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?

[fatbobfan]

Saying it and doing it are two different things

From experience they do not clamp down on abuse of the system, its all over the forums and weekly chats, and its not just a 'little earner' accounts, were talking thousands of listings, thousands of feedback, so blatant, so obvious its a business, business sellers have reported and reported and reported and nothing happens.

More than happy to be proven wrong, wont hold my breath 

[fatbobfan]

Flying on  HUKD, the comments section make interesting reading

[infinibrix]

Absolutely, but this announcement has only just been made besides which they have already stated that there will be further limitations for Private Sellers which is different to what was in place previously?

[fatbobfan]

'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"

Kerching for Ebay, 

[555njp]

On another thread (no surprise there are rather a lot of them today!) A concierge member asked the question to eBay about what exactly they are doing with reported businesses trading on private accounts? The answer was "They are deemed a business if sales exceed 10,000 Euros in a rolling year, so will then be invited to upgrade to a business account".

In other words, if you can stay under 10,000 Euro, you can basically carry on with a private account! Bonkers.

[fatbobfan]

You made me swear good and proper with that post 😂

[tapperred]

Competition from elsewhere must be biting hard and drawing people away from the site.

Also with the cap on listings down to 300 a month before the 35p listing fee kicks in,

may mean ebay are banking on those that list hundreds a month bringing in some revenue.

I think somewhere in ebay towers this move is going to either make or break someones career.

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

Shortfall ??.

Probably zero,they have planned this very carefully and may actually make more.

There are many parts to their plan.

One is that any items over 300 will cost 35p each.They get that instantly as soon as the listing goes live.That soon mounts up and then there's the interest.

There are many sellers who will be happy to pay that 35p and it doesn't matter to Ebay if the item sells or not,they have already been paid and are earning interest on it from day 1.

There is also this thing called Ebay Balance ,not sure quite what that means yet but if it means Ebay now become the "Bank" and managed payments are no longer used by private sellers i'm guessing the interest will soon mount up.

Kerching.

It's one of the cleverest plans iv'e ever seen,bearing in mind they can pull the rug out at any time.

[fatbobfan]

Head down, crack on, same hit different day

Interesting few months ahead with GPRS, Free Fees, Christmas, looking forward to the support for business sellers,  the ones with great offers, I definitely know it wont cost me 🤣

[555njp]

Sorry, that wasn't the intention 😂

[555njp]

Another kick in the nuts.
As "private sellers" don't pay any fees, they can afford to promote a bit more.
So not only already undercutting the legit business sellers of the same product but their listings will be plastered all over ours!!

Great plan eBay...!

[medealady]

Ebay will make their money by only paying out quarterly the money made from private sales 'unless requested' inertia means cash sitting in ebay accounts. It is true that if you dont sell you visit the site less so are exposed to buying less. There are also sites like Temu selling stock for buttons.

[vintage-emporium-jedburgh]

The  Fees  from Promoting simple as that

[infinibrix]

One of the areas that ebay can and should focus more attention towards is the restriction on Private Sellers selling NEW products. Selling the odd new unwanted gift or taking advantage of a one off money making opportunity is one thing but listing/selling hundreds of items as NEW can only ever be operating as a business?
I appreciate private sellers can still be operating as a business selling used products but restricting the number of new item listings available to private sellers would certainly route out the big offenders!

[fatbobfan]

I had not even thought of that added bonus, 

Jeez it gets worse

[555njp]

Had the same problem last year. Lots of 'illegal' competition selling same lines as us. Suddenly sales dropped off a cliff as we were being undercut. 

Totally separate topic but promoting listings IMO is a complete waste of time as buyers who want a specific product will just re-search by price and 9 times out of 10 go with cheapest.

100% FB and TRS helps a bit but usually price point is king. Buyers care not a jot if buying from business or private due to MBG.

So, took prices down to match competition, finally cleared stock but frankly the reduced margins wouldn't be worth doing it again. This was when the illegal traders were only getting free listings and 80% off FVFs. Now its 100%, the problem will get worse.

Basically any 'private' seller can now get the same profit as a business but undercut them by 15%.

Or, to put it another way, if you earn 10% on your sale after fees, they can pull 25% or, 20% using the extra 5% to keep their prices under yours ensuring they take the majority of sales.

So more sales with twice the profit and non of the legal obligations, even more if they aren't declaring tax!

I think eBay have messed up big time here. This cannot be a sustainable business model.

[crg_music]

Adverts I guess and listing upgrades then pushing promoted items. Its not like its going to cost them that much more to potentially pull in many times more site users which I think is the strategy. If 10x more people visit the site and ebay really does fix this issue of business users selling as personal it could work. Lets all be honest something needed to change and this is pretty big changes.

The way you have to view it as and existing seller is that there will soon be many times potential customers, ofcourse there will be more sellers also but if they do as they say they will those will be legitimate personal sellers only selling a small amount as the cheats will be dragged kicking and screaming onto a business account.

I think it will work honestly, ebay got left behind but this is more inline with how many other marketplaces work in 2024 but they have got to stringent on the personal/business thing.

[jma2815]

I was about to list a few things to make some room, and a bit of extra money for Christmas. That's not going to work now, is it, unless I spend it on eBay. 

[jonat_broad]

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@jma2815 wrote:

I was about to list a few things to make some room, and a bit of extra money for Christmas. That's not going to work now, is it, unless I spend it on eBay. 

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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

So its fine - you can still withdraw money if you wish.

[comrie-antique-books]

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"They are deemed a business if sales exceed 10,000 Euros in a rolling year, so will then be invited to upgrade to a business account".

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Wouldn't this techniqually be a breach of governmant tax law? According to Gov.UK you must register with them if "you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year (from 6 April to 5 April)" and subsequently Sole traders are treated as business and "are responsible for following business law".

The problem is Ebay's got to come up with some arbitrary figure to justify large value private sales such as cars or antiques etc. The mojority of private sellers are selling small low value items. Small low value items that total a couple of 1,000 each year and small low value items that far exceeds anyone clearing out their unwanted junk. I happen to be a book collecter, but I would still struggle to find 300 items to upload every month, let alone the previous figure of 1,000.

In the 4 years of selling on Ebay this August and September were the 2 worst months in the history of selling. Lately I'm finding it a struggle to buy stock let alone grow a business. If I happened to be selling on a private account I would have made £100 more than on a business account. That's £100 more in stock and probably about £270 more in porfits, from that investment.  I fail to see what the advantages of having a business account are other than helping to fund Ebays circular economy.