Important Price Changes

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members

At eBay, it has been our constant endeavor to improve our buyer and seller experience. Some initiatives we have recently taken in this direction are a new Home Page layout, Feedback 2.0 and improving feedback adoption through promotions like Cricket Mania. The new Home Page layout helps us showcase interesting inventory like 1Paisa auctions, whereas Feedback 2.0 is a result of frequent community feedback to incorporate more details in the Feedback system.

Providing our users with better value is also a key focus area, and we have tried to address this through introducing new features like "Markdown Manager" using which sellers can run discounted promotions in their shops, thus helping sellers showcase their offerings better and helping buyers find good bargains.

To achieve our twin objectives of better value and improved user experience, we are introducing a new Fee Structure for all categories.

Key changes are:

• All listings created on eBay India will be subject to new Listing Fees, revised Final Value Fees, revised Feature Fees and Seller Tools Fees. These new fees shall be applicable to all listings in all formats (i.e. BIN, Shop Inventory format, and Auctions) created on or after 11:59 PM IST on 31st March 2007

• Listing fees shall apply to all listings by sellers who have listed more than 20 listings on eBay

• No Gallery Fees will be charged, however sellers will need to select Gallery while creating the listing to avail the feature

• Listing Fees will be credited if your item does not sell successfully (including Unpaid Item) for the first time, but is successfully sold in the 1st re-list instance

• Fees associated with Services & Real Estate and Cars & Bikes categories remain unchanged

We understand that our sellers may need to make changes to their current business plan to accommodate these new fee changes. So, we encourage you to check the Managing your eBay Business Strategy, download the Fee Calculator, attend our Online Workshop on 23rd March, or use our Customer Support Resources to help you understand your overall listing strategy.

To learn more about these Fee changes, read our FAQ section. Your suggestions & comments are valuable to us and we encourage you to share your feedback with us on this thread.

We are aware that, as a seller, you have a choice of outlets through which to sell your products. We appreciate that you choose to do business with eBay. We will continue to work hard to ensure that our sellers and buyers continue to have great eBay user experiences.

Regards,

Sapana

[pc_gaming_store]

Hi Sapana,

We agree to your point of charging a Listing Fee for Store Items too.

However we disagree with your point of same fee as normal listings.

It is evident right now that eBay India is following the same principles of eBay USA.

But then on eBay USA when you list a $24.99 item you are charged a $0.60 listing fee. But the same item when listed in Shop Inventory is charged $0.05 for 30 days.

So basically the Shop Inventory is much cheaper. Why not the same for eBay India.

Personally we think the justifications of getting indexed in Search Engines for natural search, email marketing, Opportunity to create one’s own branding is just excuses as all these cannot make up for the main positive: no display in category pages and by the way they appear in search only if there are very few listings displayed when a person does a search so that justification point is not entirely true.

Shop Inventory Fees should not be free but cheaper than normal listing fees.

[coolbrasco]

Dear eBay,

May be it is good news or bad news for me, i could not really predict that early. When gallery picture fees is imposed everyone started screaming, and finally benefited for the genuine sellers. But paying .25 Paisa the benefit was more and more visible for good sellers. My sales had definitely boosted compared to free gallery picture before. Similar way by paying Rs.10 daily, if my sales goes up would be great, but from Nov, there is not much change in my sales, though I have good feedbacks. We have to wait and see what is going to happen.


Another risk is if we don’t list multiple items, we will be under loss if a buyer buy and does not pay your single item listing(Then this eBay promotion will be "1 Rupee loosing, single item listing" for poor sellers). So sellers have be more careful and make sure enough items in listing until the period is over.


But i would limit to 10 listing per day to limit my budget, rest goes to shop view if shop listing is free. Let me know you are going to charge for listings in the shop view as well ?. Like books & CDS, can you also exempt Baby Products & Maternity wear as well ? to show some courtesy for the New born babies and the moms ?. Baby Products are slow selling products and need some help from you. Otherwise all poor New born babies will suffer.

Regarding Listing fees, you should have just charged Rs.0.50 instead of Re.1 straight away. If some small seller one having 10 listing/day, have to pay Rs.10 each day whether he can sell or not. It is Rs.300/month. I am experienced seller, OK somehow i can manage. Definitely for new sellers it is going to a burden.

Whenever eBay introduced some fees definitely it is going to cut down unwanted sellers, but Re.1 is too much in the beginning, sellers still slugging. I hope buyers will be less nuisance and hope they will have nice choice from now.


