Prepping eBay For Big Sellers

The fixed-price changes were crucial in enticing large retailers to sell on eBay. Prior to the fee structure changes, the cost of just listing tens of thousands or more products on eBay was simply too high. Moving the fees to the back-end in fixed-price fees has brought eBay more in line with pay-per-performance platforms, which is pretty consistent among online marketplaces, including Amazon.

In addition to fixed-price listing changes, eBay also introduced a new Diamond PowerSeller tier, which caters to large-volume sellers. Perks of being a Diamond PowerSeller include the option to negotiate with eBay for better pricing and other benefits if you reach $500,000 in monthly gross sales.

Large Merchant Services also tackles another big issue for big brand sellers — how to list and oversee their vast quantities of items. Access to the new APIs basically gives sellers a way to list and manage items in bulk, and also Allows sellers to react quickly to marketplace dynamics through bulk editing and revisions.

The new Large Merchant Services plan combined with lower fixed-price insertion fees and the opportunity to haggle for better pricing under the Diamond PowerSeller program means eBay.com is now truly positioned to offer a viable selling platform for large-volume and catalog sellers. Clearly, it puts the company in a better position to compete with Amazon, which has been doing this for quite some time.

New Catalog Sellers Already Selling on eBay

Mercent Corporation is in the forefront of the migration of large-volume sellers to eBay under the new plan. It is an online marketing technology and services company that helps retailers sell or advertise through online merchandising channels, including Amazon and comparison shopping engines.

Mercent CEO Eric Best, well-known for his earlier work on Amazon's third-party seller program, Merchants@Amazon.com, said that for the past six months the company has been working on eBay integration, and already one client, SmartBargains.com is successfully using eBay as a selling channel.

In an interview with EcommerceGuide.com Best said that Mercent had been working to integrate with the new platform for nearly six months prior to eBay's rather quiet public beta release last week. He said, "The advent of this technology was one of several events in 2008, including the Diamond PowerSeller tier and fixed-price listing fee changes, that lead up to reconsidering eBay as a viable platform for our customers."

Mercent's first customer to use the eBay LMS platform is SmartBargains, based in Boston. It started out on the new sales channel with a catalog of just under 10,000 products.

In the first few days of listing, eBay seller SmartBargains was falling below the minimum 4.3 DSR score required to list on eBay. Now, as more feedback is left, it has attained above a 4.3 score in each of the four areas in the DSR.

Best said, "SmartBargains had a few hiccups in the first few days following the launch, but now it has a 93-percent success rate, achieving 40 positive and three negative feedbacks, with those negatives being in first 48 hours of launch."

Overall, Best says that Mercent is seeing positive results with eBay's new APIs, and he also indicated that Mercent expects to launch more customers on eBay in the coming months.

Can Small Sellers Co-Exist with Large Retailers?

Best said that some retailers simply want to get authorized listings out there showing up alongside unauthorized listings, something that will be a benefit to consumers. By opening up eBay to large catalog sellers, retailers can control their own brands on an authorized channel rather than sit back and throw out security measures to stop the listings.

So far Mercent is pleased with eBay as a selling channel, especially in these economic conditions.  "EBay is offering catalog sellers a lower risk, high-profile sales opportunity," said Best, "at a time when retailers are turning over every stone ensuring they haven't overlooked any opportunities."

In terms of the effects on smaller eBay sellers, Best said that there is no reason the two cannot co-exist on eBay. Not all retailers will jump on board and use eBay as a selling channel, he said, and not all large sellers will even want their entire product catalog sold at discount prices on eBay. Best thinks smaller sellers will benefit because ultimately the new catalog sellers will bring more traffic and buyers to the site.

Still, many smaller e-commerce merchants who sell on eBay fear that they may not be able to compete with big-volume sellers' pricing and shipping deals. On the other hand, vendors with smaller inventories may be able to more quickly meet market demand as they are able to be more flexible in terms of setting their own pricing and discounts.

Also at issue is whether eBay is offering to waive listing fees for Diamond-tier sellers, which would give them what many think is an unfair advantage over other PowerSellers.

Best said that eBay has already exceeded the company's expectations from a sales standpoint and Mercent expects to soon launch clients with hundreds of thousands of products on the eBay platform.