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

[nakoda_creation]

Respected eBay team & sapna,

We are happy with the Bold move of eBay.
we are in need of such fee to avoid false listings & Multiple listings.

we as a seller should be benefited due to it in long run,As multiple listings will get down,our listings will get maximum exposer,It will avoid non updated listings as well as non selling listings.

any sellers 1st demand is good sales,It comes from good listings & good price,listing fee will encourage us to list good product with good price,if u list at good price & listing,the sale is definite on eBay.so automatically u will get benefit of listing.To pay Rs.5 for any listing is not much compare to your sales.(if u r selling good product at good price)

it will benefit genuine sellers , I am happy with the move ,

but still UPI is one issue that has to be control by eBay to save our valuable listing fees.

i hope eBay will defiantly come with some tools & updates.


With Regards

--
Mahavir Computers Pvt ltd.

Mumbai

[kastbhanjancollection]

Vary Good decision for buyer & for seller too


Komal

[veedeedirect]

Hello,



The biggest objections to the listing fees seems to be coming from sellers who have large inventories.



Carrying inventory is always a Cost. The larger the inventory, the larger the cost. If you do a business offline, you have to pay for the goods, the storage cost, the insurance on the goods. If you want to display more goods than you can in a given area you have to get bigger premises and pay more rent.



So is the case in the online business, if you want to have huge inventories and therefore more sales, you have to pay for it.


There are different types of store formats, the boutique format, the mom and pop store, the supermarket, the departmental store and finally the hypermarket store, etc.



A boutique can survive with just say a couple of hundred products whereas a hypermarket would need to carry hundreds of thousands of products.



All these stores survive in the offline market. A hyermarket like Spencers will not get free space in InOrbit (a large mall in Mumbai, there are simillar malls across India), it too will have to pay rent. The space occupied by a Spencers is 10 if not hundred times more than a Desinger boutique like Swaroski.



A huge inventory is only justified if you can genrate more sales. You cannot occupy the space of a hypermarket and still justify sales of a boutique. So it finally comes down to your sell through ratio. In advanced markets like the US with high listings fees a sell through ratio of 30% is considered to be good. In India where fullfillment is low and thus listing fees are also sought to be kept low, a sell through ratio of 10% would be sufficient.



So if you have a product which only sells once in a year, you should be through. If you were to list the said product in the store format, than you can keep it live for almost year with 11 relists.



If you have a product which does not sell in 11 relistings, than that product has no place to be on the site. It is just cluttering up the display. Tell me is there any offline store which would keep inventory which does not even sell once in a year?



We all have to rethink the way we do business. The simple mantra of "more listings, more sales" will have to be modified to "more saleable listings, more sales."



The earlier business model was given to us by baazee / ebay and the new business model is also being given to us by the same people. There is a huge merit in the new model.



The benefits are huge which have alreay been pointed out by my fellow sellers.



I will just give an assurance to my fellow sellers that the business of serious sellers will boom in the times of listing fees.



Only those sellers who do not have any business / product knowledge, sourcing, pricing, etc. will be affected. Those sellers who merely kept on adding more and more listings (since they were free) in the hope that some product may sometime sell will have to rework their business model.



ebaY does not dislcose its sales figures, so all we do is a guesstimate. I belive the current sale through rate is about 1-3%. Surely no business can survive with such a sell through ratio. The sell through ration will surely go up by 10 times when listing fees are announced.



In fact I am of the opinion that listing fees should also be announced for the book, movies and music categories too.



Regards,



Devesh



P.S.: I only wonder how does ebaY justify leving a higher listing fee based on the value of the product. Whatever be the value of the product, it simply provides the service of hosting, etc. of the product. The cost of this service is the same for say a Re.100/- product or a Rs.1,00,000/- product. All I can think of that the differential listing fee is to encourage more seller to start their products at a lower starting price. It is after all an auction site.

