Is eBay an April Fool?

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If you’re a regular seller on eBay, you may already know that eBay has discontinued its popular “Store” format, effective April 1, 2010.

Communication on this topic from eBay has been confusing at best, as they’ve tried to position it as a rate decrease for its “Buy-it –Now” listings rather than a rate increase for those who used the old store format.

The difference between the “Buy it Now” format and the store format is that the former was available in full search, while the store listings are just that—store listings that resided in a less visible environment.

In eliminating stores, eBay has effectively raised the price of a monthly listing for a typical store owner from 3 cents to 20 cents.  This applies to basic store owners who pay $15.95 per

month for the storefront.  A store owner now has the option of paying $299.95 per month for what is called an “anchor” store, which gets them the 3 cent monthly listing fee.  An in-between price point is the “premium” store at $49.95 per month and 5 cent monthly listings.

The  benefit offered with these price increases is that all fixed price listings will be fully searchable.  Whether this is a good trade-off or a bad one is best evaluated on an individual seller basis.  Certainly the net effect of this sweeping change will be easier to evaluate once the price changes go into effect.

As one of those long-time store owners, I can tell you how it affects me.  I’m closing my two stores on 3/31/2010.

I primarily sell collectible vinyl records.  While there is much ballyhoo in the media about the comeback of vinyl, it’s still a fact that most vinyl records–like a very large % of collectibles– are not fast sellers.  Only those with unusually high demand relative to supply will sell quickly on eBay, despite the massive traffic eBay delivers.  So the store format has provided a great solution for items that—while valuable—are not going to sell in a week, a month or maybe even a year even in a high traffic environment.  Much like items in a brick and mortar store, they wait until the right buyer comes along.

Based on the howls of protest on eBay forums and other sites, clearly I am in good company.  eBay will be eliminating a large number of listings with this change and a lot of revenue with those listings.  That may well have been their intent—to rid the site of slower selling merchandise.  If that is the case, we’ll see what the “laws of unintended consequences” have in store for eBay.

If your business needs e-commerce, eBay is less of a solution today than it was before this change.   Unless you are a high-volume seller, eBay has taken a large price increase and priced many of you out of the market.  Is eBay an April Fool?

We’ll be watching closely to see if any of the alternatives to eBay, like Etsy, Bonanzle, eCrater and others are able to take advantage.  More importantly, we’ll be focused on what to recommend for our e-commerce clients in this post-April Fools world.