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Am I reading this correct? eBay is upping the number of items you can list in each subscription level? https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/financials.html
Starter :250 Auction + Fixed Price listings changes to No change
Basic: 350 Fixed Price listings changes to 1,000 Fixed Price listings
Premium 1,000 Fixed Price listings changes to 10,000 Fixed Price listings
Anchor: 10,000 Fixed Price listings changes to 25,000 Fixed Price listings
Enterprise: 100,000 Fixed Price listings changes to No ChangeThis starts April 1. So this means Premium will handle our level store. It essentially becomes an anchor store at the same cost!? That’s save us $150/month unless Im reading it wrong.
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Wow that is huge! I have an anchor store right now also, I wonder how we could change over to Premium without penalties – would we have to wait until our renewal date. But, I do enjoy the ability to have phone service customer service – but is it worth the extra $150.00 a month we would be saving(?) Probably not. I will be checking in to this! Thanks for sharing!
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I’ll be downgrading to a premium store too. I only speak to Anchor Support a few times per year at most. Is there any “early termination” penalty for doing this? I imagine a lot of people will be doing the downgrade. I hope eBay is prepared for that.
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Actually, I think I just found my own answer. If I’m reading this right there is apparently an early termination fee for store downgrades. See here: https://pages.ebay.com/stores/subscriptionterms.html
Could you find the end of your current store subscription here: https://www.ebay.com/sub/manage
Do the math to figure out what you’ll save / pay to downgrade early.
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For anchor subscriptions, its $100/month penalty to cancel early. Thankfully we renew on May 1 so we’re only out $100. Its a good really good deal.
So if the new FVF is 11.7%, what was the old percentage?
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Jay, Based on a very quick look, I’d say on balance, it’s an OK update. Coded coupons will be replacing codeless coupons, which is a definite plus. Also, there’s this: “more ebay store updates will be announced soon”….I’m hopeful that they will finally be updating the look and functionality of stores (which haven’t been changed in years). Yes, the increase in free insertion fees should benefit store owners, and allow some to downgrade. There are some FVF increases to compensate for this, but I’m OK with that because I can bake that into my item price. The Promoted Listing credit is going away, but most of us have been expecting that since the last update, and frankly, again, I’m OK with that. It was nice to have, but I’ll continue to use PL without it.
There’s other stuff, but I’ve got to get to the shipping here….
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Jay,
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/fees-update.html#m17-1-tb2
Since FVFs differ by category and by non-store/store, store subscription level, and whether in managed payments or not , my best suggestion is , find the section that applies to you, and read through this. At a glance, it doesn’t look like a huge increase….I won’t change my existing item prices to accommodate the change, since most of my stuff has great margins baked in….
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I like that you now get a timeline of when updates go live.
1. New category changes. eBay will automatically move your items to new categories which could result in a change in fees. I’m not sure how you’re going to track it.
2. New items specifics are being added in the following categories: Clothing, shoes & accessories; Collectibles; Media; Musical Instruments; Parts & Accessories; and Sporting Goods. For those of you who have been working on updating your Item Specifics, gird your loins. Round #18533544 about to start! 😀 They are offering a bunch of resources to help, though, including free use of Optiseller.
3. Variation details are changing for those who create listings with multiple variations.
4. A new unified listing tool will become mandatory in a few months. It’s available as a Try It Now on the listing page. They recommend you start sooner rather than later so that you can get used to it. Interesting additions here includes background removal on desktop as well as mobile.
5. New coded coupons tool allows you to offer coupons to customers. You can now send buyers codes to encourage repeat buyers
6. The Promoted Listings credit will be going away, so now you have to Pay to Play.
7. New store options are going to be added.
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Amatino, You mention “new store options” will be announced at a later date….just to be clear, I don’t think this means new store levels. It has to do with the appearance of stores and the features such as the store newsletter, promotions manager, etc. Months ago ebay had talked about this stuff in one of their monthly videos (I think I had posted about it here)….I’m really looking forward to see what changes they implement…..for way too many years, ebay has just ignored store design and sites like Shopify now make ebay stores look ancient….I hope we get these changes in time for Q4….
