Question
I'm much more of a shopper now than a seller. and I don't like it...
Lots of sellers have stopped using gallery or at least cut back on gallery due to the price increase.
I don't blame them, not at all, it does cost too much
BUT
If I shop anywhere else online, I get to look at a virtual catalog - you know - with pictures, before I pick what I am interested enough in to look at more
On ebay I am seeing fewer pictures.... I try to shop by reading more titles and opening more auctions but loading time is horrible and I am on cable... good grief... I don't have all day to shop (Ok I do have all day, but that's not the point)
I think ebay is really hurting itself with this increase in gallery fees... and I think a lot of sellers are hurting themselves by not using gallery even though it costs too much.
Anyway, that is just a grumble from a window shopper that is looking around the mall and not liking having to go in the door to see what is in the store.
mutter, mutter
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I really have to agree Sandy but I've actually found some good deals from listing that DON'T have gallery. It takes longer for me because I have to open and close the listing but obviously many people don't bother because in many cases I am the only bidder!
I do understand lower priced listings not using gallery but ones over $10 surprise me.
I wonder what the other sellers will have to say.
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alot of sellers who are only making one or two dollars on an item can't afford the gallery (even at the old price). after ebay and paypal get done your profit margin has taken a big hit. ebay has lost sight of what it is that makes them their money and that is volume, which is quickly dwindling. has anyone else noticed a decrease in sales...................
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I am one whe thinks the gallery amount is too high.
I had listed a bunch of Native American Jewelry and forgot to turn off the gallery on the template. So I did turn it off later after they had launched. The stuff sold really well and then a few days later I listed the rest of the jewelry and forgot I had turned it off and I decide that since the jewelry did so well I would leave it on. A few days after I launched the auctions I realised that they did not have gallery and the jewelry sold for twice what the first bunch did.
Who can say what will happen!!!!
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I predicted this when the fee increase was announced. It is the little sellers with the minimally priced items that will suffer, along with their customers, who will go elsewhere when they find that gallery is gone. It takes longer to shop, the small seller makes less from bids, and eBay makes less in both FVF and listing fees as a result. Many of us are already exploring other venues.
I stated then that I think eBay wanted to run us little sellers off even though the small sellers are who made eBay successful.
I wish someone would do a break even price study on eBay and PayPal for the least cost items and give us all a black and white idea of exactly how much we have to sell an item for with the two sets of fees just to make a small profit. I think many of us would be surprised to see that items below say $10 are a real threat to making any profit now, aside from the person selling an item from home and not caring what they get for the item.
I'd also expect that the sellers of recipes at $0.99 will cease or become something more like $2.50 as a guess, just to cover fees.
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Maybe that is why our sales have increased... we have continued to use the Gallery...but most of our items are over $20.00.. .. not all, but most. Some of our competitors have quit using gallery and quit their stores. We kept both..
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I was looking on ebay the other day for a John Grisham audiobook (unabridged) - a book of his I somehow missed. I confess only becuse amazon didn't have it in stock.
Ordinarily I would scan the pictures - as for some reason sellers don't bother to put in the title - hardback, paperback, audio etc.
But there were almost no pictures. Puzzled me until I remembered the fee increase. Darn.
I finally bought it on half.com where there were lots of pictures (do they not pay gallery type fees?) And since I always feel sorry for half sellers with respect to postage, I looked at the seller's list of items and picked up two more things.
I'm sure every buyer is different but there ARE going to be reactions to the lack of gallery photos even if we can't predict what reactions.
Maryanne
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I sent this to AuctionBytes a month or so ago... before the fees went into effect.
Why I Stopped Selling On eBay, and Now I'll Stop Buying Too!
eBay already ran me off as a seller. Last Spring I was thinking about expanding my eBay business in a big way. I sat down with a potential business partner and we started going over a plan for this expansion, which would consist of hiring several employees, moving into multiple new product lines, and changing the way I've successfully done things for over 8 years as a seller on eBay. Lagging sales and income brought about the need for change, and I thought ramping up my business to a new level might be the answer. Ultimately, we determined that eBay is not a dependable or trustworthy business associate, and that we could not depend on eBay to maintain a stable enough marketplace for our business to succeed.
It wasn't that we were afraid all the buyers would suddenly leave, but rather that eBay's "enhancements" and new fees and the rest would continue to change at a pace that could render our business irrelevant, at any time, and in a matter of days. I'm very happy we made that decision, because the new fees eBay is rolling out in few days would have done just that.
Instead of expanding on eBay, I finished up some sales in October, and for the most part stopped selling at eBay. I found that the vintage areas of eBay are a buyer's market, and that sufficient numbers of collectors have left eBay, due to fraud, seller misrepresentation of goods, and other issues. I knew that my long experience as a seller would serve me well as a buyer, and that I could assume the "risk" of buying online and then sell to local customers through brick and mortar outlets. This has been extremely successful for me, and it's put me on the other side of the transaction in a very big way. After leaving the ranks of the PowerSeller, I became a PowerBuyer, spending around $10,000 a month on eBay for the past few months.
