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I’ve always believed that an eBay shop was worth more than the ability to use SIF listings, so the announcement that SIFs are to be retired in September is not going to convince me to close my shop.

In view of the fee changes and possible discounts which level eBay shop should you subscribe to? eBay have a microsite which goes into the changes in depth including a cute (and useful) shop fee illustrator.

What this site doesn’t cover is the added benefits of shops over and above pure fee discounts, however as a start point it’s worth looking at when BINs justify a shop on their own merits. The following table shows the level eBay shop you should choose based on the number of fixed price listings you have on the site.

An anchor shop had no real advantage over a featured shop in the past, so it’s good to see real anchor shop benefits introduced. Anchor shops are still not suitable for most sellers, only those with over 7500 product lines (not listings!) will be able to justify the cost.

Feature	Basic Shop	Featured Shop	Anchor Shop
Cross Promotions
Shop Categories
Listing Frame
Markdown Manager
Holiday Settings
Minimal Page Header	-
Telephone Support	-
Sales Reports Plus	£3.00
SMP	£4.99
Scheduling*	6p/listing
Email Marketing	1000 free	2500 free	5000 free
Custom Shop Pages	5	10	15
Traffic Reports	Basic	Extended	Extended
Shop Promotion	Basic	Priority	Priority

* Free scheduling requires SMP subscription

If you already use SMP and/or wish to make use of scheduling then the benefits of a featured shop really start to stack up. Sellers with a basic shop but subscribed to SMP should upgrade to a featured shop if they have more than 160 BIN listings live on the site at any one time.

Anchor and Featured Shop subscriptions will come with telephone support, a great bonus for non-PowerSellers who would otherwise be reliant on email support.

Which ever level eBay shop you consider remember that your listing strategy is likely to change.

eBay are encouraging sellers to list just one fixed price listing for each product line. In the past you may have listed the same item on a daily or even hourly basis. When choosing your shop subscription from 24th September you should factor in a reduction in your total number of fixed price listings.

It’s worth considering auctions, even if you don’t currently have them in your listing mix. Fixed price listings will no longer be sorted with “Ending Soonest”, but auctions will. The one way to ensure visibility of your items on the first page of search results is to run auction listings.

The mix of auctions and fixed price listings on the first page of search results will vary by category. In collectible categories I’d expect to see more auctions and in commodity categories it’s likely a higher percentage of fixed price listings will be displayed. It will be worth experimenting to see if auctions attract more buyers both to bid and to drive traffic to your fixed price listings.

We are aware that the changes to shops are making it unprofitable for sellers of low cost, low sell through rate, unique items to list their inventory on eBay. Currently there is no easy solution and it’s hoped eBay will address this situation prior to the changes going live on 24th September or hundreds of thousands of products will disappear from the site.

For sellers of higher priced items the reduction in listing fees and change of listing strategy should make it economically viable to list more product lines in greater quantities.

Finally there are still some notable holes in the fee structure to take advantage of:

• Technology and Media products have lower final value fees
• Multiple quantity fixed price listings will now have lower insertion fees than Dutch Auctions
• Listing enhancements will cost up to 3 times as much for 30 day listings - consider shorter fixed price listings if you have limited stock.

CLD

On 5th and 6th September there’s a special promotion for Polish-resident sellers, who will be able to list on eBay.com for just 5c. The offer is valid for auctions and BIN listings, but sellers must offer PayPal as a payment method and have DSRs of 4.5 or above for all four criteria. (And yes, apparently we have a few Polish readers. Cześć to you all!)

eBay Australia have just announced an interesting promotion - 50% off final value fees if free domestic postage is offered.

The promotion has been announced but will takes effect on the 10th - 14th September, that means that any 10 day listings starting up to tomorrow, and any 7 day listings starting up until the 7th will end during the promotional period.

eBay have been making strong suggestions that free shipping is desirable and it wouldn’t surprise me to see similar promotions come to the UK in the future.

If eBay were to offer a permanent 50% reduction in FVF for sellers that offered free shipping I’d be happy to take them up on the offer.

eBay are running a promotion for SMS text alerts for September waiving the normal charge of 12p per message. You’ll be able to receive free alerts when watched items are about to end as well as place and raise bids on eBay auctions.

If you’ve not already subscribed for SMS alerts you’ll need to register for the text messaging service. When you add an item to your watched list, or place a bid, click the link to add text alerts and messages will be sent to your mobile when you need to take action. From then on to place or raise a bid simply reply to the alert message with the amount you’d like to bid along with the item number.

If you have a 3G Internet capable mobile phone you may prefer to browse to eBay rather than use text messaging. To access eBay simply browse to ebay.co.uk and you’ll be directed to the mobile eBay site. If you prefer you can switch to the classic view of eBay which is the same view you’ll be used to on your computer.

