Is an eBay Stores Listing Fee Increase (or Auction Fee Decrease) in the Offing?

[mandy]

Observation from the Channel Advisor auction management services' CEO who sees an eBay.com Stores listing fee increase in the near future-with an announcement as early as the June eBay Live convention.

At Goldman Sachs based on what Meg said, I got the inkling that she was foreshadowing a listing fee increase for what eBay coins SIF (Store Inventory Format) with analysts (ironically sellers wouldn’t know the SIF acronym).

So here’s my case:

    * In the .com, the store listings are growing crazily
    * In Jan, eBay implemented Stores in Search (SIS) globally putting store listings in with core.
    * In the .com, this apparently caused buyer confusion (because of the abundance of store listings)
    * Therefore in March, eBay reversed SIS – for the .com ONLY.
    * At the Goldman Sachs conference last week, Meg gave several series of talks: Wednesday she had small meetings with 10-15 investors at a time that were webcast (voice only). Thursday she gave more of these as well as the main “all hands” Noto fireside chat.
          o The buzz Wednesday was that in an earlier small meeting she had said they would lower core pricing to bridge the value gap between core/store.
          o In fact, Justin Post at Merrill Lynch was listening and issued a report in the wee hours of Wed evening. In his report, Justin theorizes we could see a lower core or higher store to adjust the fees.
    * During her main speech which I recorded in parts V and IV on the blog, she said:
          o “As we manage via pricing and other techniques” we will bring more balance to the marketplace.
          o In the .com/US, the pricing difference is largest between SIF/core of 8 markets.
          o Finally during Q+A, Justin Bauldorf asked specifically: In an earlier session you were quoted as saying you would lower store/core listings? Meg replied: I didn’t say that, we’re looking at things.

In any case, my prediction is we’ll see a listing fee increase in stores – maybe as high as .10 or it could be like some countries, where it’s .04 for 30 days and a .06 surcharge for additional timeframes.

full article: http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_str...k_an_.html

[BellisimaJ.]

Mandy,

I believe you are right on. This topic was also mentioned in Scott Wingo's blog recently. As was Microsoft.

I think that the fee increase will be part of more visibility for stores in search

Additionally, I am beginning to think that the whole reason for including stores in core search to start with, was an intentional "taste test".

Ie; give store owners a taste of the increase in business, turn off the faucet, let demand grow, BAM, increase the fees as a requirement for inclusion.

xxxxxxxfffff%^7890-0-= Jacka$$es!!!!

[Nat]

eBay and fees to me is like death to me - not death as in killing the site, but death as in it is going to happen sooner or later.  Sooner or later someone sooners.  Sooner or later eBay fees will increase.  Gee, they are the same.

[amy]

I'd be surprised if they deviated from their normal eBay.com site January fee hike announcement schedule and announced a mid-year hike at eBay Live


EDIT: unless they are getting extremely desperate over the slowdown in auction format listings