Pricing Changes, 30 day listing and Increased Visibility to Shop Listings

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members

At eBay.in, it has been our constant endeavor to improve buyer experience by providing great deals across a wide variety of products and helping buyers find them quickly. Along with this, we are also committed to providing our sellers an unmatched business platform that rewards quality products and good customer service with increased product visibility and sales.

In the last one year, some of the steps we have taken towards the same are more attractive deals for buyers, inclusion of larger number of sellers in promotions, marketing campaigns and use of eBay coupons to increase buyer transactions. With the intent of further improving overall buyer experience and to ensure inclusive growth for all sellers, we are making the following changes to the fees on eBay.in

Changes to Listing Fee Max Cap: Last year in July, the Listing Fee Max Cap was introduced with the intent of enabling our sellers to display their entire inventory in a cost effective manner. This pricing structure was successful in certain categories, while in others it caused an imbalance which impacted visibility of products. This in turn led to a bad finding experience for buyers. Thus to balance visibility for all listings, following fees will be applicable for sellers listing more than 1500 listings in a calendar month.

1. All listings in all categories, created and scheduled to go live on or after 00:00:01 IST on 16th September 2009, will be subject to the new pricing structure
2. Listings for a duration of 1 and 3 days will be charged Re. 1 irrespective of category they are listed in (excluding Books & Magazines, Movie & Music, Video & Computer games)
3. The max cap benefits will continue to be computed on seller’s listings in a calendar month.
4. The discounted fee above 1500 listings in a calendar month shall be charged during the listing process and credited back within 30 days of the end of the calendar month
5. For sellers listing less than 1500 listings in a calendar month, the fee continues to remain Re.1 per listing
6. Final Value Fee for all categories remains the same, subject to minimum Rs. 3.

Introduction of 30 day Fixed Price (Buy it Now) listing duration for all sellers in addition to the current 3,5,7 and 10 day listing duration. We believe this new listing duration will allow sellers to display their slow moving items over a longer period of time, without having to re-list the items multiple times.

href="http://pages.ebay.in/marketplace/marketplace_changes.html#3">Click here to see the details of listing & feature fees for the 30 day fixed price format.

Greater value for shop sellers: With introduction of 30 day duration listing, all shop listings will become part of fixed price listings and will enjoy increased visibility in core search results. Good ‘Til Cancelled format will continue to remain available only for shop listings. Shop listings will also get discounted listing and feature fees.

href="http://pages.ebay.in/marketplace/marketplace_changes.html#3">Click here to see the discounted fee for shop listings. Given the increased benefits for shop sellers, the revised shop subscription fee shall be as follows.


 The new 30 day fixed price format will be available from 10th September 2009. The revised listing fee on the 30 day fixed price format, changes in Feature fees and Shop subscription fees shall be effective on all listings created or scheduled to go live on or after 00:00:01 IST on 10th September 2009.


Which sellers will be impacted?
 All sellers listing in all categories on eBay India
 Sellers who have listed more than 20 listings on eBay since their time of registration on eBay, will be charged Listing Fees.
 Sellers who are creating their 20th listing or less than the 20th listing on eBay from the time of registration will not be charged the new listing fees.

How do the changes impact a seller?
We understand that our sellers will need to make changes to their current business plan to accommodate the above mentioned changes. To understand the impact of the above changes on your business, we encourage you to read our FAQ section.

We also encourage you to use our Customer Support Resources to understand how this change will impact your business and discuss your options for adjusting your eBay selling strategy. You can also reach out to your Category manager or your Account manager to understand the changes and incorporate them in your business.

To help understand the changes better, to discuss various aspects of selling on eBay or to give feedback, please join the Open House discussion with Muralikrishnan B. – Director, Product & Category Management on this thread on 1st September, 4 PM.

Regards,
eBay Team

[veedeedirect]

Hi Murli,

Great seeing you on the community boards.

The Good - 30 Day Listing.
Removal of Max Cap.

The Bad - only 50 paise per additional listing after 1500 listings per calender month.

Too little to stop the spammers, (yours truly included) to put up innumerable multiple listings.

I have counted one seller having a multiple of 149 listings of the same product on the same id. It is too difficult to keep track of those guys who have innumerable ids and innumerable ways of describing the same product which can result in having more than 150 listings of the same product.

It should be more like Rs.5/- per listing after first 1500 listings.

Since most sellers have more than one selling id, if s seller has an inventory of more than unique 1500 products he can easily sift it to other id and still end up paying ust Rs.1/- per listing for a period of 30 days.


Regards,

Devesh

[amitava123gems]

Dear Mr Murli and Dear Sapana,
I am happy. If you cant stop spamming, the quality items get less visibility. They sell because buyer does not buy junk but it takes a long time to sell. God bless you. Now I shall be able to list stamps again.

Hi Devesh,
I agree with you.

Thanx,
Truly,
Amitava

[indconcepts]

Hello,

Shop Subscription would be un-viable for New Sellers who aren't getting much Sales ? They would shy away from subscribing to Shop ... and would have to pay extra for Listing, Schedule, ILF & other upgrades.

You aren't getting any extra benefits by subscribing to Shop .... but you are only get the existing features at an increased cost.

I feel ..... Basic, Featured & Premium Shop Subscriptions should be compulsory for Power Sellers of Bronze, Silver & Gold status respectively.

This would reflect that ebay is serious in growing the Sales graph of Individual Sellers .... and not like Indian Government which finds the easy way out by increasing the Taxes where ever and when ever they feel like. .


best regards

Umang Midha

[amitava123gems]

Hi indconcepts,
It is possible to work without a shop, but shop is very useful. We dont see you much nowadays. Miss you.
Thanx,
Truly,
Amitava

[anand_online]

Its not a good idea to remove the Max cap limit, and why Jewellery categories to have benefit of this, If there is any reason its for every category, maybe there is difference in convincing power of various category managers.
Last week all effort were made to reduce the duplicate listings , if there were any plans to implement this, it should have been informed there and then.
Its always a good idea to reduce the duplicate listings, may be 5 instead of 10, but still the Max cap was a good idea, that should not be abolished, its very difficult to keep a track of listing fees this way,, 1Rs, then 0.50 then so on , listing some in 30 days .
Its a big hassel if the Max cap limit is abolished.

[bagsworld]

I agree with anand_online that it will be hassle to keep track of the fees and plan the listings.

Instead I advise eBay team to come up with fees slabs above max cap like:

0 - 1500 = 1500
1500-2500= Rs. X fees
2500-3500= Rs. Y fees
3500-4500= Rs. Z fees

What say members?

[anand_online]

I would still consider a fixed max cap much better so that seller needs to calculate which way of listings is more beneficial, and does not keep checking when the calender month is ending and what to list and when to list.

[stylish_india]

What is this Max Cap ?? I don't understand..
Bad - Shop fees is getting increased :(

[anand_online]

What I have understood that this listing fee increase is due to many duplicate listings on site, to avoid all this the rule for duplicate listings could be revised, even the rule "NO Duplicate listings" is better than this fee increase, but the MAX cap should not be abolished, this will impact on total unique listings on site. There are many items which we list are only sold once in 3 months or 6 months, these listings we might think of removing, This will impact on buyer purchase trend and he will move to other sites.
Surprised to see that there are only 8 replies to this discussion in 3 days, it seems the high volume sellers are not understanding the impact this will have on their profits.