New Store Subscription Fees

[gec2002]

Just got the email that come 14th February our store subscription fees are going up.

Basic $24.95  Offset by 600 Free listings

Featured $54.95 Offset by 1500 Free listings

Anchor (Make sure you are sitting down before reading) $549.95

However all tiers and stores will have slightly higher FVF fees at all levels and tiers

As per usual the devil is in the detail

The cap on Final Value Fees per item will increase from $250 to $400

Auction Insertion Fees (not within the collectibles category) will be $3 regardless of the start price for store subscribers.

They definitely don't want store holders doing auctions.

Off to do my sums and see what it all really means, there will be a sweet spot there somewhere, just need to work it out.  But overall my guess is if listing items with normal listing fee you may in some cases be slightly better off, but for media @ 5c not so much.

[digital*ghost]

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@gec2002 wrote:

As I stated earlier selling everything is a best case selling less will leave you worse off.

And while the argument you state makes you $15 better off, why would you have a basic store selling 600 items.  You are only providing the facts that suit your case and certainly not the cheapest opinion.

Davevil sells books so 5c listing fee tier 2 fvfs

@So his 600 books in a basic store if all sold @ $20 each would currently cost him $1179.95 but under the new fees, he would only pay $1164.95 a saving of $15.  As he stated!

But what he's not saying because that would spoil his argument is he should use a featured store.

@Features Store Old fees for 600 books @$20 = $1074.95 ($105 saving on basic store) New fees featured store $1080.95 (now only an $84.00 saving over the basic store, but still cheaper), but an increase of $6.00 over the old featured store rate.

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This is one way to look at it for media sellers, but the way media moves for most private sellers, I'm not sure it's the best way.

You have to take into consideration the average number of listings the store has from month to month, and rather than the fairly unlikely scenario (IMHO) of "if I sold everything", actually look at the average turnover, particuarly considering that most stores aren't in it to sell everything, but to sell as much as possible while still reinvesting in new stock, on a continual basis.

A lot of private media sellers are better off with basic stores, because to make the extra $30 in store subscription fees worthwhile, the number of listings and average turnover has to at least make that $30 pay for itself. 

Let's say someone has 1000 book listings. In a basic store (under the new subscription package), that will cost them $44.95 per month in store and listing fees. That leaves a $10 difference, which means they would need to be turning over more than $1000 (rough guestimate) every month just to break even on the featured store subscription cost. The fewer listings they have, the more they would need to sell to make the featured store worthwhile, and vice versa - the more listings they have, the less they would need to sell to make it worthwhile (but not by much, as it's only a 5c saving on listing fees in so far as the free ones go, and there's 0.95% difference in FVF, which equates to about a 9c difference on a $10 item).

As a featured store holder selling in tier 2 categories, I won't be better off just yet, but should be able to make my way to that point with some extra listings. I have about 530 at the moment, which are currently costing me an extra $6 per month in listing fees, so the extra $5 store fee will off-set that, and once I get a few more listings happening, the extra 0.05% in FVF should be off-set by not having to pay all the extra insertion fees. 

Oh... and happy Valentine's day to you, too, eBay... (They perhaps picked the best date to scr..... raise fees). 

[found-in-australia]

Thanks brerrabbit585,

The current availability for no store is 40 free listings a month, and then $1.50 per auction listing under $100.

It is still a no win if I want to list runs of auctions of sports memorabilia, entertainment memorabilia etc in the categories where they are browsed for by collectors (I am not sure what Ebay thinks buyers do with memorabilia, but they claim it is not a collectable). It looks like it is time for me to walk away from Ebay almost completely, and just list the occassional more special item.

They have beaten me. I am sure Ebay Australia's management will take pride in getting rid of sellers like me, who unethically use the world's largest international online auction site to list auctions. It took less less than 20 years.

[digital*ghost]

I just felt the need to add separately...

I really feel for any storeholders than run auctions in non-collectible categories. A $3 insertion fee is disgusting. 

[phorum_junkie*]

I never use auctions in my store unless it is a collectable but I do have 2 other ids where I list auction items so that gives me 80 free listings a month. most of them I tick the three free relists option too so can end up with more than a hundred items up at any one time.

[thecatspjs]

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@phorum_junkie* wrote:

I never use auctions in my store unless it is a collectable but I do have 2 other ids where I list auction items so that gives me 80 free listings a month. most of them I tick the three free relists option too so can end up with more than a hundred items up at any one time.

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You are lucky you are not registered as a business seller as there are no free relists to be had.

[brerrabbit585]

Don't business sellers get auto relists on their non-store IDs? I've always assumed that you only become a business seller on the ID that you've sold too much on, but I could be basing that on wrong info. I think I read ages ago where a seller had chosen to be a business seller and later regretted it because of the auto relists, so they opened up a new non-store ID and got them. Perhaps they opened it in a different name but they didn't say so.

