What is The eBay Stores Fee Hike for July, 2006?
eBay has raised fees drastically on all eBay Stores and eBay store listings. After years of promoting eBay Stores to sellers and buyers, eBay management decided that they wanted to get back to their "core" business of auctions. So, they decided to raise both listing fees and final value fees for eBay Stores only, to encourage sellers to sell more at auction. This is a reverse of prior eBay policy to heavily promote eBay Stores to their eBay Store Sellers.
How Much Is The eBay Fee Hike?
Although Mr. Bill Cobb stated in his announcement about the fee hike that "A typical eBay Stores seller who uses Store Inventory format ... will experience an overall fee increase of less than six percent" the actual fees are going up much more than this. Listing fees are going from 2 cents a month to 5 cents a month for items under $25 and to 10 cents a month for items over $25. So that a store with 1000 dolls for sale will go from paying $20.00 a month in listing fees to $100.00 per month (actually, a 500% increase). On top of that, the final value fees have increased from 8% to 10% per sale for items under $25, and from 5% to % for items from $25 to $100. To put this in perspective for you, seven percent is a very hefty fee--most modern doll sellers rarely make more than 30% gross profit on a doll, and that 30% must include all their business expenses before they make a profit. For sellers of antique and vintage dolls, 7% is still a considerable percentage, close to what some actual terra firma auction houses charge (especially when you add listing fees and other fees of doing eBay business, including PayPal, to that 7%).
How Will The eBay Stores Fee Hike Affect Me, As a Doll Collector?
Only time will tell how deeply the doll categories are impacted by this. Many eBay Stores doll sellers are very angered by this latest fee hike, which comes on top of the January fee increase. I have spoken to many of these sellers in the past few days, and many don't know what they are going to do long term. Some will stay and raise prices, others are looking into selling at other venues, and others are still working out their strategies. Few have decided, so far, to list more eBay auctions because of the softness of auction prices on eBay of late. In the interest of full disclosure, I run an eBay Store, I lecture on using eBay for doll collectors, and I have run auctions on eBay since 1996, so these eBay fee increases will have a direct effect on me personally.
Will I Be Able To Find The Dolls I Want on eBay In The Future?
There are so many sellers of dolls on eBay that I think you will still be able to find what you want, although I do think that overall the increases will cause prices to rise and the supply of certain dolls to decrease. Until the eBay Store doll sellers decide what to do and see the impact on their businesses, however, it will be hard to see the long term effects. In the short term (for the holiday 2006 season) most doll sellers are already committed to inventory and probably won't be able to change very much about their eBay offerings.
What are the eBay Stores Fee Hike Auctions?
The eBay Fee Hike Auctions were clever auctions that eBay Store sellers were running to protest the eBay Fee Hikes. The auctions were satirical and many were quite funny with many thousands of page views, but eBay decided to end them all for "keyword spamming" or some other eBay listing violation. I was quite shocked by this, since eBay is such a large company, and you would think they could take some public criticism of the fee hikes created by the very same sellers who would be impacted by this. Evidently not.
