Yesterday I talked about the fee changes happening on 24/9/08 on eBay .co.uk and .ie.
I wanted to spend a bit of time going through the changes so I could let you know the impact as I see it. Well the news is in and I have to say
I am encouraged to some extent, but shop owners look out!
Today I will do a brief run through of the changes to Buy It Now (BIN) items, Auction format listings and Shops. There are many changes, I will cover the most important as there are only so many hours in my day! If you would like to look at the changes in deatil here is the link for the uk and here is the link for the Irish site
Gallery pictures are now free, I talked of that in my last post. BIN fees are now flat rated at 40p and here is the biggie BIN listings can now last 30 days! That is great, more exposure and lower pricing. A listing at £4.99 under the old fees would have a total cost to sell (CTS) of around 25.5% that includes listing and Final Falue Fees (FVF) and also assuming a 100% sell through rate, which of course doesn’t always happen. Under the new pricing the CTS is 17.83% for 30 days exposure under the old rules it was a maximum of 10 days. So sellers have now got much more exposure time.
BIN pricing across the range of higher than £4.99 selling prices has fallen by approx 4%, An item selling at £4.99 fell by 7.7%.
So good news for BIN listings & sellers.
Now to Auctions, we have less change here. The picture for the gallery is now free. To offset this the FVF has increased. Old basic FVF was 7.5% new FVF is 8.75% both have a tiered system that you should check on the links above.
An item selling at £4.99 would incur 12.53% CTS at old rates and 11.62% CTS at new rates. There would be an approx 1% or just less increase in the CTS for the £14.99 -29.99 final selling price range. Above £99.99 banding is slightly better by a fraction.
So auctions are very similar no major change. The difference I expect to see is higher end prices for items that now have pictures in the search results because they are now free. In fact items that once would not have sold because of no picture will stand a better chance now.
There are other changes and big ones too! Shop fees increase quite a bit a basic shop goes from £9.99 to £14.99 for instance! Whilst the selling costs also increase in all but a few instances! To sell on item costing £4.99 under the old fees would have a CTS of approx 10.42% under the new fees this is 13.83%! Not to mention the Basic Shop Subscription increase!
If you sell £4.99 items and list for 90 days your insertion costs are up by 10% assuming a sale! Old costs were 0.09p for 90 days they are now 0.60p wow!
It looks as though the shop inventory is no longer, and all shop items are now classed as BIN. I therefore assume that FVF will be at BIN rates and not the old 10% plus rates. It does not clearly state that but I am fairly sure that is the intention.
It looks as though basic shop owners are hit the hardest with approx 2% to 10% increases. Plus the hefty increase in monthly shop fees. Even though the FVF has fallen it has not offset any increases far from it!
Featured shops are slightly better with increases in the 1-2% range plus again monthly charges increasing by 19.99 a month!
Anchored are the only ones to really gain but by fractions and that is not in all areas there are increases for them too.
A couple of caveats here, This isn’t a full analysis there are many changes! I have looked at general listings and not the pricing differences of the media sections for instance. The figures are based on eBay.co.uk. I have created an excel spreadsheet that goes into minute detail for BIN, Auction & Shops showing you exactly where the increases are! If you have a shop you need to take a good look at your bottom line! IMHO Shops have been hit the hardest.
So the verdict is Good, Bad & Indifferent! Good if you sell BINs a lot, Bad for shops and Indifferent for auctions.
If you don’t have Microsoft excel you can access it free online at Google Docs
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