[brerrabbit585]

Digi, I'm really glad you pointed out that it's best to be realistic and not compare our current fees to some imaginary, unrealistic level of sales!

A lot of us can increase our listing numbers dramatically and increase our sales that way, so an extra $5 a month for the store isn't going to eat into our profit enough to matter.  As a percentage of the extra profit we'll make, it's lower than the current store as a percentage of our current profit.  For example, if a seller with 200 listings increased their listing numbers to the full 600, their profit (excluding shop fee) could potentially triple, but the extra $5 would only be a 25% increase on the current fee - peanuts compared to a potential 300% increase in profit!  

A lot of sellers will be able to downgrade from a featured store to a basic one, and some will be able to combine two stores and save one shop fee.  The savings would pay for a few auctions every month, or they could use the 40 free listings to do auctions on the ID that's a closed store. One size doesn't fit all and I expect ebay know this, but you can't please everyone, and a LOT of sellers will be better off under the new scheme, especially if they take as much advantage of it as they can.

I think ebay have probably done their homework and seen that there are a lot less 'true' auctions these days. By not being true auctions I mean that a lot of people list as auctions just to get extra visibility or they hope that someone impatient will pay the higher BIN price, but they're not the sort of items that are likely to get more than one bid, and they're relisted many times before they sell.

Ebay may have decided that the only things they want to see auctioned are sought after items that are likely to sell first time, rather than having auctions relist umpteen times before they sell, which isn't really in the spirit of a proper auction - most things are expected to sell at a 'real' auction, and if they don't because they have a reserve, they're usually advertised afterwards at a fixed price.  If you went to an auction house and saw the same things being auctioned every week, most buyers would stop going.

Just as an aside, a couple of weeks ago I was looking at a store that had only five listings, and that's all they've had for at least the past three months, and probably the whole year, going by their meagre feedback.  No doubt they'll be screaming at the fee increase too (if they even notice it), but it might just wake them up to how inefficient stupid they've been to be paying for a shop.  They would have been lucky to make $240 profit on their year's sales and it all went on shop fees.

[thecatspjs]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:
Don't business sellers get auto relists on their non-store IDs? I've always assumed that you only become a business seller on the ID that you've sold too much on, but I could be basing that on wrong info. I think I read ages ago where a seller had chosen to be a business seller and later regretted it because of the auto relists, so they opened up a new non-store ID and got them. Perhaps they opened it in a different name but they didn't say so.

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Nope business sellers don't get free relists full stop.

My stores and non-store accounts are linked so it applies across the board.   

There is no advantage to being a registered (small) business on eBay OZ - none that I am aware of.  

[brerrabbit585]

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@thecatspjs wrote:

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:
Don't business sellers get auto relists on their non-store IDs? I've always assumed that you only become a business seller on the ID that you've sold too much on, but I could be basing that on wrong info. I think I read ages ago where a seller had chosen to be a business seller and later regretted it because of the auto relists, so they opened up a new non-store ID and got them. Perhaps they opened it in a different name but they didn't say so.

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Nope business sellers don't get free relists full stop.

My stores and non-store accounts are linked so it applies across the board.   

There is no advantage to being a registered (small) business on eBay OZ - none that I am aware of.  

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You're right there.  I suspect that they've set it up that way because they assume that if you're a business you must be making plenty of money, just like all the people who knock on business's doors and ask for hand-outs assume that people who run businesses must be making more than wage earners.  Mostly they would just do things the way they do because they know businesses rely on ebay heavily and have no alternative but to put up with it.

[gec2002]

Sorry but I am struggling with your logic are you saying

"Let's say someone has 1000 book listings. In a basic store (under the new subscription package), that will cost them $44.95 per month in store and listing fees. That leaves a $10 difference, which means they would need to be turning over more than $1000 (rough guestimate) every month just to break even on the featured store subscription cost."

So Media 5c listing and list 1000 items base line fees with no sales are

Old Basic $59.95, Featured $74.95

New Basic $44.95, Featured $54.95  Are you saying you are only making 1% margin on sales (1% of $1000 = $10) because if you are you need to seriously look at your business model

List 1000 books per month

If they only sell 50 books a month the listing and FVF fee under the new rates for
Basic store = $139.95   Featured store $140.45 = $0.50 extra not exactly a major financial burden.

If they get their finger out and sell 100 month (10% of stock) they are even better of with a Featured store.
Basic Store $234.95  Featured $225.95 (saving themselves $9)

I only used selling everything to make the examples easier, I stated it wasn't realistic, but the principle still holds.