Comments on: Which eBay shop is best for you?

By: Binh Nguyen

Binh Nguyen — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:38:21 +0000

Useful post and discussion. I’m gonna try the basic shop even though I guess I’ll move to featured shop soon. The only trouble is that eBay’s going to disable the visibility of BIN items to overseas people. I’ve been working very well with them and never had a really big problem. International bidders account for some 20% of my sale at the moment. Is there any way to ask eBay to keep the international visibility? Cannot understand why they do that to BIN but not auction listings! :-”

By: Mandy

Mandy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:11:52 +0000

I am wondering if peope who list shop items for 5 , 7 or 10 days get better visibility comparing 30 days listings?

By: hanafi_h

hanafi_h — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:41:24 +0000

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/9/1220750976.html

I think medium to large scale sellers with expensive shops should check out AuctionByte’s latest story above.

By: Swan

Swan — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:09:09 +0000

#32 it looks like every one is paying pro rata for shops, check you last invoice if you have a shop already

By: Andy Toogood

Andy Toogood — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:08:02 +0000

Question for anyone who might know. If I subscribe to a Featured Shop on 23 September at Â£30 will I pay pro-rata from the 24th at Â£49.99 or do I get my month for Â£30?

By: Fruity

Fruity — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:27:30 +0000

Dear Chris, I think the biggest value an ebay store has is its optimization in the search engines. Ebay wants products to have quick turn arounds, to convert fast. But collectors are accustomed to having it sit on the shelves. When you have it sit on the shelves forever, your hyperlink stays in the search engines longer, they get cached. They dont all get that much exposure, but if you have a good product, with relevant titles, you get killer traffic. Moving items to FP Core 30 day, I dont think ebay is going to optimize them the same to the search engines as they exposure store inventory. And it is ebay that controls it, they can control the crawl / revisit rate. Reason why I dont feel they’re expose it the same way is its going to be a spammy nightmare searching for stuff on Google. But I have always felt the store format itself was the best value for store sellers who wanted to maintain their ASP

By: Rich Brady

Rich Brady — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:44:42 +0000

#29

That’s what I’ve suggested to a client. We worked out some figures using Septembers listings over their 3 basic shops using the new fees and worked out they’d be over Â£1000 a year better of with one featured shop.

The whole point of 3 shops to begin with was to seperate different product types/lines, but having more custom pages with the higher level shop subscription will allow me to modify the design of the featured shop to the same effect…

By: Swan

Swan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:52:39 +0000

Well looking at these changes we will be amalgamating several ids and going for higher level shops

Paying Â£6 a month for an off season shop was worth it to keep the brand but Â£15 a month is not, and once you get free smp and higher discounts for more than basic shops then the savings can be irrisistable.

3 basic shops and 3 smps go a long way towards the cost of a featured/anchor shop.

and I get a spare bogey ID to tinker with

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:10:33 +0000

“We are aware that the changes to shops are making it unprofitable for sellers of low cost, low sell…”

Yeah tell me about it. As it is, I am paying ebay around Â£50 a month all in. I have about 1,250 items on-line. FVF fees are not really an issue for me, almost all my eBay expenses are listing fees. It can take me mothns to sell one item, even with some of the most competitive prices in town. It’s not a failing on my part, I have 100% +FB, everything has a photo and item condition, all items over Â£3 have best offer so I’m flexible on price too. It’s just the nature of collectibles, it can take months to find a buyer for the obscure and rare items I specialise in.

So let’s do a little maths here. You reckon ‘Featured’ would be the best for my level of stock… OK let’s take that as given. Â£50 for the shop, 1250 items at 5p each to list = Â£112.50 per month *just for upfront costs*

Now on an average profit margin of Â£70 a month based on 8 months of trade… Need I say more?

Frankly I think eBay are greedy, moneygrabbing, parasites! It’s game over for me, the shop will close by the 24th, and they will not be getting a penny more out of me. They’ve had about Â£400 this year, isn’t that enough for them? They are the worst manifestation of corporate greed. Making a steady income isn’t enough for them, they want it hand over fist.

By: Rich Brady

Rich Brady — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:00:10 +0000

I spoke to Power Seller support this morning and they comfirmed that any listings on a GTC would continue an be relisted in the new format.

Does anyone know any specifics on non-UK buyers viewing listings? Fro what the guy said to me this morning only people viewing .co.uk would be able to see our listings come Doomsday, sorry Sept 24th…

By: Oasis

Oasis — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:09:26 +0000

#23 & #24

If you list a 90 day SIF before the changes it will remain as a 90 day SIF, with FVFs being at the pre 24th Sept prices.

Timing out just before Xmas.

There is talk on the Business & eBay shop boards that a lot of sellers will take this route with items that they don’t have many of. So if you had a item with just 3 quanity and it took 70 days to sell them. The fees are likely to be less than 3 x 20p BIN 30GTC plus a higher FVF.

