Another shoe is ready to drop at eBay
Big changes are afoot at eBay. A new chief executive is on the way in, and Meg Whitman is on the way out.At the top of the agenda:
Shifting eBay's emphasis from auctions to fixed-priced listing, which could make the experience of buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.Fixed-price sales now account for 40 percent of eBay's revenue. Who knew?
An announcement on a new fee structure is expected next week. I am guessing -- I'm way out on a limb here -- that fees for sellers will be higher.
If eBay can improve its search function and repeat-business action, higher fees might be worth it.
One area where eBay is expected to CUT fees: image hosting. That's long overdue, if you ask me. The more product images on eBay, the more sales. Encouraging multiple photos for listings without a fee penalty makes a lot of sense.
There's a lot of speculation about what this means for eBay Store sellers. For those of you who sell on eBay, how do your costs compare to Amazon when you add up insertion, final-value, and PayPal fees, compared to Amazon's 15-percent Marketplace commissions?
Labels: eBay
posted by Steve Weber at 1/25/2008
4 Comments:
Amazon's 15% Marketplace commissions? Don't forget about the shipping holdback that bumps the fees to nearly 25%.
Ebay charges less in total fees allowing us to sell for less and make more money.
Sales on eBay now often beat sales on Amazon even though we have an eBay store which currently gets very little exposure compared to auction listings.
Buyers are learning that it costs less on eBay and our sales there continue to grow and sales on Amazon continue to shrink as Amazon continues to implement policies that make it harder for sellers.
I have been moving more and more of my sales to ebay. I am tired of Amazon. Amazon is still a powerful selling venue, but I hate Amazon and the way they treat sellers. ebay is more expensive to list since you pay month after month for each listing. Amazon you just list it and no insertion fees every month. Although on ebay you can charge a little extra for shipping supplies. There are ups and downs for both sites. I would love to see ebay take over Amazon since it is a much friendlier atmosphere. There is a much better customer interaction on ebay and feedback goes both ways which is always good.
Whenever I sell a book on Amazon, I feel like I've been robbed. If you are selling a medium to large book the postage that you receive will often come from the price of the book.Amazon says charge more to make up the difference,but often that means the book is not a fair buy for your customer and a harder sell for you.Ebay has always been a good source for me. However the fees are already to high to suit me. I make 90 0/0 of my ebay income comes from the auctions, people like to bid and compete. Ebay may make more money from fixed price but I don't.
My experience is the opposite of the ones posted before me. Amazon takes it's 15-20%. Ebay takes 20-25% with Paypal fees, listing fees and FVF. Amazon with no upfront fee works for me for books. Anything else is still iffy. Although when I do sell something else there, it goes for a higher price than ebay.
I'm in the "wait and see" mode on ebay's fee announcements. I learned 10 years ago to anticipate the worst with them. I still do.
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