ebay.com/ebay.ca/ebaymotors.com 10¢ Fixed Price Listing Day February 28th

[amy]

***10¢ Fixed Price Listing Day Tomorrow, February 28th*** 

February 27, 2006 | 05:00PM PST/PT


As a special offer to our sellers, we are pleased to announce a one-day promotion for www.ebay.com, www.ebay.ca and www.ebaymotors.com (for non-vehicles listings), where the insertion fees for Fixed Price listings will be 10¢!

The promotion starts on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 00:00:01 PT (12:00 AM plus one second) and ends that same day, Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 23:59:59 PT (11:59 PM plus 59 seconds). Listings which were created prior to February 28, 2006 and scheduled to start during the promotional period will also be eligible for the special promotional rate.

The 10¢ Fixed Price Sale will not apply to eBay Motors vehicles, International, Live Auction, Professional Services, Real Estate/Ad Format, and Store Inventory listings. Also, the following Business & Industrial categories are excluded from this promotion: tractors & farm machinery (category #91952), heavy equipment (25249), concession trailers, carts (67145), imaging and aesthetics equipment (92035), forklifts and other lifts (97185), manufacturing equipment (92080), metalworking equipment (92082), and commercial printing presses (26247).

promotion details page: http://pages.ebay.com/promo/10fixprice/?...MDV:AB1000

[Angel]

Listings must be down again cause they're throwing out another bone.  Get ready for the flood  lol 


Angel 

[bargainbloodhound]

Get ready for the flood 

The flood and the drop in sell-through rates is the reason I always hated reduced rate days.

I haven't listed anything but store inventory items on eBay since late 2004 so I think I'll sit this one out (as usual).

[maggie777]

10 cents isn't low enough to entice me to return. 

[sneakymagenta]

The flood is  a few little sprinkles http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND

The choice Pay 2 cents to get your store items in search or Pay 10 cents for fixed price items in same search? 

[bargainbloodhound]

Medved's figures could be off, but it does make sense that people wouldn't be rushing to spend 10 cents instead of 2 cents for a fixed price listing.  The fixed price format  probably accounted for a large percentage of the 2+ million decline in non-stores items since eBay started including all store inventory in the main search.

[dnc_ont]

I've listed a couple things.

But I've mentioned before, I haven't listed ANY fixed price items really (one or two) since the store items started showing up in search - and according to the store traffic reports, my traffic hasn't changed one bit.

So that means that either

a) The store traffic reports are complete  or
b) I'm gonna save a whole poo poo load of money 

[dimucci]

Theyll raise store fees back to 5 cents next January.

[dnc_ont]

I don't think they'll raise the store fees again.

Actually I came up with an interesting theory last night about fees, all the listing sales lately...

Despite what we may all think, eBay's management isn't entirely stupid.  I think that including store inventory in the main search, offering listing sales like this, far more regularly, is all part of a larger plan.

Which is, they have finally seen the writing on the wall.  Growth is slowing, sellers are bitching about there being no buyers and the fees being too high, other smaller sites are competing with some degree of success, Google Base is coming online and has the potential to grow into a major competitor, their China strategy is a bomb what with having to backtrack on the "Free isn't a business model" statement..  Large previously successful eBay sellers finally getting eaten alive, or leaving eBay for St Elsewhere and getting printed in all those online interviews, eBay's increasing fees always comes up among their reasons for tanking/leaving.  eBay has finally clued in that the fees are indeed TOO HIGH for sellers to remain and compete.  Yes, they may have gotten rid of some of the riff-raff sellers they wanted to drive away, but..  The rest still can't hack it, long term, with what they're charging.

I think what they're doing, by including store inventory in search, and giving us frequent listing sales (which I think that the 10 cent listing thing will start to be a regular monthly fixture on .com, just as it has been the last few months on .ca) they're giving store sellers (ie. the frequent customers) a much better value and chance to lower their fees to a competitive level (as I said, I haven't run more than a couple fixed price listings since the change in search, and my traffic is exactly the same).

The plan?  Saving face.  There's absolutely NO way that they could turn around and LOWER fees - shareholders would be screaming bloody murder, it would be a dangerous precedent for them to set, not to mention that admitting that kind of mistake would kill them, on so many levels.  So by doing this, they're doing an end run around those problems, and lowering fees for the group of sellers that really needs it, in order to survive (and thus keep paying eBay money).

It's all about saving eBay's butt in the long run, without shooting themselves in the foot.

[dnc_ont]

(And if any of that doesn't make much sense, YOU try posting intelligently while you're wife is yapping at you from the other room about how smart she was to cut up an orange and peel it off the skin, so our lazy daughter has no excuse for not taking one for lunch, because it's too much of a hassle to peel and eat, and 47 other various inane subjects)