descent...
you're not the only one. i don't have to pay as much as you, but it sure hurts me too...sometimes i can't believe how much i pay monthly to ebay...my god, in some cases, its as much or more as a mortgage payment or a monthly rent!! its kind of scary when you think of it like that...
i don't know that ebay would ever LOWER their listing fees...its hard to imagine, being the leader in online auctions, it would be a slow rise for competitors to reach their level of reputation and trust.
i hope you find another venue where you can turn a decent profit, i don't know how feasible it would be for you to change product lines, but sometimes that's what it takes to stay competitive and make good money. good luck...

[cello10]

Sorry to hear that John.

I think it has in fact been ebay's intention to weed out the low margin/low priced item dealers and I believe that was stated (roundabout anyway) in a recent Cobb message and this is how we understood it...ebay was overflowed with these types of sellers who maintained huge volumes of inventory and very low ticket items. Meaning ebay was doing a lot of work with these people in maintaining all this data, but making very little for their efforts. At the same time many of these dealers have been/are avoiding fees by basically giving away their merchandise but making profit on extremely overpriced shipping charges. This is why ebay is going to be policing shipping charges in the near future and shutting down those who are operating in this manner. So a lot more of these sellers will be gone soon as well too. In this same message, again in a roundabout way, as we understood it, was that ebay wanted to return its focus to its core type of business which was people selling unique items. So much like in the real, non ebay world, only the strong will survive for the piece of the ebay pie that is low priced mass merchansdise...walmart and a few others have all the pie in the real world, and a few will have it on ebay as well. Bottom line for the little guy to thrive on ebay, he'll have to be unique in some way.

Hey!..you've had a good ride!...silver is nothing to sneeze at either! Best of luck to you!!

[tea_past_times]

Great Post. Unfortunately, you are caught in a shift in thinking underway at Ebay. I was once a 99 cent guy on Ebay. I was very busy. Maybe not so profitable, but busy to be sure. I only sold 2 items this weekend, a cup and saucer for $12.99, I paid $2.00 for, and a teapot for $51.51, that I paid $10.00 for. Since I add all ebay fees and paypal fees to my shipping charges, that leaves a $52.50 profit for me on 2 items. That's a $26.25 per item profit. I could have listed way more, but I won't until a special listing (20 cents) day comes along. In the meantime, my other 190 items sit in the Ebay store, awaiting a return to auctions, also on a special listing day. I will rarely list anything for under a $5.00 start price anymore, as you are correct, it isn't worth it. Welcome to the new Ebay !! Goodbye online dollar stores, hello collectors website. Long story short, List less, price high, keep everything in your Ebay store until a special listing day arrives, add all fees to shipping costs. You have to roll with the punches. Find $10-$20 items to sell or start checking the local want ads for a MCJOB in the local paper. As for me, I can find and sell $10-20 items.

For example in my case a $7.00 cup and saucer with $7.50 shipping on the OLD EBAY becomes a $9.99 cup and saucer with $8.86 for shipping on the NEW EBAY. In the same way a 79 cent litre of gasoline has become a $1.14 cent litre of gasoline. Same cups as always, new prices, like everything else since the dawn of time.

The only other thing you can do is squeeze your suppliers for lower prices. I have quite a few people who go out to garage sales, and they keep an eye out for cups and saucer for me. I used to pay them $5.00 a cup and saucer, now everyone knows, I won't pay more than $3.00 for them. So they in turn of course leave everything over $2.00 sit where it is, which may cause the garage salers to charge less for them.

Best of luck in the future, no matter what you do in the future. 99 cent Ebay WAS fun while it lasted.

PHIL

[westernstargifts]

In late December I began selling some jewelry on eBay that I buy at at discount that does not do well for me in other areas. I was surprised and pleased at how well it sold (esp. at 99 cents) and quickly reached PS status. I did have to raise my prices to make a profit. I kind of had a corner on the market with one line until one of eBay's top 10 sellers swooped in and started selling a similar product starting at $.99. I bought quite a few of this seller's product thinking I could resell it elsewhere. I was charged almost $70 for shipping which cost them $1.15. I reported it but they are still going strong under at least 2 user ID's.

I have my doubts that eBay will shut down one of their top 10 sellers even though they know they are avoiding listing fees with grossly inflated shipping costs. This seller even had the nerve to tell me they pay 60 cents per listing when all of their listing start at 99 cents! And then they included a religious tract with the shipment!

