Big Changes On eBay US Will Soon Affect eBay Australia…
Big news coming out of eBay US this month: Starting March 30, eBay.com will be making some significant changes to their fee structures and policies.
eBay Australia haven’t had notification of when this change may hit our shores but usually these types of changes can take 3-6 months before they affect us.
eBay is promoting this change as a move to their “lowest insertion fees ever!” and in fact, for auctions with a starting price of less than $1, the insertion fees will actually be waived altogether.
What eBay is neglecting to mention, however, is that the backend fees for auctions are going to see a sharp increase.
Right now, when you sell an item via auction (and you don’t have an eBay Store), you pay 8.75% for the first $25 of the final price, and 3.5% for the rest of the amount, up to $1000.
But when the new fees kick in, you’re going to have to pay a flat 9% on the total price of the auction, to a $50 maximum.
This is great news if you happen to sell big-ticket items costing over $1000 — but if you sell items that cost less than that, you’re going to find yourself paying a LOT more in your Final Value Fees.
Here’s an example to illustrate the difference: Let’s say you list an auction for a designer purse, and the winning bid is $200.
Right now, you’d pay 8.75% of the first $25 you make, and 3.5% of the remaining $175, bringing your total Final Value Fee to $2.19 + $6.13 = $8.32.
So overall after selling the same bag for the same price , you’ll be looking at shelling out a Final Value Fee of $18.00.
Pretty scary right!
However the Final Value Fees for eBay Store owners will remain largely unchanged. Not only that, Store owners will be able to add up to 12 photos to each listing for free – a bonus that will save them some serious cash.
And as if that weren’t enough to make Store owners happy, eBay is putting regular Store listings back into their search results, giving them search exposure equal to auction listings and regular “Buy It Now” listings!
This looks like eBay is trying to reward professional eBay Store owners… at the expense of casual eBayers
So if you are using auctions a lot these changes are really going to hurt your profits and bottom line…
We’re lucky that these changes haven’t hit us yet and we’ll have time to get ready for them and make the appropriate changes we may need to make to our eBay business. So be on the lookout in the next few months with news from eBay about these new changes!
Til next time, have a great eBay week.
Matt & Amanda Clarkson
eBay are trying to force small timers to up their game and go professional. More and more, if you’re not planning to be a full time professional Store owner, it just doesn’t make sense to do business on eBay. They’re simply not making it worth your while.








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