The Northeast has been in a deep freeze for the past week. Schools were closed in many areas on Friday, not because of snow, but because of cold temperatures, which in Boston reached -40 with the wind-chill factored in.
On January 5, eBay sent its own cold blast when it announced fee increases, which go into effect on February 2nd. There were a few positives in the announcement, such as qualifying NPB items now being eligible for the standard re-list credit. But not many sellers took anything positive away from the hike in listing fees, which will be rising between 9% and 45%. See AuctionBytes Newsflash coverage of the announcement at http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m01/i05/s01.
eBay is making it cheaper to list inventories in Stores. eBay still charges a monthly fee, but the per-item monthly listing fee was lowered from 5 cents to 2 cents. Nancy Hix has been writing about storefronts for online sellers and covered eBay Stores in her last two columns. In today's issue, she takes a look at Vendio storefronts.
How do you plan to deal with eBay fee increases? Do you have a Web site or Storefront? If you sell on ePier, Bidville, SellYourItem, Bid4Assets, Yahoo, Amazon, etc., let us know what works for you. Give us statistics, be specific. Please post your strategies and thoughts in the AuctionBytes Discussion Forums at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=3
Online sellers are continually being challenged to sell smarter. We will try to help by keeping you informed of new products and services, policy changes, and tips and techniques for saving time and money!
As many of you know, David's ebook, "Snappy Auction Photos" is in its second edition and is available for sale in CD-Rom format from Auction-Sellers-Resource.com and in ebook Reader format from Powells.com. New Canoe University has used the book as a basis for one of its online courses, which is now available at http://digbig.com/3krp. Many thanks to Leland Harden of New Canoe University for making this possible!
Here's hoping Spring will arrive soon with warmer temperatures, good health and brisk sales.
Thanks for reading!
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
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