I have to agree with PosterChilf.
Ebay has shown they do NOT want sellers who don't list at least $500,000 a month.
In exchange for listing $500,000 a month in merchandise, and artificially inflating their listings, ebay will do the following for you:
waive your listing fees, and perhaps allow you to have lower FVFs. Sellers in this new powerseller category, according to ebay, can "negotiate fees AND policy". Now, I understand negotiating fees, but HOW does one negotiate policy? If I list (not sell) $500,000 in merchandise in a month, can I negotiate that DSRs are not tabulated? That negatives are not allowed? That if a customer is unhappy, they get a letter from ebay telling them they are being unreasonable, or that I can charge $20 to ship a post card, or that I dont have to follow any of the rules I don't like? What the heck does "negotiate policy" mean?
Something I discovered last year when I was first told about Buy.com was shocking. Here are the numbers I found:
These numbers were taken from Terapeak and are based on a 90 day history (March 2, 2008-
May 31, 2008. The most current info at the time of publishing):
Seller: Buy
Dates: March 2, 2008-May 31, 2008
Total Items Listed: 2,708,987
Total sales: $3,924,907
Successful listings: 64,638
Total Items Offered: 249,431,285
Sell through rate: 2.39%
Average Sale: $44.43
MINIMUM listing fee, including dutch auctions: $24,943,128.50 (Based on the lowest fee of .10 per listing, and offering Media Mail. Does not include higher listing fees, or other promotional listing fees, or Final Value Fees (which based on the average selling price, and the then posted FVFs of 8.75% would have been approximately $465,000)would increase the fees dramnatically).
I can understand waiving fees, but when comping fees the point is still to bring in more than you are waiving. But, almost $25 MILLION in waived fees? And you generate less than half a million?
EBay has made it extremely clear, they do NOT want sellers who don't sell more than $500,000 in a given month. And, I believe the 3rd and 4th quarter results show we don't want ebay, either.
Please join the ebay boycott,
it is working!
Tim
http://forums.delphiforums.com/boycottebay/start
http://myspace.com/boycottebay