eBay has release the monthly change list, and it's a big one. I'm not going to rehash the announcement. You can read that for yourself. But here are my gut reaction predictions, pros and cons.
Pros
Fees are generally going to be lower. I've already closed my eBay Store. That'll save me $15.95 per month.
Visibility for fixed-price listings will be greater. They will last longer, and if a seller sells multiple items with the new 30-day duration, they'll get indexed by search engines. This will hopefully bring some organic search visibility for your eBay listings.
Another positive, the more recent sales an item has had, the higher that listing will appear in Best Match results.
Cons
Lower upfront fees, and longer durations will likely mean more items on eBay. More items essentially more competition, both in a literal way, and due to eBay's new "Finding" system. Sell-through rates will likely fall across the site.
Small sellers of one-of-a-kind items will benefit the least from these changes. The bigger sellers with multiple items will get the benefit of greater visibility over time.
Automatically suspending sellers with less than a 4.3 DSR. There's not much screaming about this yet. But it will likely lead to more sales of Selling on 'the River'.
Bigger media sellers will be affected by the new fee structure / fixed shipping. Ultimately, it will cost buyers more to buy media items. These large sellers make a little bit on shipping, which they'll now pass on to buyers.
Summary
It's a little harder to pick on these new changes. Overall, I think the changes are positive. I still disagree with some of the other changes made this year, but this set is more positive for the masses.
Maybe eBay's Q4 2008 will not be a bust after all. Time will tell.
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2 comments ↓
>> Automatically suspending sellers with less than a 4.3 DSR. There’s not much screaming about this yet.>>
Oh yes there is (please check out http://workshops.ebay.com/forum.jspa?forumID=14000000003). Almost all of us sellers and buyers are glad to see the bad sellers are weeded out.
The actual problem stems from how Ebay uses the 5 star DSR: if a buyer gives a “4″ across the five rating options, they responded as follows:
1. How accurate was the item description?
If the buyer says “Accurate” they leave 4 stars
2. “How satified were you with the seller’s communication? If the buyer says “Satisfied” they leave 4 stars.
3. “How quickly did the seller ship the item?” If the buyer says “Quickly” they leave 4 stars.
4. “How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?” If the buyer says reasonable they leave 4 stars.
So a buyer who responded “Accurate”, “Satisfied”, “Quickly” and “Reasonable” gets the seller a 4.0. But ebay uses 4.3 as ‘acceptable’ as far as letting the seller continue to sell widgets.
My own DSR’s are far above this, but I have joined in asking Ebay to tell us how a buyer is to learn that using those terms will result in a seller being booted of Ebay.
So essentially using, ratings between 1-4 stars means “bad” and 5 stars means “acceptable.”
Somethings wrong here…
The new fee structure will allow us to market higher priced items on eBay. For lower priced items, this is a fee hike which will require us to re-evaluate what we sell on eBay. Hopefully, the fees we pay overall will balance out or be in our favor.
I agree on your blog post re: DSR 4.3. You have no business being on eBay if you can not maintain such a score. It is not difficult to do. You really do have to a “bad” seller if your DSR is below 4.3 using current calculations.
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