Each day, I receive 2-20 eBay "scam" emails. These range from normal "phishing" emails, designed to obtain my credit card information and other personal data, to more elaborate "fake Second Chance" sales offers and even one that was so elaborate it involved a trojan virus being placed on a seller's computer, so that the scammer could intercept and reply to the seller's email.
Navigating these treacherous waters, to look for bargains among the sharks is not an easy thing. Beyond the outright thieves, there are many sellers who provide poor descriptions, leaving out important details which lead to disappointments, sellers who pack their items poorly and then fail to take responsibility for the resulting damage to the item, and folks who simply make other types of honest mistakes which wind up costing the buyer money. I can deal with all that. I don't like it, but I can deal with it. Of course, there are many wonderful and professional sellers as well, and they are always a pleasure.
Pages on eBay have been loading very slowly for some months now. I have a very fast cable broadband connection, and a new and powerful computer. Most of the internet loads very quickly, but eBay is often extremely slow. Some other eBay users at here (www.here.com) mentioned that they have had success getting eBay to load faster by changing some settings and using Firefox. Firefox is indeed a much better way to surf eBay. I don't like the slow loading pages, but I've found a way to deal with them.
Having fought through all that... what could eBay possibly do to run me off as a buyer? Simple, they've raised the fees on the features that I use to find the deals I manage to find, and now sellers can't afford to use those features at the higher price.
eBay is raising the fee for Gallery by 71%, from 25¢ per listing to 35¢. Gallery is a little picture of the item next to the item title. As a buyer, I absolutely love gallery. I can scan through hundreds of listings, which sometimes do not correctly identify the item being sold, and knowing what it really is, I can buy it at a greatly reduced price. If those sellers don't use the Gallery feature, it will make finding those ganga deals more like finding the head of a pin in a haystack, than like finding a needle. As a buyer, I LOVE the BuyItNow (BIN) feature. Sometimes sellers price items to sell FAST, and I can peruse new BIN listings to find some great deals, but the BIN fee is going up from 5¢ per listing to as much as 25¢ per listing, and now that source will dry up as well. And finally eBay Stores.... with the high cost of listing items for auction on eBay, many sellers put items in their eBay Store, and at ready-to-move prices. But both the store subscription rate ($9.95/mo to $14.95/mo) and the FinalValueFee for items that sell (3% to 8%) are increasing, and sellers are closing their stores left and right. My favorite seller stores are going away or are gone already, and those great eBay Stores deals are going with them.
Why is eBay raising fees that negatively impact buyers? eBay is under pressure to perform, not from buyers and sellers, but from the stock market. Rather than focus on what will put more money in sellers' pockets, and more great items on buyers' shelves, eBay has been focused on how to fill its own coffers so it can hit its numbers for Wall Street. Rather than working to make eBay the best and easiest place to buy on the internet, eBay has focused on finding new ways to soak sellers.
In order to get sellers to pay for increasingly expensive "enhancements" on eBay, eBay has now moved to make it increasingly expensive to gain access to buyers through its marketplace, and in doing this, is removing buyer access to the broad and diverse offerings on eBay. That's probably not their intent, however it is the net effect.
On the positive side, I see new websites popping up all the time, and I've started finding some incredible buys away from eBay. Maybe the internet is starting to grow up. Maybe we don't need a "venue" anymore.
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Many buyers have gotten so accustomed to viewing the pictures that they just skip right over those without them. I've gotten some really good buys on items without the pictures.
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How Petty. You just don't get it do you?
From the New York Times Article quoted here:
The company also said it believed that too large a proportion of sellers were using the "gallery" feature - choosing to have a picture accompany a listing - so the company raised its fee for the feature by 40 percent to restore its premium status.
Screw what buyers want or think. Screw what sellers can afford. The point is that gallery should be "exclusive" and have a "premium status".
Ebay wants to shed the image of being a garage sale - and this one step towards that - it will reduce sales in lower value items. Ebay wants to shed the image that it is profitable - this is also one step towards that. If there are now half of the gallery pictures pulling in an extra 10 cents, it needs to be remembered that there are also half pulling in 25 cents less.... but forget about buyer expectations, they are now a premium item on the Ebay landscape.
If I shop anywhere else online, I get to look at a virtual catalog - you know - with pictures, before I pick what I am interested enough in to look at more
Please quit the pretence that Ebay does not pay careful attention to how "retail" buyers shop on-line. After all, this was the precise reason that Ebay placed the "Bid Now - Inspect Later" button at the top of listings for items that may be used or imperfect. Buyers (allegedly) expected this type of service based on their other online shopping. The gallery is different, with too much useage it lowers the tone of the place. Sure it makes it easier for buyers to identify what they are looking for without having to open page after page of irrelelvant listings, but that overlooks that it was not instituted with buyers in mind - a premium service should be a premium service - and how changing its useage causes a reduction in prices or sales is not relevant to something as upmarket as a, umm, marketplace.
Keeping the gallery "exclusive" benefits absolutely everybody***
***(except for buyers, sellers, stockholders, the marketplace itself, and Ebay's botom line)
I am glad to be able to clear up this silly little missunderstanding.
Kevin