As regular visitors to this blog likely know, one of the ways I try to make a living is through a variety of online sales ventures, from old postage stamps for collectors to my artwork.
It's a challenging proposition, at the best of times, and online marketplaces like eBay and Etsy have changed a lot since the early days, particularly in terms of the cost sell, when you're a seller.
So the latest bullshit story from eBay - because there always has to be a good bullshit story - came in the form of a notification that arrived today that effective in May, eBay will be showing to the customer the actual deeply discounted eBay shipping fees, rather than the going retail shipping rates.
And that'll be what the customer will pay, instead of previously paying the retail rate meaning now that sellers no longer get to benefit from having a little bit of slush to cover the cost of their shipping materials, along with the fact that you actually have to pay eBay fees on the cost of shipping, which is already a form of *"double dipping.
The net effect is that the giant e-commerce site will be taking another two or three dollars per transaction away from sellers and putting it in their own pockets... so isn't that just special?
The rationale is that people will be more willing to shop and buy stuff if shipping rates are lower... but the elephant in the room is that that money has to come from somewhere, and most small sellers can't afford to have more taken from what little profit they are making.
Needless to say, I'm not a happy camper!
Meanwhile, what's sort of ironic about this new eBay cost increase thing is that collectibles portal Delcampe - which, of course, is based in Belgium -just redid their fee structure as well... but in order to lighten the load on their sellers who were starting to leave.
So now they're doing their listing format like any kind of country auction or even Sotheby's... where part of the cost of selling is borne by the buyer rather than the seller so there is effectively a "buyer's premium" there now.
That means that I - as a seller - would list something for sale for $5, (or whatever I want to get for it) and that's what I actually get. The selling expense gets added to the seller invoice, along with taxes, etc.
Even though I have been an eBay seller for twenty six years I'm getting closer and closer to just telling them to permanently have them kiss off!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2024-04-18 01:17 PDT
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Rotational hidden cost to seller chased many away years ago from using their point of sale years ago.
Each region may be affected in a different way, one needs to research regularly to adjust or lose.
Sometimes it seems like they had a great master plan!
Make their venue cheap and effective for the small seller until they became the 500 lb gorilla in the room, at which point they could keep raising their fees while providing less because they had ultimately created a situation in which they were the only game in town.
The advice now is go somewhere else! Create your own website! What you can certainly do and save the fees but they have made it so that it's almost impossible to get anybody to show up. It is not easy for an individual operator to compete with a marketing department with 500 full-time workers.
As always, the elephant is the winner. What a pity that all the time and experience invested in this honest way of making a living is pushing him to the point of giving up. Whatever he does, I hope he has the best of luck. @denmarkguy
You are unfortunately right, the elephant does win again. And because this elephant is so large, there is no serious competitors where you could move your business to, instead.
I would just get the fuck out of there and use another platform!
Staying there definitely becomes a little less of a viable proposition every year.
Sadly, the choice often seems to be between make a lot of sales and hand over most of your profits, or go out on your own and end up with nothing, because you become invisible.
What a choice!