posted on September 25, 2001 10:45:49 AM new
Auctionwatch,
Your new pricing arrangement does not make mathematical or economical sense. You state that the new Business plan is intended to be for "high-volume" sellers. You state in your original announcement 300 items a month or more... I say that number is far too low.
Okay... well lets start with that.... For a seller to make listing using the Business plan feasable they must list more than 549 auctions. This is because using the Standard plan you could list 549 auctions before exceeding the 29.95 monthly cost ((29.95 - (50*.10))/.05) + 50). So... yes... you DO have to be a high-volume seller with more than 550 auctions per month to even consider this as a feasable option.
HOWEVER, this does not nearly begin to cover the difference in percentage between the FVF of the standard plan and the FVF of the Business Plan. A .25% is not a large increase if you are a small-volume seller. Yet, we've already established that you should be a high-volume seller to consider using this plan. With just 549 auctions running at a low estimated final bid price of $5.00 each, it would cost you an additional $6.86 more than using the standard plan. You could list an additional 137 items on the standard plan for that!
Then... there's the instance when the Business plan will NEVER be more economical than the standard plan. If your items sell for an average of $20.00 or higher... the .25% difference in FVF will always be greater than $.05.
Therefore... it looks like you have a VERY small target market for this new product of yours. The way you are pricing it, it will only make sense for a high-volume seller of low-ticket items to use. Perhaps you will find some who will fit into that category. However, I doubt that I am one of them. If you have any findings that dispute this thread, or if I have made any errors in my logic, PLEASE post a response. In the meantime, I hope that this post helps other users who may be considering the new service. This new Business plan makes sense only if you fall in their small target market or want to pay extra for "complete SKU based inventory management system, the ability to import and export data to your own sales management system, reporting functionality,
an integrated HTML editor for faster listing creation, and more" (quote from original AW announcement).
posted on September 25, 2001 10:55:37 AM new
Your take on the new pricing arrangement is absolutely correct. I have been figuring it out also, and thought I must have something wrong as it didn't make any sense. My items run from $60 - $200, so you can see the big difference .25% would make here. For a $200 item you could list 10 more items for the difference in the FVF. Makes absolutely no sense to me.
posted on September 27, 2001 05:55:20 PM new
Hi All,
I have locked this thread and request that if you have any more feedback about our pricing that you will post it in the Feedback Forum. This forum is for questions regarding the features available in Auction Manager.
