Admittedly, fees are high for what is offered by the service but I liken it to paying for advertising.

(that's actually how I account for eBay store and listing fees).

FVF's and PayPal etc are accounted for as "Banking" but that's beside the point.

What is actually the killer for media sellers is the PayPal fixed transaction fee of 30c plus the FVF on postage.

When postage plays such a significant part in overall price it raises the fee percentage hugely.

An earlier poster on this zombie thread sells DVD's.

If a DVD cost him $0.20 which he sells for $5.95 (an average DVD price on eBay) then here is the breakdown:

Costs:

1. DVD ............. $0.20

2. Post ............. $1.30 (cheapest estimate)

3. eBay FVF .... $0.56

4. PayPay ........ $0.45

    Total ............. $2.51

So ROI is ........ $3.44

% Profit is 57% (not too bad by retail standards)

% Cost is 43% (getting a bit high)

% Fees is 17% (now that's steep for a service and it's based on my rates as a featured store - an occasional seller would be over 19%).

Obviously, the higher your prices go, the less your fees become as a percentage of sale but only by a percentage point or so.

This forces the sellers of low cost items to go for volume and any cost reduction they can find.

In a market, this fuels a race to the bottom where only the very high volume, very low cost sellers can hope to succeed.

I see this in books all the time where occasional sellers come on and auction for $0.99 (where it usually sells) and charging $8~$13 for postage ie they are making a loss.

Even the ones selling BIN and pricing low are not factoring costs in correctly and so are making a dollar or so or, more frequently, suffering a loss.

This does nothing to actually support the marketplace long term.

A seller burned is a buyer tainted (with the stench of being used).

In essence, the decision to levee fees on postage, while serving to maintain short term profitability for eBay, can be argued as having had quite a counterproductive effect on buyer engagement.

(Buyers after all will eventually have a go at selling something)

The folk running this show are all (supposedly) well educated MBA's etc yet they can't seem to get short term gain out of forefront in their thinking.

It's really quite sad to see it all panning out.