I must be on the right track though because I just opened an eBay store this weekend with plans to list fewer items for auction. I can make $1000 in one day at some of the craft shows I do for less than $100 compared to $300 to $350 I paid eBay, not to mention that it took a month to make that on eBay. We have given up doing some events and craft shows too when the organizers started getting too greedy and we could no longer make a decent profit.

Thank you John for the information and good luck on any new endeavors!

[q5e]

Just a suggestion ...

What if Ebay created a new section/posting for sellers.
One that offered free listings (no fee) for under $1.00 auctions, specifically to power sellers; but FVF were calculated on selling price plus S&H. (gotta give to get).
This way, they get compensated by your successful listings and reward the power seller status as well as protect themselves from the advertisers.
If they pose it as an option to the seller it would send a message to all, that they are seeking to work with the sellers & reward powerseller auctioneers rather than dictate policy.

[cello10]

Well basically an ebay store fits that bill. It's not free...but at 6 cents a month per item (which includes gallery and one pic) and the monthly fee of $15.95 it is affordable. So for less than $80/month you can list 1000 items. Exposure is less than auctions of course but still decent for the price.

[racketguy]

Ebay fees have increased tremendously over the years, and with increased competition, auction success rates have decreased. They also dip into sellers pockets telling us we should use bold, buy it now, feature our item, subtitle, thumbnail pictures, etc., etc. We didn't need all those things 7 years ago, and our success rate was much higher. Ebay should concentrate on helping its sellers compete against other marketplaces, not Ebay seller against Ebay seller. The Ebay seller that gets the sale should be the one that offers the best product, at the best price, and offers the best service. Not the one that pays more for selling features.
So why do they do it? They have a monopoly and many of the sellers are dependent on Ebay to maintain sales volume. Can you blame them? Not really, they're a business and they're going to do what's best for Ebay. Will it haunt them in the future? Time will tell...but I believe so. Higher overhead for sellers must eventually result in higher selling prices. Buyers don't go to Ebay looking for higher selling prices. So...less buyers, which will give less incentive for sellers....less sellers = less revenue for Ebay.
Many Ebay sellers are also looking elsewhere where they can sell with lower fees?
That's my 2 cents.

[cgcgraded]

.11us$ per listing including gallery + $15.95us per month.

[cello10]

Actually Buckingham we were talking about 99 cent item guys...99 cent items cost 6 cents (US) including gallery.

[katiusciav]

you know what...and maybe others will disagree with me, but i would never...NEVER open a store. i know its probably a lot cheaper, but in my opinion, being a buyer myself, the exposure is rotten. i'll pay the extra fees of having auctions because they get more exposure. and i think ebay knows this, which is why store fees are so low. they expected it to be a big success, but when you search for an item, and you put stores way at the bottom, what do you expect? am i wrong about this, or do stores come up with other auction listings?

[coastwindchimes]

Well, it probably depends what you are selling, Kat, but I generally get over half my sales from my store, and the price I get is about 30% higher than my core listings. I do work pretty hard, though, pushing people over to my store. For me, my eBay store is the best deal going.

Higher fees are a drag, to be sure. But I really object to eBay Express, where Canadians get zero exposure. Why fracture the market?

[katiusciav]

ebay express is a big joke! that's my opinion...put it this way, as a buyer, i would barely even knew it existed if it weren't for these boards. after searching for something, and you get a huge list of items, then the stores, THEN that little italic lines saying 'go to ebay express'...well...what would people normally do? start looking at what's in front of them, and probably find it before even going to stores or ebay express, unless its something quite hard to find...

[cgcgraded]

Sorry cello, I stand corrected.

[whoscloset]

It is up to you to market your store and drive traffic to it. Listing fees are low but FVF's are much higher. I get about 3/4 of my sales from my store and charge higher prices there. I have sales regularly and use my auction listings to bring in customers.

[zarzuella]

80% of my business from my store.
Depends on what you sell and how you market the store.

Ann

[westernstargifts]

After a year of buying on eBay I learned that there were lots of things in the Stores that were never listed. That is, once I learned the Stores were there!

I often look to see what a seller has in a store and then, if I see something I want, wait for them to list it as an auction. If it is never listed as an auction, I buy it from the store.

[cello10]

A large part of our business comes from our store as well. I agree with the others, it depends upon what you sell. If your items are unique enough (in some cases the only item of its kind on ebay) then they show up nicely in searches.