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I guess I’m a little confused…I have a premium store/managed payments and was paying I think 9.7% FVF for most categories I sell in (collectibles/art/pottery glass) plus the managed payment fees. As I read the update, these categories are now 11.7% FVF not including managed payment fees, so that’s an increase of 2% not .2%. Am I reading that right? If so, that’s a pretty good increase. I’m in that weird numbers area where I probably can’t downgrade my store and it’s not due for renewal until August I think, so no saving money there. Any thoughts?
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Yeah, the new fees page is confusing. It would have been helpful if they provided “before update” and “after update” comparison columns like they did for the zero insertion fee listing changes.
Here’s the page that lists the current FVF percentages for folks in Managed Payments.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-fees/store-fees?id=4809
The FVF of 11.5% (for most categories) includes the Managed Payments fee – there’s just one FVF now (plus the 30 cents non-refundable MP fee), so an increase to 11.7% is indeed an increase of just .2
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In the section about the invoice going away, they list the fees that will be now taken out from selling proceeds in managed payments, but no mention of UPS or FedEx shipping label fees. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens there? A bit disconcerting.
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/financials.html#invoicing-process
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I currently have a premium store level with 1000 free listings, but eBay added an extra 10,000 items in categories such as collectables. I have a little under 1400 items, but I don’t pay any additional insertion fees because I have lots of items in those categories.
The new basic store will now have 1000 free listings. However, does it have those extra listings in the select categories such as collectables? I couldn’t tell from the page I was reading. If not, then this change will not helpful for me.
One other thing, I saw in an eBay Facebook group that eBay will be waiving fees if you chose to downgrade your store during a certain time period (one person said to April 1 another said April 30). I can’t personally confirm this, but, apparently, this information on the community boards.
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Sharyn,
Yes, the Basic store will continue to have thousands of free listings in Collectibles as it does now. Check out the more detailed page here – the relevant term is “select categories”:
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/fees-update.html
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Thank-you for this! Looking at the select categories, collectables and books are a large part of my inventory. I will have no issues keeping the rest of my listings under 1000. I’ll lose a little in the eBay supplies coupon, but I’ll make up for it in the $38/month savings.
I’ll wait to get something a bit more official about them waiving the fees first. My renewal isn’t until October, so I want to make sure.
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New item specifics required for collectibles and media. Two of my main listing categories. I’m really looking forward to updating thousands of listings rather than having the time to list new ones! This is annoying! Do item specifics really cause that much of a difference in search? I’m so confused by their overall relevance.
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almasty,
Yes, this will be annoying. But does it really make the much difference in search? Yes, I believe it makes a HUGE difference in search. Use of the search filters has been increasing, and without IS, your listing won’t show up in a filtered search. Also, remember that buyers don’t just find items through search. I think I make a lot of sales through my items appearing on other, non-search pages, and that exposure relies heavily on IS.
I don’t really enjoy taking photos, but I do it because I know it makes a difference. Same thing with IS.
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That’s interesting. I didn’t realize people were actually sitting around clicking through item specifics. That seems very time consuming. Perhaps it is increasing due to the amount of time people have to sit around and explore listings on Ebay due to the pandemic? I always thought keywords were more important than item specifics.
Has Ebay posted anywhere how many and which fields we will need to fill in for these newly added categories?
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Photos are different because you only have to take them once. I’m happy to fill out item specifics once, or even twice. But repeatedly? With insane changes like ebay not autofilling Department=Women when the item is in a women’s clothing category? That’s a waste of time for me and for ebay – b/c I could be spending that time listing more stuff.
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Did anyone else notice that eBay is auto-defaulting to Buyer Receives Carrier Discounts in Manage Shipping Preferences? I’ve not seen that option before, but I found out today that eBay has been giving the eBay discounts to my buyers. I’ve been wondering why they’ve been paying the same as or less than me. I use the discount as a buffer for any pricing outages I may have, and I’ve found on several occasions that the buyers have paid less than I’ve been charged. You can change it to “I don’t want to offer any carrier discounts.”
