Last week, eBay held a meeting to announce its roadmap of growth plans
through to 2011. The company said that its eBay Marketplaces business
is expected to achieve revenues of $5 billion to $7 billion in 2011 with a
continued shift toward more fixed price sales and a smaller online auction
business. Following that announcement is a round-up of marketplace
promotions aimed at international, fixed-priced listings and individual
(non-business) sellers.
Starting on EBay.co.uk, eBay recently made changes that make it cheaper
for private sellers to list on the auction site. Starting this week, private U.K.
sellers who list on the auction-style format with a starting price of up to 99p
(eBay.co.uk) or €1.49 (eBay.ie ) will not be charged an insertion fee. The newly
dubbed "Zero insertion fees" means private sellers will now pay the majority of
eBay fees on the back-end — that is when they
successfully sell an item in a qualifying category.
Other changes private U.K. sellers need to make note of include new final-value
fees. Prior to march 12th, sellers' final value fees were based on different
tiers according to the selling price and the category the item was listed in.
Final Value Fees for auction-style listings in all categories, including Media
and Technology and excluding motors vehicles, mobile phones with contracts and
property are now 10percent of the amount of the winning bid, up to a maximum FVF of
£40.00. EBay has a new page that compares the new and old
final value
fees. Similar changes were made on the eBay Ireland site. Final Value
fee changes for ebay.ie can be
found here.
For U.S.-based eBay sellers, eBay's current promotion lets you use the
International Site
Visibility upgrade for a penny on each auction-style listings. International
Site Visibility upgrade is basically a cheaper alternative to listing on both
the U.S. and U.K. eBay sites. When you use the upgrade from the Sell Your Item form,
Turbo Lister and third-party tools like ChannelAdvisor, it enables your item be
displayed in regular search results on eBay U.K. The one-cent upgrade fee, which
usually costs between 10 and 40 cents, is available to U.S. sellers until March 27,
2009.
North of the border, eBay Canada (eBay.ca) launched a promotion similar
to a previous mentioned US-based promotion for those listing in the Books,
Movies & DVDs, Music and Video Games category. The insertion fee for these items
on eBay.ca (in Fixed Price format with product details) is only five-cents. This
is a promotion that has been running for some time already, but it has
been extended through to the end of 2009. The same offer is available sellers on
the U.S. eBay Web site.
eBay Tools Round-up
Also focusing on fixed-price listings is Certified eBay Provider,
Terapeak, who has released several new
features this week for its eBay Marketplace Research tool. The new features
integrate eBay's Fixed Price 30-day listing format into Terapeak search results
to report on every specific item as it sells.
This transactional information allows sellers to access detailed sales
information about their products and competitors. As well, International sellers
will be able to review sales across six sites (U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany,
and Australia) with one fast report.
Other new features announced by Terapeak include Value Track, a time-saving tool
that allows subscribers to enter a list of their favorite search terms. Terapeak
will provide a weekly reporting page each time the user logs in to improve the
speed of searches to seconds per report.
eSeller Street launches Popular eBay Search
eSeller Street, a comp-any who also provides eBay market research recently
launched WatchedItem.com,
a new search tool that aggregates popular eBay items. Designed for shoppers,
eSeller Street's WatchedItem.com provides instant access to the most watched,
popular, and interesting items on eBay. For sellers, you can use eSeller
Street's Watcher Counters, Product Gallery banners and Hall of Fame banners to
help shoppers decide on products. The Watcher Counter tool encourages shoppers
to watch an item. Once an item is on a shopper's watch list, eBay automatically
promotes the product through emails and prominent positioning on the eBay home
page.
Only on eBay...
The Tonight Show host, Jay Leno, has announced a Comedy Stimulus Plan which
will see him appear in Detroit at the Palace of Auburn Hills on April 7, 2009,
with a second show having been added for April 8, 2009. The show is free for
Detroit's unemployed workers, and those having a hard time right now.
According to the
Detroit Free Press, during Monday's The Tonight Show Leno said that seeing
tickets on eBay for the Comedy Stimulus Plan show was annoying him and he asked
that people selling the tickets on eBay take them down. "Here is something that
annoys me. I look on eBay today and I see four tickets to my show for sale.
You're out of your mind to pay $800 to see me. I would like to ask the people on
eBay to take the tickets down. There is nothing for sale here," he said.
Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.
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