Forum Moderators: buckworks
EBay Inc will slash fees by 20 percent for its top-rated sellers and push their listings higher up in the search queue, part of steps to try to rev up its long-stagnant Marketplaces arm.The online giant is trying to revive growth in its main retail unit, whose auctions and fixed-price sales connect buyers and sellers. Its latest move, announced on Monday, is aimed at rewarding the most reputable sellers, who drive shoppers to the site and give top customer service. San Jose, California-based eBay also said it would bestow on approximately 150,000 top sellers a "Top-Rated Seller" designation that buyers can search for on the site as they choose to conduct business with the most reputable.
It's hard to revive that Golden Goose once you've killed it.
FarmBoy
Though some of the changes could/will actually benefit us, it's a little too late. Our own website has replaced eBay—with no Final Value Fees and a lot less customer induced headaches.
As for selling on their platform, I find that their 'best match' produces tremendously inconsistent results - feast or famine to the extreme. Like T_Miller I am focusing on local sales and my own site. Ebay has done a thorough job of alienating sellers in the small to mid size space. This latest move will empower the bigger sellers and be the final nail.
EBay Inc will slash fees by 20 percent for its top-rated sellers
Its latest move, announced on Monday, is aimed at rewarding the most reputable sellers, who drive shoppers to the site and give top customer service
I find the moves interesting overall but not from an affiliate point of view, eBay stands to be chasing off several affiliates, especially if things like Adsense begin to pay more with much less work. (I hear it's close already)
edit: as major companies like Yahoo! become EPN (eBay partner network) affiliates there is less need for smaller affiliates, might these moves also be designed to squeeze out the small affiliates? Yahoo's new front page has eBay offerings, with affiliate links, as does the new Yahoo! toolbar.
eBay used to be a site where everyone took part, today it seems leadership is steering towards keeping the biggest sellers happy and making it harder for the smaller affiliates to stay with the program while courting the likes of Yahoo! There will be no growth with this approach, eBay will live or die based on the future whims of its super affiliates, the mom and pop affiliates will be gone for lack of income.
She has switched to craigslist and finds it much better in selling her products.
I used to be a powerseller and was making a LOT of money, I had one large store and a couple of smaller stores as I was trying to capture a sub-niche of my particular market.
So, since eBay has the STUPID rule of having to open up a separate sellers account for each store and you have a new user id. This means that you are starting out with ZERO feedback on the new store. Worst mistake I ever made. I ended up getting down to just below the 4.5 star rating for shipping and handling charges. I don't know if it has changed but last year when this happened to me, there was no warning, no temporary hold, just completely booted off of eBay after being a power seller in good standing for several years.
The worst thing about these star ratings, especially for shipping and handling is it's subjective. No one likes to pay shipping, I don't either. And the buyer knows BEFORE they bid or buy how much your shipping charge is. If they do not like it, they don't have to buy, but they do, knowing darn well they got a great deal, but still mess you over with the star ratings.
I will NEVER use eBay again (oh, well, I can't since they booted me off forever!), however it does sadden me not to be able to.
Anyway, sorry for the rant and off topic discussion here, but this just reminded me of how stupid eBay is and what a moron they have running the place!
To me they just don't get it at eBay. The original model was to have a place for people to sell one-off items, either personal or semi professional. But either way it was supposed to be individual sales of one-off items. Then they got greedy and wanted to turn it into a quasi eCommerce site as well, with "buy it now" and all that. You can't do both... You can't be a sales site AND an auction site. In the end, the decent customers got sick of going on eBay and having to sift through all the hard sell BS and $19.95 garbage to find the decent stuff. So now they decide that the best thing to do is cater even more to the hard sell $19.95 crowd... Makes no sense.
I'd never recommend eBay be anyone's *only* sales channel.
But a lot of people take the bait and build their "businesses" around selling on 1 or two venues like eBay, Amazon, Etsy, etc. Same people can't understand why they don't make money when they try to compete based on price at 15-20% GPM—they forget to figure in the 12-15% cut eBay takes. ;)
For me, eBay was just one source, I have my own online stores. Frankly, it got to be a huge pain because of so many cut throaters on there. People in my niche that were wholesalers AND retailers, made it hard to compete! Plus with eBays huge fees and rules and all, I don't miss the stress, I'll tell you that much!
( i often wondered if the people in ebay USA who authorised the french office ever actually understood what was being said in the french language fora on ebay ..there was documentary proof and even court cases here concerning the corruption levels of their french staff ) ..and yet no heads rolled..
Ebay ..they have become their own parody ..and are now repainting the deckchairs ..
I think if I was used to making money via a CPA model I would be very worried.
This will certainly help for some of the full time power sellers but wouldn't it be an excellent way to piss off 99% of their seller base even further?
All I use ebay now is for advertising my site and getting my name out there. I use their 30 day BIN auctions basically as advertisement to get in Google searches and drive traffic to my site.
I have seen a lot of sellers with lots of total feedback have their sales drastically cut. I can tell by looking at their feedback received in the past 30 days and derive from that their sales volume....it's way down in a lot of cases.
I was lazy in the past and hoped for ebay to bring me customers...now I realize that you really need to build your brand and promote your own web site and use ebay as either a way to gain exposure or for some ancillary income...bulk of sales should be generated from your own site which you have complete control over.
Moves like cutting off all sellers of virtual game items because of paypal concerns weren't great (imo) because those game items helped launch ebay to begin with and paypal problems (or any other entity problems) shouldn't be able to cause major changes on eBay, but they do.
I like what I see with the new affiliate program changes. Gone are the needing to earn almost a million dollars in commissions before being paid in the top tier, now you can apparently be in it on a daily basis if I understand the extensive wording in the FAQ correctly.
I wonder where eBay will be at this time next year, perhaps on Google too since they are on Yahoo! and Bing already.
Still good for buying cheap stuff, though why something else hasn't sprung up that doesn't charge 15% commission on cheap stuff amazes me. For price sensitive buyers 10% less elsewhere would surely attract some publicity. One for another forum member - I do my own shops these days.
