posted on January 7, 2003 12:51:32 PM
Next week -Jan 16-is when eBay announces their 4th quarter statistics. I am pretty sure that last year about a week after telling the world that they were making a nice profit, they announced new fees.
Anyone have an opinion as to whether or not there will be a fee hike in a few weeks? And if you think there will be--what is your guess on where the fees will be raised?
My guess is that there will be a fee hike --but gallery and BIN will be included in the new listing price.
If you don't think there will be new fees--why not?
posted on January 7, 2003 01:15:56 PM
eBay has complete pricing control over the online auction/sales market. They can pretty much raise fees whenever they want and to a degree as high as they want.
posted on January 7, 2003 01:23:25 PM
I think we will see a fee increase this year. I will guess a nickel raise in insertion fee, or a small jump in the FVF.
posted on January 7, 2003 01:50:18 PM
I really don't think they'll raise fees any at least the first half of 2003.
If they do, I'd bet on a slightly bumped up FVF- the Listing fee is prohibitively high on many items as it is.
I think eBay has been focusing their efforts on "add-on" products to help increase their income. For example:
They've owned SAPro for a couple of years now, and they're finally evolving it into Turbo Lister, which will probably come out with a more epensive "for pay" version.
They've added stores & fixed price, which still hasn't totally taken off, but has obviously made money for eBay.
There's that new post-sale thing whose name escapes me at the moment that is meant to be a direct (Albeit half-arsed) attack on AW and other services.
Then there's Paypal. I wonder if it's paid for itself yet? it's a sure-fire moneymaker for eBay now since there is NO competition.
One thing that wouldn't surprise me one bit is for eBay to buy out one of the big Auction management service (AW/AW2/AN/CA or one of the others) and make it the "official" eBay auction management site. Actually, I'm kind of surprised they didn't do this last year.
But back to my main point- they're focusing on other forms of add-on products and peripheral sales for additional growth.
posted on January 7, 2003 02:08:39 PM
I agree with replaymedia's post pretty much.
Last time there was only a very small FVF increase and no listing fee increase. There was a dramatic increase and change in the pricing of the Dutch Auctions though. I can see ebay going after other segments of their basic listing structures such as Reserve Auction fees. I can actually almost see ebay permanently lowering fees on auctions that start below $1 with no reserve used after the success of that promotion and the expelling of the sportscards from their Half.com unit.
posted on January 7, 2003 04:37:56 PM
I can see that as well, lowering to 20¢ auctions that start under $1 - I think many of those will go higher, creating more FVF money for ebay. I don't see them raising the listing fee.