Although most modern mobiles now support 3G coverage can be patchy in certain areas of the country. Text messages are often more reliable and have the advantage of providing a timely prompt, rather than relying on memory to log on to eBay.

If you’re bidding on an eBay auction sign up for SMS alerts and try the service for free this month.

There’s a cheap listing day for Thursday this week, Auctions and Buy it Now listings will have insertion fees lowered to just 5p.

Rather bizarrely the cheap listing day specifically excludes multiple item listings, although it runs during the multiple item promotion currently running until 23rd September.

Having encouraged sellers to place their inventory on a single listing ready for the fee changes, the cheap listing day is likely to break those multiple items down into single listings as sellers vie for visibility.

If you are going to list, work out the economics and if it’s better to have more listings or more cost effective to stick with a single listing for each line that you carry. The 5ps will start to add up if items don’t sell.

Site Changes

eBay.com have announced today that they are to drop the Bid Assistant tool as of 15th September. Introduced in May last year, Bid Assistant allowed buyers to specify a group of items of which they wanted to buy one: the system would then bid for them on each in turn, moving on to the next in the group if they failed to win the preceding one.

eBay’s announcement says that the feature had very little use, and sadly I think this was predictable: for buyers who are savvy enough to use such tools, there are plenty of third-party offerings with better features. Bid Assistant never offered the ability to “snipe”, or bid at the last minute so no rival bidder had the chance to go higher. Perhaps it’s understandable that eBay couldn’t offer this: the whole point of sniping, after all, is to keep auction prices as low as possible. But without this essential feature for buyers, Bid Assistant was never going to take off.

Selling Tips

I’ve always believed that an eBay shop was worth more than the ability to use SIF listings, so the announcement that SIFs are to be retired in September is not going to convince me to close my shop.

In view of the fee changes and possible discounts which level eBay shop should you subscribe to? eBay have a microsite which goes into the changes in depth including a cute (and useful) shop fee illustrator.

What this site doesn’t cover is the added benefits of shops over and above pure fee discounts, however as a start point it’s worth looking at when BINs justify a shop on their own merits. The following table shows the level eBay shop you should choose based on the number of fixed price listings you have on the site.

An anchor shop had no real advantage over a featured shop in the past, so it’s good to see real anchor shop benefits introduced. Anchor shops are still not suitable for most sellers, only those with over 7500 product lines (not listings!) will be able to justify the cost.

Feature	Basic Shop	Featured Shop	Anchor Shop
Cross Promotions
Shop Categories
Listing Frame
Markdown Manager
Holiday Settings
Minimal Page Header	-
Telephone Support	-
Sales Reports Plus	£3.00
SMP	£4.99
Scheduling*	6p/listing
Email Marketing	1000 free	2500 free	5000 free
Custom Shop Pages	5	10	15
Traffic Reports	Basic	Extended	Extended
Shop Promotion	Basic	Priority	Priority

* Free scheduling requires SMP subscription

If you already use SMP and/or wish to make use of scheduling then the benefits of a featured shop really start to stack up. Sellers with a basic shop but subscribed to SMP should upgrade to a featured shop if they have more than 160 BIN listings live on the site at any one time.

Anchor and Featured Shop subscriptions will come with telephone support, a great bonus for non-PowerSellers who would otherwise be reliant on email support.

Which ever level eBay shop you consider remember that your listing strategy is likely to change.

eBay are encouraging sellers to list just one fixed price listing for each product line. In the past you may have listed the same item on a daily or even hourly basis. When choosing your shop subscription from 24th September you should factor in a reduction in your total number of fixed price listings.

It’s worth considering auctions, even if you don’t currently have them in your listing mix. Fixed price listings will no longer be sorted with “Ending Soonest”, but auctions will. The one way to ensure visibility of your items on the first page of search results is to run auction listings.

The mix of auctions and fixed price listings on the first page of search results will vary by category. In collectible categories I’d expect to see more auctions and in commodity categories it’s likely a higher percentage of fixed price listings will be displayed. It will be worth experimenting to see if auctions attract more buyers both to bid and to drive traffic to your fixed price listings.

We are aware that the changes to shops are making it unprofitable for sellers of low cost, low sell through rate, unique items to list their inventory on eBay. Currently there is no easy solution and it’s hoped eBay will address this situation prior to the changes going live on 24th September or hundreds of thousands of products will disappear from the site.

For sellers of higher priced items the reduction in listing fees and change of listing strategy should make it economically viable to list more product lines in greater quantities.

Finally there are still some notable holes in the fee structure to take advantage of:

• Technology and Media products have lower final value fees
• Multiple quantity fixed price listings will now have lower insertion fees than Dutch Auctions
• Listing enhancements will cost up to 3 times as much for 30 day listings - consider shorter fixed price listings if you have limited stock.