Free free, set Gallery free (with apologies to Sting)

From November 6th through December 12th, eBay is giving the gallery listing upgrade away FREE. WOOO! 

As die-hard readers have probably noticed, I've been on the Free Gallery bandwagon for years and its great to finally see eBay testing this for a prolonged period.   In fact, I've gotten to the point where I argue that eBay should charge for people that DONT offer images+gallery in their listings because of the negative buyer impact.

It's going to be interesting to see what this does to conversions.  For those sellers that haven't been using gallery, it's going to help, for those that have, they could actually have a little negative hit as there are now more gallery images to compete for eyeballs. could be time to add a sub-title, gift icon or even border.  I usually don't recommend these listings up grades, but I think if you sell > $50 items as we go into the holidays the extra conversions pay for it.

On a Wall St. call with Merrill Lynch last week, an attendee asked the question along the lines of, "what do you think eBay should do to change fees".  My thoughts on that one:

• The pendulum has swung way too far towards the listing fee side of things.  Of the fees sellers pay, 60% are going to listing fees and 40% to FVFs.  eBay needs to swing the pendulum the other way.  Note: last week's listing fee discount is an example of how to achieve this.
• Gallery wants to be free, set it free!!!
• Category based fees are being tested in the UK and I believe other countries.  This makes a lot of sense.  Your average media seller is never going to have 50% conversions, thus price appropriately and differently for that market so that the supply comes to the site, vs. incenting it to go elsewhere.
• Stores need to go back to a reasonable FVF and very low listing fee (.02!!!), the current store fee structure pushes so much inventory off eBay it is really negatively impacting the selection, and thus the buyer experience.

Readers, what do you think eBay should do with fees?  Should gallery be free FOREVER?!

Comments

[OD]

I was exited in the bigining when they announced gallery was to be free. Then... I realized it's going to hurt me more. I sell cellphone accessories competing with the big dogs out there that sell everything for $0.01 They had no gallery immages so it was ok. And now.............They do. It's going to hurt.

[Rinovette]

Wow! Great blog; (just found it)

I also think that eBay should relax a bit on the fees and take better care of their sellers; especially Powersellers. Anyone who has hit Powerseller status has put in their time and investment in figuring out what works and what doesn't. eBay will only win in the long run with additional listings and thus additional FVF. When they raised the fees for store listings, many Powersellers cut their inventory huge. Free gallery listings for auction and fixed price, at least, allows many sellers to post a few more auctions consistantly to help bring buyers to their store where eBay is making the larger FVF.

Mike

[Carolanne]

I love the free gallery, I wish they would keep it. Sometimes I think that ebay fees are too high.
But that's why I do 5 ptr ads a day...it SO helps pay for listing fees in the long run :).

[Nathan Huppatz]

Scott,

I agree wholeheartedly that gallery should be free. A thumbnail image, title and price are the three basic ecommerce advertisement features available for products worldwide, on seller's own sites, on shopping.com and many other sites.

There are still plenty of other listing upgrades that buyers can opt for if they want to stand out more than others, and the benefits for the eBay buyer experience will be seen over the mdeium to longer term (even if it does have a small impact on sellers already heavily using gallery currently).

[EDNA MORGAN]

marketing health AND BEAUTY PRODUCTS, Telecommunication
sporting goods, ipod games,cloths and accessories,MERCHANTS
ALL TOYS,BUSINESS CAREER, MORTGAGES

[Christopher Oquist]

I agree that the current fee structure in some ways can be ultimately detrimental to the buyer experience. I think would make sense for eBay to move towards a more Amazon-like fee breakdown, with lower insertion or listing fees and higher final value fees. At the same time, category-based fees address the fact that when insertion fees are lowered we once again end up with many categories chock full of duplicate-listing low value garbage..

Gallery should be free.

Chris

[multiplatinum]

Is that a rhetorical question?

[peter]

Scot, your blog has been recommened to China ebayer at http://bbs.fobshanghai.com/forum-98-1.html

Hope your experience to help them, thanks

[Mr S]

It makes sense that the gallery listing should be free. It may mean that sellers that didnt take advantage of it before "competing for eyeballs" with those that did, but there are also inexperienced potential-bidders that may not bid for various reasons, such as a plain lack of comfort [Why do some sellers have an gallery image/Why do others not/Why all the differance between sellers method.] I think if there was a little bit more of a constant between sellers (and this gallery listing is as good a start as I can imagine) then perhaps people make be competing for a slightly larger pie?

[Fashion Jewelry Seller]

Yes. I have selling on eBay for more than 2 years. The gallery and is NOT is reasonable charge. Almost all the auction site will not charge for the gallery. That's give bad experience to the buyer if we have no gallery but it cost us half or more compared with the listing fees. That should be free forever.

I also support the cost down of the store inventory listing fees and final value change. We have already paid the store subscribe monthly fees and it is not fair to us if the store inventory listing fees and final value charge stay in a expensive cost!

Actually we can make no profit after the fees increase of the store inventory and the final value charge. Especially the "test" of get rid of adwords ads. eBay have saved 26 million per month and we are paying the same eBay fees but get nearly 50% drop of the sales. eBay have mentioned that eBay seller is not the employer of eBay. Yes, because we are worst that the staff of eBay.

[Randy T]

Scot,

Great post, I completely agree with you about the need for catagory specific pricing for ebay fees. The one size fits all fees structure just doesn't apply to the ebay marketplace in its very matured state now. Since you cite the media catagory as an example, I thought I could add another view to that. I've been a small ebay media seller for 9 years now, and have watched it plummet to the broken state it has sat in for at least 2 plus years now....

If fees were lowered for the media catagory, it would surely increase seller listings, but would only add to the permanent glut of mega-sellers all trying to sell the same thousands of things, all at below wholesale cost pricing-with meager shipping and handling as the only profits...more listings en masse, would only make the marketplace even furthur depressed (and it can't get much worse than it is now). So in this example, lowering fees would actually hurt the marketplace in the longterm. Ebay wants sales velocity and the media catagory doesn't have it.

Honestly, the best idea is for ebay to mimic Amazon and simply enforce a fixed allowable charge for shipping/handling for media (dvd/cd/video games/etc). That would be the great equalizer....right now, there are simply too many sellers in this catagory (small and large) and ebay knows that not enough of us went away with the big fee increase of 2006....

Keep up the great writing!
Randy T

[BILLSTUFF]

Stores need to go back to a reasonable FVF and very low listing fee (.02!!!)

I hereby salute that proposal.

[John]

FREE Gallery, is way overdue on this site. eBay is so far behind the web 2.0 curve and free gallery is just the begining of what they really need to be evaluating. I see story after story that compairs eBay erosion with advances on Amazon and comparison shopping sites. Honestly, I think a full analysis of the erosion MUST include sites like Craigslist and Google PPC. Craigslist is completely FREE and on the lips of everyone for finding deals. Google PPC is paid by performance clicks.

eBay should take a look at how to make listing cheaper or FREE and charge sellers for performance. Higher FVF on core and store, is a reasonable exchange and in the long run should pay for the missed .35 cents for gallery. Wake up eBay you are still signing that old Prince song but the party is over, it is no longer '1999'.