Well Ebay are at it again with even more changes to the site. This time it’s fees that are changing so lets have a look at what this means for the multimedia seller (like you and me).
First of all you can now list an item with a gallery picture for free!
On the plus side:
Having a gallery image definitely helps with sales and I can prove this by simply searching for finished items in any category and then scrolling through the results. You’ll see that more items sell with a gallery picture than without.
On the negative side:
Everyone worth there salt will now be listing with a gallery picture so there will be more to compete against and more for a prospective customer to choose from.
This means that having a good gallery picture is going to be very important but what is the best type of gallery picture?
Ideally this would be a nice clear picture of the actual product you’re selling. Always try to make sure the product fills up the whole picture. For example lets say your selling a pair of trainers, don’t photograph the whole table that the trainers are on, make sure you get in and take a good clear close up so that the trainers fill the photo.
The next change is called ‘Success-Based Fees’ and these start from the 24th September.
An ‘insertion’ fee for a ‘Buy-It-Now’ item at £1.99 currently costs 15p for up to 10 days. After the changes this will be 40p for up to 30 days. This should save you a little bit of cash each month but only if you list it for 30 days. If you continue to list it for 7 days for example it will still cost 40p.
However if you have a basic shop the listing fee drops to just 20p for up to 30 days, 5p if you have a featured shop or just 1p if you have an anchor shop.
Now you may be thinking why would they structure ‘Buy-It-Now’ listing fees on whether you have a shop or not? The reason is because they are getting rid of the ‘Shop Inventory’ format and replacing it with ‘Buy-It-Now’ for up to 30 days or ‘Good Til Cancelled’.
As such all your listings will now be shown in search listings (shop items didn’t). Another thing to notice is that the listing fee is now set regardless at what price your item starts or finishes at. This is extremely good news for anyone selling higher priced items.
All shop fees are also going to be increased. A ‘Basic Shop’ will go from £6.00 a month to £14.99 a month, ‘Featured Shop’ from £30.00 to £49.99 and an ‘Anchor Shop’ from £300.00 to £349.00.
Final Value Fees (FVF)
These are also changing. Currently any item that sells between 1p and £29.99 costs 7.5% in FVF fees, so if your item sells at £1.99 the FVF will be 14.9p (let’s say 15p for easier calculations). The new FVF will be 9.9% which equates to 19.7p (or 20p).
So then bottom line, will we save any money or not?
Facts and figures time . . . .
Lets say you have a Basic shop and list 1000 items a month and sell 10% (100 products) at an average price of £4.00.
Currently it would cost you:
Listing Fees - 15p x 1000 = £150.00
FVF Fees (7.5% of £4) - 30p x 100 = £30.00
Basic Shop - £6.00
Monthly Total - £186.00
with the new price structures it would be:
Listing Fees - 20p x 1000 = £200.00
FVF Fees (9.9% of £4) - 39.6p x 100 = £39.60
Basic Shop - £14.99
Monthly Total = £254.59
Brilliant, nice one Ebay thanks a bunch thats an extra £70.00 a month!
Errrrr but hang on a moment . . .
Lets see what happens if we upgrade to a ‘Featured Shop’ at £49.99 a month.
Our listing fees drop to just 5p . . .
Listing Fees - 5p x 1000 = £50.00
FVF Fees (9.9% of £4) - 39.6p x 100 = £39.60
Basic Shop - £49.99
Monthly Total = £139.59
Wahey that’s nearly £50.00 LESS PER MONTH than before!
According to Ebay ‘All new fee amounts also apply to listings with multiple identical items in Buy It Now format (colour variations are permitted).’
This means you can now (from 24th September) list 100 items in a single listing for 30 days and still only pay 5p per listing if you upgrade to a ‘Featured Shop’.
For more details on these changes you can visit the official Ebay announcement page at:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/#fees
Also I recommend you check out the following pages too:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/buyitnow08/index.html
And probably the most important page (so you can work out whether you’ll benefit):
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/buyitnow08/illustrator.html
Warm regards, Richard
p.s. Your comments regarding this are most welcome!