eBay no longer wants certain types of sellers on their site... Where to Go?

With all of the recent turmoil in the eBay community, mainly derived from comments expressed by the "new" powers that be within eBay, it is no wonder some long-time sellers are expressing more than a little angst over the quick use of terms like "retail experience" and "buyer experience" in conjuction with new performance-based discounts tied in with detailed seller ratings and feedback. It is not as though they were minor adjustments which should be obvious to everyone involved with using the eBay site for the last 10 years or so.

Lorrie Norrington - President of eBay Global Marketplaces - recently stated in a keynote speech: "....However, if you cannot, or will not change business practices to provide a great customer experience, then eBay is not for you."

Good sellers recognize the value of the bargain image that eBay nurtured for many years. In contrast, high volume sellers appreciate the retail experience language, while low volume or one-of-a-kind & consignment sellers have a harder time with this particular message. Is there a place for everyone to be comfortable? Apparently it is no longer going to be eBay.

Mr. Donahoe, who has been running the company since his appointment to the top spot was announced in January 2008, wants the company - the Internet’s largest eCommerce site - to operate less like an unruly flea market and more like a strip mall where buyers are guaranteed to have a comfortable and predictable shopping experience. See NY Times Article

If this message of change is affecting your online business plan or if you are unaware of other venues available to sell the types of goods you feel eBay was built upon (yet now seems to no longer want), we have assembled a short list of alternate venues for your to explore. Some of these marketplaces offer a venue for your online sales of unique and one-of-a-kind items and others could be more appropriate for the types of inventory no longer wanted on eBay.

1. OnlineAuction.com - Fixed flat rate yearly or monthly price to sell , 13 million listings live on the site.
2. eBid - $49.95 lifetime price to sell, international sites. Less active listings than OLA but growing.
3. Etsy - Free to list, 3.5% transaction fee if items sell, dedicated to hand-crafted & arts merchandise. Etsy has 870,000 registered users with 160,000 individual artists listing 1.5 million hand-made creations.
4. Yahoo Stores - Not an auction venue, but a great place to set up an online store if you do not want to build your own website with a shopping cart. $39.95 a month + 1.5% transaction fee for the basic package.
5. BuyitSellit - Buy It Sell It is an Ink Frog product. Many eBay sellers will be familiar with the Ink Frog eBay listing software solution. The BuyItSellIt basic package is free, but there are upgrades available including a digital delivery option for $9.95 per month. BuyItSellIt offers to also feature eBay listings alongside the shoping cart listing created in a merchant's BuyItSellIt Store.
6. Amazon Webstore - While the fees are higher here - $59.99 per month plus a 7% transaction fee - Amazon Webstores provide the Amazon experience to buyers and allows merchant specific branding. In addition, the merchant may operate multiple niche-specific Amazon Webstores all under one account for no additional fees.

Amazon Webstores Details

All credit card processing and transaction fees. There are no other hidden fees such as hosting, payment gateways or merchant accounts.

Payment Fraud Protection for you. WebStore by Amazon uses sophisticated fraud detection tools in use on Amazon.com. This allows you to benefit from Amazon’s world-class fraud protection services and experience.

Purchase protection for your customers. Customers who shop on your WebStore will feel more confident buying from your site knowing they are protected by the same A-to-z Guarantee that protects shoppers on Amazon.com.

Creating multiple WebStores within your account. Each WebStore can be a customized and independent Web presence for no additional monthly fee.

The option of adding Amazon products to your WebStore. Offer items from Amazon.com through your WebStore and the Amazon Associates Program allows you to collect a referral fee when such items are sold!

Every merchant must make his or her own choices when it comes to multi-channel selling. Using a multi-channel listing service which can feed inventory to many venues is also an option. This option is often the most expensive way to get product online and many small businesses cannot take advantage of the services of a ChannelAdvisor or Infopia multi-channel management solution. But if convenience and automation are your goals these are the types of services you should look into. Merchant Advantage is another service worthy of investigation if you have a large inventory and are interested in placing it in multiple online venues.

