eBay Loses Mind and Raises Seller Fees Again

eBay just announced that seller fees will be going up again, effective August 22nd, 2006.

It is likely no coincidence that on the same day, eBay reported a 14% decline in quarterly revenue.

eBay's answer to the dip in revenue?

Raise Fees and stick it to the sellers who are already fed up with eBay's virtual doubling of it's fees over the last two years.

eBay President of North America, Bill Cobb had this to say:

I'm confident the actions we're taking are the right thing to do for the overall eBay Community. We'll more effectively deliver on our buyers' needs and expectations. And for sellers, these changes will ensure that eBay remains a differentiated and distinct e-commerce channel with fast inventory turnover.

Can Mr. Cobb lay it on any thicker? Another raise in fees is not better for the community. It is a band-aid on the drop in revenue more than likely due to the huge drop in traffic on eBay over the six months.

Here is a run-down of the new fees:

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

                                                                                 

Starting Price	New Insertion Fee	Current Fee
$0.01 – 24.99	5¢	2¢
$25.00 – and higher	10¢	2¢

  Some Store Inventory format final value fees also will increase, effective Aug. 22, 2006:

                                                                                                                                

Selling Price	New Final Value Fee	Current Fee
$0.01 – 25.00	10%	8%
$25.01 – 100.00	7%	5%
$100.01 – 1,000.00	5% (no change)	5%
$1,000.01 and higher	3% (no change)	3%

Comments

[kc]

YEP.....I AM WAVING BYE BYE BYE TO EBAY......

I AM ALSO PROTESTING WITH THIS AUCTION....
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=013&item=230010944341&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1

IN ADDITION TO THE LETTERS I SENT OUT!

[cploonker]

This is leading to eBay sellers trying to figure out more and more innovative ways of selling outside eBay.

A friend of mine is a programmer and one of his customers had him write a program to do following :
1) Retrieve the list of bidders and the corresponding items from his ebay id.
2) Create a shopping cart for that user in his own store. If the user does not exist create the user.
3) Send out email to the user with the link saying we have your products ready to ship just make the payment using the link below and the goods will ship immediately.

Using this technique this guys is able to sell to each of his bidder instead of just the highest bidder and avoid commission on all but one buyer.