Ebay fee’s hike . . . good or bad for info product sellers?

Well Ebay are at it again with even more changes to the site. This time it’s fees that are changing so lets have a look at what this means for the multimedia/information product seller (like you and me).

First of all you can now list an item with a gallery picture for free!

On the plus side:

Having a gallery image definitely helps with sales and I can prove this by simply searching for finished items in any category and then scrolling through the results. You’ll see that more items sell with a gallery picture than without.

On the negative side:

Everyone worth there salt will now be listing with a gallery picture so there will be more to compete against and more for a prospective customer to choose from.

This means that having a good gallery picture is going to be very important but what is the best type of gallery picture?

Ideally this would be a nice clear picture of the actual product you’re selling. Always try to make sure the product fills up the whole picture. For example lets say your selling a pair of trainers, don’t photograph the whole table that the trainers are on, make sure you get in and take a good clear close up so that the trainers fill the photo.

The next change is called ‘Success-Based Fees’ and these start from the 24th September.

An ‘insertion’ fee for a ‘Buy-It-Now’ item at £1.99 currently costs 15p for up to 10 days. After the changes this will be 40p for up to 30 days. This should save you a little bit of cash each month but only if you list it for 30 days. If you continue to list it for 7 days for example it will still cost 40p.

However if you have a basic shop the listing fee drops to just 20p for up to 30 days, 5p if you have a featured shop or just 1p if you have an anchor shop.

Now you may be thinking why would they structure ‘Buy-It-Now’ listing fees on whether you have a shop or not? The reason is because they are getting rid of the ‘Shop Inventory’ format and replacing it with ‘Buy-It-Now’ for up to 30 days or ‘Good Til Cancelled’.

As such all your listings will now be shown in search listings (shop items didn’t). Another thing to notice is that the listing fee is now set regardless at what price your item starts or finishes at. This is extremely good news for anyone selling higher priced items.

All shop fees are also going to be increased. A ‘Basic Shop’ will go from £6.00 a month to £14.99 a month, ‘Featured Shop’ from £30.00 to £49.99 and an ‘Anchor Shop’ from £300.00 to £349.00.

Final Value Fees (FVF)

These are also changing. Currently any item that sells between 1p and £29.99 costs 7.5% in FVF fees, so if your item sells at £1.99 the FVF will be 14.9p (let’s say 15p for easier calculations). The new FVF will be 9.9% which equates to 19.7p (or 20p).

So then bottom line, will we save any money or not?

Facts and figures time . . . .

Lets say you sell 50 products a week at £1.99 (Gross Total £199.00)

Currently it would cost you:

Listing Fees - 15p x 50 = £7.50
FVF Fees - 15p x 50 = £7.50
Basic Shop - £1.50 (a week, £6 a month)

Weekly Total - £16.50
Monthly Total - £66.00

with the new price structures it would be:

Listing Fees - 40p x 50 = £20.00
FVF Fees - 20p x 50 = £10.00
Basic Shop - £3.75 (a week, £14.99 a month)

Weekly Total = £33.75
Monthly Total = £44.99

Ok you’re probably looking at that and thinking ‘Hang on, £33.75 a week x 4 = £135.00 a month and yet you’re saying its only £44.99?

This is because you can now list an item for 30 days for the same price as listing an item for 7 days. If you continue to list your items for just 7 days you will pay £135.00 over a month but if you list your items for 30 days you’ll pay just £44.99.

According to Ebay ‘All new fee amounts also apply to listings with multiple identical items in Buy It Now format (colour variations are permitted).’

This means you can now (from 24th September) list multiple items in a single listing for 30 days and still only pay 40p per listing. Well that’s what it reads like to me, I may have got it completely wrong so if anyone knows different please let me know asap.

For more details on these changes you can visit the official Ebay announcement page at:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/#fees

Warm regards, Richard