Successful eBay sellers are the people who have the skills necessary to be successful elsewhere and they are finding it more difficult to remain successful on eBay. These sellers are moving their inventory where they are making more margin for significantly less effort. For example, if we have an item with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $100, then we have on average a gross margin on our own website of $34, on Amazon the gross margin is $25, and on eBay the gross margin in $12. The Gross Margin is the Selling Price less the product costs (costs we pay to the manufacturer to obtain the product) and less the selling fees (including payment processing fees) we pay to Amazon or to eBay / Paypal. So to put it in a little different format: MSRP $100 item Gross margin – website $34 Gross margin – Amazon $25 Gross margin – eBay $12 The reason that eBay gross margin is so much lower is actually the function of two things – higher selling fees paid to eBay and lower average selling price. For an average item, the eBay buyer will not pay as much as the buyer who purchases from Amazon or directly through our website. In addition, we have to pay eBay an insertion fee per item as well as a final value fee per item which always comes out to a higher percentage than Amazon. So, in essence, we have to sell twice as much volume on eBay to make the same money as Amazon or three times as much volume on eBay to make the same money as our website. That, in and of itself, is a problem. However, the even bigger problem is that the amount of effort to make one sale on eBay is about 9 times more than the effort through the alternate channels. Communicating with eBay buyers is so labor intensive because they require so much more hand-holding and eBay actually encourages unnecessary communication and punishes sellers who do not do so (for example, in the recent Town Hall meeting, Stephanie suggested that sellers should email every buyer personally who pays with an echeck to explain the echeck process and let the buyer know that their item will be shipped when the echeck clears). If we adjust the gross margins based on the EFFORT we put forth to actually generate a sale and to follow through on that sale (including begging the buyer to finally pay for the item they purchased) and the after-care of the sale, our table would look like this: MSRP $100 item (adjusted for order generation and processing time) Gross margin – website $34 Gross margin – Amazon $25 Gross margin – eBay $1.33 Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that we should be continuing our efforts to move off eBay.

http://www.tierramerica.net/2002/1103/iacentos.shtml – Vegetable ivory

It’s now huge in developing economies and is rapidly growing in former ivory centres as a replacement raw material – including India’s traditional ivory centres.

Ed

But when it came to digital items … those had to go at a moment’s notice and enforcement began against some people even before the announcement was posted.

And I have no problem at all with the ban if its saving elephants lives
though how many humans is it feeding needs to be considered

I think I will retract that and be quiet

Leave it to the experts.

The tell tale look of ivory on the cross section was meticulously copied by plastic manufacturers and has continued to fool most ordinary punters and inexperienced dealers.

So no more plastic masquerading as ivory, although I wonder if people will still offer ivory products, or fake ivory products as the case may be, by euphemistic description.

and slightly off topic I always find it amusing to see vegetarians etc
drinking/eating from Bone china, or Fine Bone china
which to be legally called that, must contain 20% or 33% crushed animal bone

though many sellers now get round this by saying its natural bone or similar,

ebay are either banning ivory or their not

I am certain the Animal that provided the ivory for the Steinway keys, is just as dead as the Animal that provided the Japanese okimono
figure

This announcement only serves to point out that it’s been ok to sell ivory on ebay for the past 10 years and that makes me think even less about ebay.

Maybe your next project could concentrate on China?