By: Rich Brady

Rich Brady — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:48:04 +0000

If they are delisted I’m going to have to pay a set of increased listing fees, having already paid for them to be lsited originally…

By: Josordoni

Josordoni — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:25:57 +0000

#23 good question…

By: Rich Brady

Rich Brady — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:11:46 +0000

What will happen on the 24th of September to my Shop Inventory Items? Will they be automatically changed to BINs or will they be delisted?

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:03:28 +0000

#21 Unlimited buy it now listings for just 1p insertion fees for Anchor shop owners. That’s a pretty big incentive – list an extra 1000 items for a tenner.

By: system_skins

system_skins — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:51:52 +0000

Once ebay starts its new 30-Day fixed price listings, what benefits will you really get as a Premium or Anchor store owner?

By: Pressed Rat

Pressed Rat — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:35:16 +0000

Many thanks for a clear insight into the changes.

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:11:42 +0000

Brilliant Chris
Thanks for taking the time to do this

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:58:05 +0000

#12 John I ran the figures purely from a standing start on the 24th Sept. I wasn’t attempting to justify whether sellers would be better off or worse off then prior, just which would be their best options going forward.

The higher ticket one off items won’t be nearly as well off as the higher ticket with duplicates. In the new eBay more is definitely less fees and that goes regardless of low or high cost items. The only real losers (as far as fixed price goes) are low cost uniques.

Surprisingly to a certain extent the FVF varies according to your sell through rate. If you have a high (close to 100%) STR then you’re worse off. If you have a medium (say 40-60% STR) depending on quantity and price you’re likely to be better off. If you have a low (sub 10% STR) you’re in a bad position from listing fees but FVF hardly makes a difference.

#13 Not in the UK they don’t. All an anchor shop in the UK gets is a 150 pixel .gif and some woolly “may or may not be promoted in related shops and keyword search”

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:18:21 +0000

Dave, it works just fine on mine. If you have changed the price during the preceding 28 days, you won’t be able to use MM: that’s the usual reason for failure. Otherwise – well, sometimes things on eBay don’t work, I’m sure that’s not news to you.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:05:34 +0000

Sue
It didnt work on my auto-relisting 30 day SIFs, well it did for the last two days of the selling period, I queried this and was referred to the condition that to be valid an item had to be “Listed for at least 28 days at a higher price before being put on sale” . I hope it works with the new version of auto-relisting BINs but it should have worked with SIFs and did not, therefore am not building hopes up.

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:50:20 +0000

@Dave, Markdown Manager is – according to an eBay employee at Insite anyway – still going to be available for the auto-relisting 30 day BINs.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:59:17 +0000

I presume the Markdown Manager is now redundant, in that in the UK you could only use it if an item had been listed for more than 30 days

By: Reality Check

Reality Check — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:06:38 +0000

“An anchor shop had no real advantage over a featured shop in the past, so itâ€™s good to see real anchor shop benefits introduced.”

Completely, unambiguously false statement. Prior to the recent reduction in features of the Anchor Store, the Anchor promised greater visibility, more inclusion in Shop eBay Stores, adwords credit, and a guarantee of one million impressions per month.

By: John

John — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:46:49 +0000

Chris

Your exposition is very useful from a standing start. The ‘cute’, your word not mine, illustrator does not mention the possible huge fee increases for some users.

But please bear a thought for EXISTING Basic Shop owners who have hitherto enjoyed success with SIF, with or without gallery.

A Basis Shop owner could have listed say 500 products up to Â£4.99 (combined value) in SIF for 90 days at 9p without gallery 12p with gallery.

The new BIN price is 15p albeit with gallery, but still needs the upgrade to Featured Shop. Now that is a huge percentage increase!

Total cost was Â£51 or Â£66. Price now Â£125 (ok SMP is included). Hideous, and extra FVF on top. And that was just a listing number out of the air, the seller with 227 listings will face a higher percentage rise, there is no breakeven point in featured for one-off sellers of lower priced stuff.

Yes I know about vis in ‘core’, but one-offs are just that and with everthing to be in ‘core’ I am to be convinced of the advantage. Argue please!

There can only be winners with higher ticket one offs or high volume inventory (commodity products).

The seller of smaller items is potentially ‘dead in the water’. No mistake, the new structure is designed only for sellers of higher ticket items and/or with bottomless inventory!

I am myself very borderline with around 1500-2000 SIF, some under Â£4.99 some higher, some one-offs, some repeatable. Will not be able to list total inventory as some items are <99p. Will need alternative outlet for the first time.

Lots and lots of upset (smaller) sellers are out there just now, this change will be a watershed. I have no idea why eBay have chosen to do this, every extra listing at the margin would have been almost total profit. Those that remain, please look forward to ever increasing FVF.

Please, please pick holes in my prognosis!

I wish everyone bon voyage – make sure that you run a very tight ship.