Fellow sellers get ready for the new Innings. I wish all of you (and me as well 🙂 of course !!!) have good luck soon !!!


Regards,
CoolBrasCo.

[coolbrasco]

Hi Sapana,

I read from one your posting that, eBay is going to charge for shop view as well. Definitely it is a TIME BOMB for shops. I could not think what will happen to the sellers having 4000 listing in the shop ?. Atleast can you please reduce (50% Re.0.50 Paisa per listing) the fees for shop view ? I hope eBay will show some mercy to shop owners like me.

Kind regards,
CoolBrasCo.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi shreelaptops,

I have shared your concern with the Trust and Safety team. They will re-investigate your complaint and take appropriate action.

As you rightly said, eBay will not allow an suspended user to start again with a new id. At times, such users do pass through due to inadequate proof or mistake on our part. Community support from members like you is highly appreciated. However, rest assured, removing bad selers from the site is a priority for us and we will be taking various proactive and reactive measures agasint such sellers.

Regards,
Sapana

[shreelaptop]

Dear coolbrasco,

[auctionsjewelry]

Hello Sapana,
If ebay is charging for shop inventory listings, then it would be great if ebay.in introduce "Best Offer" facility.

Regards,
AuctionsJewelry

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear pc_gaming_store,

Thanks for the support and agreement!

Incidentally, US and India have a big difference in display of shop inventory. In US, if a search results throws less than 30 listings, only then the search result page will feature some shop listings. Buyers who wish to broaden their search results with all Shop Inventory listings, can do so by selecting a box in the Search Options area on the search results page.

However, on India site once the core listings are displayed, ALL shop listings are displayed on the search result page. This is irrespective of the number of listings that comes in core search result. This gives shop sellers lot more exposure on India site than it does on US site.

Also, as you rightly pointed out, the the cost of listing for a shop listing will be lesser compared to a normal listing, because a shop listing will be for 30 days. Thus, for a normal listing if the listing fee will be Re 1 per week for a shop listing it will come to 25 paisa per week.

Also, I believe that benefits like natural search indexing, branding opportunity can create big long term opportunity for sellers. With increase usage of search engines, it becomes important to have pages that are strong on natural search. Many eBay shops already have a page rank of 4-5, which means that the chance of a buyer landing on thier page is very high. We will be conducting an online workshop on the topic, and will encourage you to attend the same.

Do feel free to post your further thoughts or concerns.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi coolbrasco,

I agree with you that for a single quantity listing, an Un Paid Item will hurt more. You might want to try listing multiple quantity to spread your risk. To illustrate, for a multiple quantity listing the listing fee is calculated on start price multiplied by quantity listed. If your product is worth Rs 200, and you list 8 quantity in the same listing, the listing fee will be calculated on 1600, which will come up to Re 1. Thus while your fee will remain same, you will be spreading the risk across more quantity. This will also help you manage your budget better.

Incidently, mobile sellers tell us that becasue of quality listings, buyers are able to find, choose and buy the right produt thereby increasing sales and reducing UPI.

For slow moving products, it might be worthwhile to list some of the slow moving products in your shop. As I mentioned earlier, the cost of lsiting in a shop will be spread over 4 weeks.

As you rightly said, it will be difficult to predict the future and we will get a clearer picture as days pass by. To ensure that our approach is data based and not random, we experimented with listing fee in Mobiles category in December. The results were very encouraging. Good sellers saw encouraging increase in sales as well as sell through rate. Sellers who did not have good sourcing or servicing revisted their listing strategy in the category.

Nevertheless, we will be closely monitoring the impact of listing fee on the buyers and sellers to ensure that we are doing the right thing for our community.

Looking forward towards your continuous support!

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear coolbrasco,

We also have some workshops lined up in next two weeks to help you understand tools that you can use to accomodate these changes in your business. You may want to attend the following workshops to learn more or to get further clarifications:

Leveraging Markdown manager to get more buyers
Date: 21st March 2007
Time – 4 – 5 PM

Leveraging Natural Search in your listings and Shop to get more buyers
Date: 22nd March 2007,
Time – 4 – 5 PM

Creating Business strategy to accommodate price changes
Date: 23 March 2007
Time - 4-5 PM

Leveraging Feedback 2.0 to differentiate you as a seller
Date: 28th March 2007
Time – 4 – 5 PM



Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi auctionsjewelry,

I have already shared this feedabck (Best Offer for other categories) from you with the concerned team and they shall be working on the same. While I will not be able to share a timeline, as soon as we are ready to launch the feature on the site, we shall update our members.

Regards,
Sapana