The fee increase notice on January 3rd should have started out "Happy Birthday Skip, here is your annual eBay fee increase (Jan 3rd was my birthday if anyone wants to remember that for next year)." When the announcement came I opened the email with some trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised. While no fee increase is ever welcome, as fee increases go this one was not too bad. Instead of an across-the-board increase, eBay raised one level of auction listing fees ($1.00 - $9.99 level) by a nickle and the final value fee for items selling from $25.01 to $1,000.00 by 1/4 of 1% from 3% to 3.25%. Although this does not sound like a lot, it will have a huge increase on eBay's profits. eBay stock jumped over 4% in one day on the news. So what does this mean for eBay sellers? I looked at one of our most popular selling items. It is an EZ Cube Light Tent set that sells for around $197. The starting price is higher than $9.99 so there is no change in the listing fee. The current final value fee is $6.47. With the new fee increase the final value fee increases 43 cents to $6.90. I am not excited but I can live with it. There were other increases related to eBay motors. Rather than cover these here you can read the announcement at: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200701.shtml#2007-01-03144839 |