[assemblerz]

Respected Members & Ebay Staff,
We are somehow in favor of this move made by ebay.
We would have a good looking market as junks will be eliminated. Only pure listings made by genuine sellers will be shown.
Nothing in this world is free.
You pay for it and you get it.
You pay BIG you get BIG. Its simple.
No one would like to do a business in loss.
Some day, say 15 days after this fee introduction, this ebay market will go in a auto correction mode with good listing, proper sellers & proper buyers in the market place. Prices will change as the burden of such fees will be obviously be passed to the buyers.
Now its time for healthy market competition. Lets face it !
Regards,
Assemblerz

[dusyantjewel]

Yes i am also agree listing fees also introduce for Books & Magazine Movies also otherwise on 15 April half ebay will look covered by these two category remaining category left of half ebay

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi aggrawal_gaurav,

I just went through your listings and think they are really well made. You are making a serious effort to create your eBay business. I liked lot of your products.

There can be various reasons why your products are not selling. one is that the buyers interested in those products are not there on the site. Another larger possibility is that your products are not getting enough exposure and therefore they are not getitng sold. You have around 40 products which you have listd in Apparel and Accessories category. Taking example of men's accessories: your 6 listings are overwhelmed by 2000 listings. On the first page of men's accessories I can see a lot of listings that do not have gallery images, have high shipping charges, are multiple listing. Quality listings such as your are getting buried under the good listing.

I believe that with listing fees in picture, your quality listings will get more exposure which will hopefully convert into greater business for you.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi dusyantjewel,

I agree that no listing fee in Books & magazines category can lead to miscategorisation in the category. We will be actively monitoring the same and any attempt to spoil the user experierience by miscategorisation will be appropriately actioned.

We will be also looking at active support from community members for reporting such activity.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members,

We will be conducting few Online Workshops on the topics that can help sellers get more buyers and improve their buyer experience. We will encourage you to attend these workshops and post questions or clarifications if any. You may also want to do some preliminary research into the topic and prepare your questions to make maximum use of the workshop.

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

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

Looking forward to see you there!

Regards,
Sapana

[3dcollectibles]

Dear ebay,

This is my 2nd post regarding this Listing fees.;-)

I can see the following after the listing fees implementation :

1) Seller reduces their listing of low value products on all category. Like I have reduced Mobile items in Mobile category when listing fees was introduced in it. I used to list 18 differnt items but now I have 3 items in Mobile Category.

2) Only high margin profit goods would be sold on ebay such as Pirated CD, Stolen Goods, etc. Also no retailers would survive on ebay now - Only Wholesaler or resourceful person who gets product at half price would be able to get profit.

3) As Listings is reduced by sellers so there would be less sale for them



I have the following views for ebay if they really want to improve the selling figures for INDIAN Sellers by implementing their new listing fees :

1) Make Regular Advertisement on TV, Newspaper (like baazee used to do). Right now only 10%-20% of shoppers goes for online shopping.

2) Implement more Payment gateways like other shopping site does.

3) Ebay should re-introduce the option of Paisapay charge from buyers instead of taking from Sellers. Baazee used to have this option.

From my bidorbuyindia times till ebay I can see that BAAZEE was much advanced and ebay is still learning.

But I can foretell that this listing fees would be a total failure as ebay has done nothing for sellers to improve their selling figures by advertising on TV, Newspaper.

My SUGGESTION TO EBAY :

MAKE REGULAR ADVERTISEMENT on TV, NEWSPAPER before implementing the listings fees.

I can say for myself that I would be listing on ebay even after listing fees implement but my product listing would be then only 30% as I wont be selling on ebay the regular n low margin products

Regards

Deepak

[snrama]

Hi Amitava,

We are here to make sales and profits. If its increases by atleast 35-40%, then I am happy to pay the listing fees.

Nobody are here to become as loser here.

As I said in my earlier post and Deepak's post (systeminflow) are quite the same. There are lot of online shoppings sites and the buyers gets distributed.

So eBay needs to give advertisements at Newspapers / Televisions regularly. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