@4991jack wrote:
I found the 2017 Spring Seller Update to be hugely disappointing. I was hoping for some proactive announcements that would be beneficial to sellers and store owners.
I was especially hopeful there would be an addition to the store lineup between the premium and anchor levels, bridging what is a huge gap between those levels. I even held out some (faint) hope that eBay would repeal, or at reduce, its unfair fee on shipping costs.
But I found nothing in the update that was encouraging. There is a 50% reduction in the discount for eBay's best sellers, which, by any measure, is an odd way for a company to reward its top revenue earners. There is also the trumpeting of a new vehicle that will allow sellers to promote their listings for a fee (upon sale). I suspect this will be a benefit to sellers, but only the largest of sellers offering trendy items.
I realize fully this is eBay's game and eBay's rules, and sellers can choose to play or not. I choose to play and I will continue playing. But I wish eBay would have offered some encouragement rather than a clawback.
If there are small or medium size sellers who did find positives in the update, I would appreciate it if you would post them. I would thrilled to find out I missed something good.
Hi 4991jack
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I'm intrigued by the idea of a new stores tier. I don't think I've heard that suggestion before, and I think it's interesting. I will share that idea with the stores team.
To be totally honest, I don't expect we'll move away from fees on total cost any time soon, because it all but eliminated the problem of excessive shipping. Churned buyers told us that the $1 items with $100 shipping were a huge turn-off, and it was obviously a fee avoidance problem for ebay's bottom line as well.
There is an interesting way to make this work for you a little bit if you are a typical Canadian seller, with most of your sales going to US and international buyers, and a smaller share domestically.
If you list on ebay.ca, and are able to build enough margin into your item price to offer free shipping to domestic buyers, and then add a US and/or INTL shipping service to the listings that covers the difference between the domestic price build into your item price and the expected average price for US and INTL shipments, there is a cross-border rule for final value fees that can work in your favour. In this scenario, if a Canadian buys the item, you pay FVF on item only - but since you added domestic shipping to your item price, you are effectively paying exactly the same FVF. But if you then sell an item to a US or international buyer, then we will apply FVF to the lower of the actual shipping charged, or the cost of your first domestic shipping service. Since your first domestic service in our example is "free shipping", then you won't pay any FVF on the US or international shipping charge. You'll pay FVF on the item price, with the cost of domestic shipping baked into it, but nothing on the extra charges for your US or INTL buyers.
I've worked with some sellers who take this further, and actually lose a little bit on their domestic shipping margin deliberately, so that they can save even more on their overall FVF on their export sales, and ultimately subsidize their domestic shipping with their FVF savings.
That's a little bit convoluted, but the point is that with the majority of sales being exports for most sellers, it's possible for some sellers to develop strategies to minimize their overall FVF by manipulating item price, domestic shipping and export shipping to their advantage.
