Having scrapped fees for private sellers how do eBay make their money?

[dancewithadingo]

Surely this will mean a substantial drop in their profits?  Where is the shortfall in revenue coming from?

[ett1954]

"Where is the shortfall in revenue coming from?" - where it always comes from; correctly registered business sellers.

[cooksongold]

One way I assume is found in this change....

• eBay Balance: Starting from mid-October, this new feature gives sellers the flexibility to use their earnings to shop on eBay, promote their listings, purchase delivery labels or withdraw available funds.

That money needs to be stored somewhere...accruing interest no doubt.

[technthread]

eBay will earn interest on the funds they hold once they bring the eBay wallet in. They will love the private sellers who don't withdraw their funds but just leave it sat there until they are ready to buy something.

They will hope that private sellers then use funds to buy off business sellers and yep they'll earn well off the FVF / promoted listings fees etc. This is a snippet of the email we received - they think that will happen 80% of the time:

Personally I think it would have been better PR for them overall to reduce private sellers fees to a low percentage or just bring back a permanent £1 FVF and combine it with some kind of reduction in business seller shop fees. But what do I know, I'm biased as I would have liked some form of fee reduction myself. 

[tommystrezures]

Whilst I am not happy with this and as I have said elsewhere if they had sorted the Private business accounts out prior to this, and not be offering the few so far the bribes and rewards for their previous illegal trading, to convert then I don't see it will be a substantial drop.

The number of people who come to the boards expectant of their 70/80% week in week discount, claiming to only list when these offers were available, must have created overload in the number of listings appearing once a fortnight which pushes I guess the servers more. I would now hope that it will see a more of drip feed of listings being pushed live by sellers and it not being crammed in to a three day period.

I guess the last paragraph of the message we received has some clue in revenue shortfall....

'Over the next few months, we'll be ramping up our marketing initiatives to highlight the benefits of using eBay for both sellers and buyers"

Promoted listings and the like....... More annoying ads on the listings we pay for and the like

[thetimetower]

Lol so basically now any businesses managing to hide as private sellers now have 10 times more power than the business sellers. If they were going to scrap fees completely, they should have dropped items to 100. This is going to be heavily exploited yet again. The benefits they're giving to business sellers sound paltry. I have no issue with private sellers having no fees and tbh I think it's a smart move to bring in way more users. I am ONLY okay with this if they heavily punish the ones clearly running a business.

I hope they know what they're doing here.

[tommystrezures]

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@thetimetower wrote:

I hope they know what they're doing here.

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Don't we all! As of right now it doesn't seem that well thought out.........

[bojangled]

Although I'm not initially impressed with this announcement, when I look at a couple of 'private sellers' with over 4,000 listings and take into the consideration the automatic relists  don't count in 300 limit, there will still be some considerable fees to pay for such a seller. 

It's often said that manual end and sell similar vs automatic relist the former is the better option, refreshes listing, visibility etc. 

I'm going to get my head down for Q4 and see how this all pans out. 
Jo

[lucy_farmer]

'........when I look at a couple of 'private sellers' with over 4,000 listings.......'

Surely there must be an 'easy' way for ebay to spot the problem 'private sellers'?

Using a computer program to simply jump on any 'private' seller with e.g. over 10 x 'brand-new-in-box' of the same item. Or over 10 x 'brand-new-in-box' pairs of shoes of different sizes etc....

(And I can't work out why a genuine private seller needs a 'shop'.)

Why is this so difficult to do, ebay?  It'd be a much better use of so-called AI than using it for ridiculous 'descriptions' that say sod-all about the item....

[infinibrix]

In their announcement they state that their data shows that those who sell on ebay also appear to go on to buy a lot on ebay. The other thing is by encoraging people to sell here for free people gain confidence in selling and continue to take up the opportunity of selling more routinely whereupon many will eventually end up meeting ebays new Private Seller listing restrictions at which point ebay can then nudge them to take the next step with setting up an ebay business account. Its a win win for both parties as the seller at this point will have stumbed upon creating a viable business for themselves and ebay now has the long term comitmemt from the seller where they will be operating their newly found business through the site.
Of course some private sellers will reach their selling limitations and just drop off for a bit however their overall increased selling activity will mean they are also much be onboard with using the site for buying too! 

[cobwebcottage]

I asked this question on the boards a few months ago and was told that I didn't understand how computer programming works and it wasn't that simple. 

Wasn't written by a woman then..😉

[bojangled]

These sellers I mention have quantities on these listings too, so let's say 2000 listings with a quantity of at least 5 on each. That's what really annoys me! 
Reported several times this year, gave up eventually as my time is better used elsewhere. 
Jo

[fatbobfan]

To me it seems as if the door is open for loop holes for private seller businesses to abuse the system

Private seller businesses were on the forums making it known they had multiple accounts to get the reduced FVF offers, I can only see this practice increasing

I cant see it stopping them, will increase their admin, yes, guessing it will increase the unscrupulous practices as the rewards for them are now even greater, NO FEES, I can hear the hands being wrung now

How many posts on these forums on the failure of the reporting system,

Im not confident on this one, the more I think about it, its more of an incentive to do the wrong thing

[millcottage]

A schoolboy could code it.

Some simple SQL to interrogate the Database and pull out those selling multiples of items, those that have done this a few times .....

Maybe get the eBay AI that writes the descriptions to report it 😆

"A wonderful seller that will delight any buyer looking to add to their portfolio, has multiple opportunities for you to buy a box of drawing pins, like they have over the previous 12 months in this perfect glorious example of a year. This buyer who wishes to remain private is just bursting in excitement to become a business seller."

[robbtyke132010]

Absolutely right - they will squeeze the legitimate business seller even more. Some ideas for eBay:

1. A "finders" fee of 10% - the buyer has found a bargain! Slap on 10% to buyers fees

2. A closure of account fee because you are fed up with being slapped around - £100

3. A 10% surcharge for those sellers who live in cities for adding extra pollution

4. A 10% surcharge for those sellers  who live in the countryside for being smug

5. A "raining" fee - 10% fee to those sellers who dispatch in inclement weather

6. A "sunny day" fee - 10% surcharge for those who dispatch wearing a T-shirt

There must be hundreds more eBay! Come on you are not thinking hard enough!!

[lucy_farmer]

😂

not that simple ... How simple is it to get AI/LLM to write complete *bleep* descriptions??

I would have thought that basic 'number crunching' was much more simple than that.

Obviously I don't understand computers any more than you do!   i'll keep my compu-numpty ideas to myself 😁

[infinibrix]

Well they do state the following in that regards....

"Promoting fair competition for business sellers

We’re dedicated to providing business sellers with every opportunity to succeed on eBay and will be increasing policy protection to ensure a fair and equitable marketplace for all business sellers.

We monitor trading activities on eBay, and we’ll continuously help business sellers using a private account to transition to a business account, or restrict selling activity as necessary. In addition, we’ve reduced the number of free listings available to private sellers. Alongside this, only business sellers will be eligible to benefit from the use of third-party tools and software.

"

[lucy_farmer]

'....complete *bleep* descriptions??....'

Is the word 'carp' (spelt slightly differently) really that offensive?? really??? come on ebay, this isn't the puritanical american mid-west......

[messier44000]

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@fatbobfan wrote:

"How many posts on these forums on the failure of the reporting system,"

Quote from Dave still keeps coming back, regards reporting business sellers trading as private

"Unfortunately there isn't an option for that exact topic"

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[millcottage]

Lucy - Having worked in IT for 38 years (now retired) our best developers and project managers  were women.