eBay going to price itself out of the market

[ts-trade-uk]

eBay used to be the place to find barging now with fees and promo it double bubbles the only way for us sellers to make this work is by creating multiple listings at double the prices and just promo it this already happens in most categories seen a few sellers with the same item listed multiple times in same category all this going to do is increase ebay running cost if eBay wants to earn more money then remove the promo
we can sell more goods at a lower price and you make more money

[555njp]

Been saying this for ages. The two things killing the site are manipulated search and promoted listings.

Unfortunately though this seems to be the way eBay is going. All you ever see is marketing campaigns, promote this, promote that blah blah, and it seems now that if you don’t, depending on what you sell, you risk zero visibility or at best long periods without selling a thing.

Businesses cannot operate without some level of predictability of sales revenue but neither can they take the ever increasing fees proposed by eBay to buy visibility (which by the way in my own experience also cannot be relied on!).

So the model, whist looking good to eBay’s directors as a cash cow, is actually making more and more businesses leave. The margins simply are not there to make selling viable anymore and increasing prices really isn’t an option as most goods are available elsewhere for less where overheads (advertising fees) are lower.

So even ignoring the recent announcements which are doing a great job or alienating many genuine private sellers, both sellers and buyers were already shutting up shop.

Welcome to eBay’s spiral of demise.

[santlache_sales]

Businesses cannot operate without some level of predictability of sales revenue.....

Exactly and where eBay was once pretty reliable, it has now become very unreliable due to the changes you highlight like promoted listings and eBay's total manipulation of the search engine.

....but neither can they take the ever increasing fees proposed by eBay to buy visibility.

Constant increase in prices means they are failing, ebay have been doing this for years with things like 10% on P&P and the little stealth fees to increase their revenue when it's been falling, or not as good as expected.

I think the thing that amazes me is people who have been here for 20 years or so probably know the platform and how it operates,  an awful lot better then the vast majority of eBay senior (here today, gone tomorrow) management.

We know what is wrong and usually how it can be fixed, yet eBay management for many years have now made poor decisions one after the other, some of which are verging on incompetence. They have certainly made the platform a very unattractive place to be now and as you say people are deserting in their droves, and understandably so.

[auctiongabble]

Ebay already has priced itself out of the market, many other selling sites that are far cheaper on fees than ebay! Been doing numbers past few days, far cheaper to run own site and advertise via google than what i will pay ebay in a year based on sale history. 

Annual ebay fees in region of £6k plus

cost of website , domain, hosting and advertising - £2k to £2.5k

Ebay business fees are to high

An example, sold an item for £295, free postage for buyer but will cost me £8.35.

All of ebay fees = £49 (16.6% )

Then there is cost of item, T&M for cleaning, polishing and repairs 

[magpiecorner1]

Not just price - perception of eBay is going to change and it will not be for the good.

Buyer protection has been introduced private buyers - C2C selling.   Consumer to consumer.  Except eBay is primarily a B2C - business to consumer - selling platform these days.

The headlines will be out this wee and they will be 'Ebay to introduce buyer fees'  not 'Ebay to introduce buyer fees, but not if you are buying from a business account'.  So potential buyers will now come to eBay expecting to pay extra for their goods.  If they come!

[ts-trade-uk]

The main problem is that eBay can do as it likes and we as sellers have to take it because we have no other platform I'm a small business I would like to grow but eBay does not give us that opportunity we get hammed with fees our listing go from page 1 to page 7 in a few hours the sale goes from a good day to a dead day we just have to keep creating listings and hope we get some sales ebay will soon be running backward there servers and storages will just go up and the time they realize it is too late as the business sellers would have gone eles were and there just be left with all the drop shippers and Chinese sellers on here.

Private sellers should not be allowed to sell new, especially in multiple qty. They also should not be allowed to sell multiple branded products

especially when not an authorized reseller they are just knocked off and give eBay a bad name

The Chinese sellers should not be allowed to flood the UK market using a UK address but the business address is in China they are just Chinese students coming to the UK to study on a visa they get paid to create accounts and VAT numbers then they go back after their study.

If I can notice this why can't eBay dose the eBay CEO not notice what going on

[555njp]

That’s the problem. It’s just too unreliable now to be able to take a risk and invest in more stock. The way eBay plays hide and seek with our listings means we could be stuck with it for ages.

It wasn’t that long ago I’d list 30-40 items and they’d be gone in a day or two. I genuinely struggled to keep up with packing/shipping (just me and only part-time) and was doubling my money too (before tax).
Nowadays I have to remind myself what to do on the odd occasion I get a sale 😂

It’s such a shame as it worked perfectly well before manipulated search and PLs.

It was like putting an ad in the paper. You paid your fee, it got printed, everyone saw it, it usually sold.

EBay - you listed, everyone saw it, it sold and cost you about 12% in FVFs, no problem, I can work with that.

Now, I list, it goes somewhere, a few people might see it, it hangs around for ages, I give in and promote, it still doesn’t sell, even though I’m the cheapest on the site.
Finally it sells but costs close to 35% with all the PL fees. I realise I just broke even 🙄

Genuinely becoming a waste of time.

[spence0175]

As a collector I buy quite a lot of here mostly from private sellers. I am now paying to buy and paying to sell. Who thought this rubbish idea up…

[555njp]

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@spence0175 wrote:

As a collector I buy quite a lot of here mostly from private sellers. I am now paying to buy and paying to sell. Who thought this rubbish idea up…

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EBay’s directors in order to keep the share holders happy. I think it’s coming back to bite them though.

[fatbobfan]

The thread title is my greatest concern, every penny is being squeezed from all opportunities for the platform leaving little for sellers and their customers.  Sellers need wiggle room for their customers, the platform promotes and encourages it but at the same time are slowly taking the margins away.  

Theres a point where the selling fees combined in its various forms will have an effect on its sellers and this on our buyers.

PL  is an intersting one, works for some, not all,  its also been misold by CS leding to bad experiences, there are a some good threads on PL, long, but worth the read. Understanding the right PL, even if its needed at all is a good basic start. 

As with most the sentiment above its a capitalist business thats thats calling the shots, sadly its not being done right, its at the expense of its work force for want of a better term, its sellers, treat them bad and they wont stick around and then we all have problems

Adapt and change, look for opportunities, see what happes next, crack on, the cash cow platform wont change, guessing more to come 

[tribalgiftsuk]

The private sellers on the platform are largely selling items that are no longer available elsewhere online. So whilst they are all stressing over £2 or more , at the end of the day if you cant find the item elsewhere then as a buyer you will pay the extra £2 ish for the item.

I admit it is not ideal but as a business seller i am glad that something is being done to close the gap between fee free masqueraders pretending not to be businesses and the real business sellers. It is sad that in general Ebay fee's are getting higher than other selling sites and that many items can now be found cheaper elsewhere. But these are mass produced items or items that are currently in stock all over the place.

But what Ebay is good for is selling items that can not be found elsewhere. If we alll focus  on putting rare/unusual/ hard to find/ limited edition items on Ebay then the platform can grow and people will pay for things that they can't find elsewhere and then we all win in the end. The bonus of that is that also you can sell these items for whatever price you think is fair. Because if no one else is selling it then you can almost charge what ever you want (within reason).