I don't really use eBay and I know there are more important things going on in the world, but thought I would post this:

eBay Kills Upfront Costs For Auctions Of Up To 50 Items Per Month

eBay sales fee now includes final value plus shipping charges

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Ecommerce juggernaut eBay this morning announced that it is making it free to list up to 50 items per month in auctions at any start price, and free to add the “Buy it Now” option to those listings. Effective April 19, 2011, the new pricing builds on free-listing promotions announced back in January 2010.

In related news, eBay is reducing Final Value Fee rates for Store and Fixed Price sellers (on July 6, 2011), and will apply the Final Value Fee to the total amount of a sale to encourage sellers to give buyers more options for low-cost or even free shipping.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y11/m03/i15/s00

Sweet. So if I had one item I wanted to sell, I could create 49 bogus auctions for spoons with BINs of $10K and not pay any fees?

I think you got it backwards.

this looks like good news for new/low volume sellers with the free listing and bad news for just about everyone with the 9% cut of final price. that has to be more than what it's been so far.

All they ever do is shuffle around the numbers to make it look more enticing... what's the 1st word people notice?!
FREE!
No different from the weekly car ads that have a "special one time bi-annual this weekend only super dooper sale."
Except the 'bay fees are indeed going up all the time, then factor in Paypal's cut as well
And part of what you are charged on is the accurate shipping charges ebay now requires, so a Seller can charge actual shipping cost but both ebay & paypal get a piece of that, too?!?
weak

D'oh!

They have been running promotions like this a lot. You get to list for free, but if and when your item sells they tack on the insertion fee to the final value. Is that what is going on now full time?

At least for taking a percentage of the shipping charges might not be such a bad idea for certain sellers.. I've came across a ton of ebay auctions and buy it now items where the seller hooks you with a low bid/price, and then if you look at their shipping prices, some of them are ridiculous. There was one item that I remember that the item was being sold for a low price, but the shipping was around $300 for a 6" vinyl toy.. Granted, not all people to that, but I have seen many shipping prices for around $20 from U.S. to U.S. for small figures that would cost less than $5 to ship. So maybe eBay is trying to put a stop to this?

However, I never sold anything on eBay, so I have no idea what the mark-up is on selling items after this change...?

yeah...ebay has been doing this for quite sometime. they're not losing any business from this, if anything, their profits are likely going to go up.

in short, free listings with the "previous listing fees" attached to the final value fee now. 9% is pretty darn high compared to what it was like...10 years ago.

meanmistert got it dead-on about the fees.

re: etr_wolf's comments. yeah, the shipping is nuts. but it's really the only "loophole" around the fees. which is why a lot of people were doing 1 cent auctions for the longest time with their desired price as shipping. because ebay wasn't charging fees for s/h, but i think they're finally getting wise to it all.

i haven't sold on ebay for a long time because of these changes. by the time you incorporate all the fees you're trying to counter into your price, it's not even worth it.

Yes, this is really common for lots of things that are victims of hype - a lot of times when I've been trying to track down some shoes, a shirt, or sunglasses, I find that most listings from individuals (NOT eBay Stores) are $10 or less BIN with $40-300 shipping charges. Those are the people I refuse to buy from, and I wind up reporting like 5+ listings a month. Sometimes eBay gets back to you, too, without an automated message - but usually more when it's a sketchy individual who you've reported for copy/pasting the photos and description from somebody else's listing.

The final charge of 9% is quite bad. This just means people will try to falsely inflate their shipping costs even more than they currently do, to try and further recover that 9%.

does anybody happen to remember what the final value fee was before upped to 9%?

Exactly. It’s pretty much a “six of one/half-a-dozen of another” situation.

But I will say the free 50 listing plus “Buy It Now” actually increased sales for me. Being able to put a “Buy It Now” on items—and making sure you calculate a fair “Buy It Now”—can make things work really well.

It seems though that eBay is gearing more and more towards sellers selling more than one item at a time. I usually batch stuff up anyway and sell similar things at the same time, but still... I miss the eBay of 1998 :/