eBay has 1¢ listing sale - throws a bone for auction traditionalists?

Today Stephanie Tilenius (who will be speaking at our upcoming Catalyst conference next week!) announced a one penny listing promo today.  There are several criteria, including:

• Must start the item at .99
• Must have DSRs > 4.5 (12 month rating, not 30-day)
• You have to have fixed-rate shipping specified or use the ebay shipping calculator (blech!)

This is an unusually long promotion running a week (starts tomorrow, March 25 through March 31).

This one doesn't really make sense to me.  Most sellers that aren't doing .99 auction format aren't going to really do it because of a promo because the risk on say a $50 item is, well maybe $25, so the listing fee savings isn't worth the risk.

Thus the only sellers that will benefit are the ones that are essentially already selling at .99 and they'll save 14 cents if they are non media and 9 if they are media sellers.

So this one has been a big yawner for sellers.  I'm not sure what eBay's trying to do here, but if it's drive more .99NR product or help existing .99NR sellers, it misses both targets.

Comments

[Michael]

We have found that this promotion is very useful for Reserve Price Auctions, normally they ding you for 1% reserve fee plus the insertion fee based on our reserve price. This promotion puts the insertion fee at 1 cent if you start below 99 cents, so it is saving up to $3.99 in insertion fees. (this is likely a unseen error in planning on their part however, but it is sweet)

Warmly,

Michael
ebay: westonjewelry

[Fruity]

It's the end of the quarter so they have to get their levels to a point where they can dazzle at the conference call and do some group pats on the back to justify their implementations are paying off. They do it almost every quarter. Just like a pez dispenser, all those heads in a room saying we were right, see we were right. probably already scheduled an appt with their chiropractor. lol