eBay Listing Fees Will Vanish For Some Starting March 30th
By Craig Lloyd on Jan 27th, 2010 at 12:23PM
You might be enjoying the free insertion fee on up to five listings per month, but you now have something more exciting to look forward to. eBay announced today that they will introduce free auction listings and reduced insertion fees on fixed-priced items in the United States. Starting price for auctions that are 99 cents or lower will be eligible for the free insertion fee. Then, when your item sells, you’ll pay a flat 9-percent final value fee. If the item doesn’t sell, you don’t pay anything.
For those power sellers out there, eBay has something for you as well. Insertion fees will be as low as 3 cents per listing for 30 days. For eBay Store subscribers, there are various subscription options depending on the size of your business. eBay says that a seller with 250 listings per month would save $80 a month or $960 a year in just insertion fees alone.
via [TechCrunch]
Just so you know, these changes are hardly a decrease, and nearly everyone that sells regularly on eBay is upset about them. Insertion fees were always trivial compared to final value fees, which have been greatly increased. The old fee used to be 8.75% of only the first $25 and then 3.5% after that. This new 9% flat pricing scheme means that fees for items that sale for around $25 don’t change much, but as you go up from there the fees start to increase drastically. If your item sells for $52.60, your fees will be increased by 50%. At $131.50 the fees that you are paying are double what they used to be. This is what eBay does every time they hike their fees. The send out a notice saying that fees are changing, and talk about how this will save everyone so much money, when in reality the new fees increase costs for the majority of sellers.
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