However, with all the changes they’ve been making, will they be like Facebook and do an auto-reset every time there’s an update?
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Where is “Manage Shipping Preferences” these days? I just went into the “site preferences” section where I always used to configure these types of things in a 1990s-ish UI and found it replaced by something much sparser, with nothing about shipping preferences.
I remember that when I first started selling, I set it up to NOT pass on the discounts to the buyer, and yes, I *have* been noticing a change in the shipping costs when I go to print out labels. I thought it was a USPS price increase thing (hard to tell b/c I have a handling charge in there as well), but what you are describing sounds more like it. Now if only I could figure out how to change it back.
Thanks for bringing this up, Amatino.
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I finally found “Manage Shipping Settings” and it turns out that the setting was correct – I do not pass on USPS discounts to buyers, just like always. But boy was it difficult to get to this page. Had to figure out a way to get into 1990s ebay and then I was able to get to it.
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I had to google where to find this as well–
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Further to the above – you can build in a hidden handling cost to the buyer. Either I’ve had my head in the sand for a while, or this is new.
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Regarding downgrading stores, 2 people on a Facebook Reseller group said that they spoke to ebay customer support and we’ll be allowed to downgrade until the end of April without penalty. This sounds great but please verify this independently before downgrading your store if there’s a potential for large penalties.
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@sonia I’ve seen the handling fee you can add to the listing. This was a separate section under the Manage Shipping Preferences that seems to be a default to all listings. Unless I’m reading it wrong.
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Amatino – I’m on that new Manage Shipping Settings page and I don’t see anything about handling fee. I’m relieved to hear that you are aware of the handling fee in the listing! You had me worried there for a moment – lol. 🙂
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Amatino Thank You! – I was operating with the carrier discounts passed on. I unclicked. It will be interesting to see what happens. I also read the unclick only applies to new listings or edited listings. AM i wrong thinking that the unclick will not apply towards my 700 listings?
Copied below from the page Ryanne (thank you!) linked
<h2 id=”section5″>Carrier-specific discounts</h2>
Shipping carrier discounts let you pass some or all of your savings along to your buyers. You have two options for offering carrier discounts to your buyers:- Set up a flat discount off retail or daily rates for domestic and international shipments across all carriers (USPS, FedEx, and UPS)
- Offer eBay-negotiated discount rates with USPS, FedEx, and UPS
In either case, changes you make only apply to new or edited listings where a shipping cost applies.
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FYI… For anyone interested in downgrading their store… On the ebay-for-business facebook page post dated March 3rd @ 5:04 pm… from the comments:
I have one question..?..
Will we be able to switch store levels without penalty if we subscribed to the yearly commitment
Premium will now have the Anchor Store amount of listings and that’s all I will ever need.Hey there! You will have until 4/30 to make any needed changes to your store subscription. Fee free to reach out any time if you have any further questions surround our latest Seller Update! ~Whitney
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An interesting change for eBay in this update is that they are discontinuing and consolidating hundreds of subcategories. For years eBay got more and more detailed with subcategories that would assist browsing and searching but now they’re going in the opposite direction. For example, under Comics alone, there are hundreds of subcategories. If I had a post-1992 superhero comic to sell, I had to choose “Modern Age” among various vintages, then “Superhero” among various subjects, and then decide which of almost 60 subcategories it would fit into. They are all going away. Now with Comics the top category, all US comics are going into a single subcategory – “Comics & Graphic Novels”.
EBay will be automatically moving our listings. Without many drill-down subcategories, item specifics and a good title will be very important. If a subcategory is going away eBay says where the listings will be going and warns: “Before 11 May: If you would like your listings to be moved into an appropriate category, please use the applicable eBay recommended item specifics.” There are huge changes to many categories but some areas with many subcategories (like Militaria – woo hoo!) aren’t being touched. (Yet.)
Here’s the link to the category changes: https://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/categorychanges/preview2021.html
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