The point here is that there are multiple options to explore. eBay is not the only marketplace, yet it is also not a marketplace to be ignored or abandoned. Using eBay in a smart and informed way is the best solution. Doing that while exploring the other solutions mentioned above (or many more) is a smart business plan for the future.

Diversify, reduce costs, raise efficiency. These are not just terms for large corporations - they will apply to any business. See what you can do to make them apply to your business.

Scott Pooler

Scot Wingo President and CEO of Channel Advisor gives us a heads up regarding possible eBay fee structure changes...

Scot Wingo is a man in the know... and he has many sources for his information... I would look upon this report as being as close to accurate as is possible when dealing with the unpredictable animal that is eBay. If these changes to materialize, what are your thoughts about how fee changes will effect the bottom line of eBay and more importantly, your business?

We are in favor of providing more store items in the general search and we of course appreciate any fees reductions, especially when it comes to listing fee charges...

• But will it really allow more fraudsters to enter the market?
• Could these fee reductions be implemented on a tier basis? - Volume sellers (and non -fraudsters) receiving the biggest breaks...
• Finding - or the Search capabilities of the eBay system are a problem for any serious merchant and we agree with Scot that this must be addressed!

What are your thoughts?

Comment Below:

January 16, 2008

 

eBay fee change buzz...

 

As I've covered since mid-Q4, eBay has been telegraphing some big changes coming to the fee structure. The only thing we don't know is what and when.

It seems some top sellers are getting calls from TSAMs outlining in general the fee changes that are evidently going to be announced next week with eBay's earnings (eBay is set to announce 1/23 at 5pm EST). The tidbits I'm hearing:

• Certain categories will go to low listing, high FVF for fixed-price listings - based on who is being told this, I'd say we're looking at BMV, auto-parts and other 'high density/low conversion' categories.
• Bulk discounts - eBay is being vague here, but it looks like they are finally considering some kind of break for sellers that are doing a ton of listings.

None of this is surprising at this point. I was at a Wall St. event last week and spent lots of time with the folks answering a common question that went something like: "If eBay lowers fees and fixes finding, won't they stem the tide of GMV to amazon 3P?". My answer to this one is long-term, yes, short-term there's some risk there we should all keep an eye on.

Back in December, I introduced the "3F" program for fixing what ales eBay. The trick is each F has to be solved in the right order or else it could actually make things worse. I worry about this fee announcement next week for this very reason. Here's the exact wrong-way to do the 3Fs that could destabilize eBay's marketplace even further:

1. Fees - Let's say that eBay significantly lowers listing fees. This is the right thing to do, but not first (actually it should come last - more on that in a second).
2. Finding - after fees let's say they work on Finding.
3. Fraud - Finally eBay addresses the fraud issues.

Here's the problem with this order:

• When you lower fees, listings shoot way up. Does anyone remember the Store in Search (SIS) "debacle" of Q106? I'm
• If you haven't FIRST fixed finding, the site is flooded with fixed-price items, thus your auction-listings are starved of traffic and get into a death-spiral.
• The fraudsters love low listing fees, this gives them the ability to just completely hammer the site with all kinds of wacky stuff.

IMO the correct order needs to be:

1. Fraud - Get policies, higher registration bars (buyers and sellers!), etc. in place to keep the bad guys off (and keep them off once booted) the site.
2. Finding - This probably means Finding 3.0, it's hard to go from 1.0 in 98 to 2.0 in 08 and nail it. I suspect it's going to take another big turn of the crank - what I call Finding 3.0 to get the finding experience on eBay 'right' and most importantly ready for a surge in listings from reduced fees.
3. Fees - Once you have fraud and finding locked-down, you can then safely adjust the fee structure and sleep at night knowing you're not going to drive away the auction-loving-buyers nor the fixed-price-loving buyers when you 10X the number of listings on the site.

The current information points to Fees/Finding (no fraud) vs. the recommended fraud/finding/fees so it will be interesting to see what happens as the fee reductions roll out and listings surge.

 

Posted by Scot Wingo on January 16, 2008 at 01:27 PM in Of interest to ebay sellers | Permalink