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

[Anonymous]

Dear Navaneeth (snrama)

Good to see you in this Open House

Given the nature of the change in Listing fee Max Cap, I would urge you to reconsider your strategy of listing each unique product 5 times. Also, please do leverage the new 30 day fixed price format which is far cheaper than the regular listing

Part of the reason why there was so much clutter on the site (& thus negative experience to buyers), was that many seller chose to list the same product multiple times. In fact, in Technology categories (more so in branded products as you have called out), we have seen that Pricing of the item plays a far more important role than listing multiple listings of the same product (with the intent of maximizing visibility on search results page because of the default sort order being time ending soonest)

As you may be aware, in many eBay sites globally, Best Match algorithm is the default sort logic for Search (as opposed to Time ending soonest on eBay.in). This sort logic considers multiple parameters such as popularity of the item (item views, bids, recent sales etc), Price of the item, Seller's service standards etc. We are evaluating this sort option

Best regards
Murali

[Anonymous]

Dear sellfast_1

I should state that we had evaluated your suggestion of having multiple Max Cap slabs, but chose to go with the 50 paisa only beyond 1500 listings because of the sheer simplicity of understanding and implementation

Best Regards
Murali

[Anonymous]

Dear harshcorp5

As I had mentioned to snrama, please do reconsider your strategy of 5 listings per unique product. This is actually part of the problem that we are trying to address here

Fast moving inventory can be listed in the regular 5 or 7 duration and slower moving inventory in the 30 day FP format

With the nominal 50 paisa on incremental listings above 1500 a month, we do believe that sellers would be cautious in listings multiples of the same product thus ensuring greater visibility for the quality inventory that our sellers bring to the marketplace

Best Regards
Murali

[anand_online]

It should be very easy to make default sorting to lowest price+ shipping, this option is already available , and if made as defualt then this problem will be over.
With minimum duplicate listings allowed and the above sorting method, the buyer will always get the best deal available and no bad buying experience.

[indiabigbaazar]

We deal in technology category products.

I think the maximum sales in value (Rs.) on ebay.in is generated by our category and the maximum fees (FVF + Paisapay {credit card}) is also charged to our products.

And now we will be charged more on the listing fees.

In few categorise the listing fees are not applied and for some categories the other fees (FVF + Paisapay {credit card}) are very lower comapared to technology category.

The product which gives more business are charged more than the products which gives lower volume and value business are charged less

Moreover, the margins in our products are very very thin as compared to the other category of products.

Is this fare enough to us?

[Anonymous]

Dear anand_online

We have chosen to continue with Zero Listing fees beyond the Max cap limit for Jewelery & Apparel categories because these are driven by huge variety and that too with multiple variants (in terms of Colour, Size etc)

Regarding your point on 6% fees for Video games being high. We will continue to monitor the market and Seller profitability and take regular calls on pricing accordingly

Please rest assured that we at eBay strongly believe in ensuring that our sellers have a profitable business channel on ebay, since our success depends on yours. Seeking your co-operation (as well as that of all sellers of the eBay community) in delivering Lots of Great deals to our buyers

Best regards
Murali

[Anonymous]

Dear originalgoods & veedeedirect

To address your point of PaisaPay fees, I would like to state that the cost of managing PaisaPay is not just about Payment gateway charges, but includes many other cost components such as Operating costs, Chargeback risk provisions, Seller protection costs, Continuous investments in product upgradation etc.

Many of our sellers often tell us that even if one were to add up all the costs of selling on eBay (PaisaPay included), for the significantly higher quantum of traffic that eBay generates, it is a far better value proposition for a business as compared to many other avenues available online

Best regards
Murali

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi indiabigbaazar,

Not sure if we got your point right, so posting a clarificaiton.

Fee in tech category is actually the lowest at 1% compared to 6% in Media cateogries and 5% in rest of site categories.

We understand that differnt categories have different margin structures and have tried to replicate the same on eBay pricing.

I hope this will clarify your question.

Regards,
Sapana

[Anonymous]

Dear anand_online

If we were to make Price+Shipping cost lowest as the default sort order, then for many search queries in the technology category, accessories would up showing up on top and thus create a negative perception amongst buyers

For example, try searching for Nokia and then sort on price+shipping lowest

Best regards
Murali

[Anonymous]

Dear Community Members

I wish to thank each of you personally for taking time to participate in this discussion

I have heard many points of view on our recent changes. I seek to underscore the fact that the changes are being done with the goal of further improving the overall vibrancy of the marketplace. I do recognize the fact that some of sellers would need to make changes to their selling strategy on eBay and we are there at all points in time to guide & help you make changes while ensuring that your overall business on eBay continues to grow

Thanking you all again for your inputs & comments

If there are any other open questions, I would come back in a couple of days and answer the same

Best regards and Happy eBaying
Murali