eBay Changes Up Its Seller Fees In Bid To Chip Away At Amazon Marketplace

Where you choose to sell the stuff you have to sell is a big decision, and online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay know that. So what could mean the difference between taking your budding business to one place and not the other? The fees sellers have to pay can be a deciding factor, and eBay knows it. That’s why the company is launching new fee rules for its sellers.

The company said today it’s ditching the old, more complex system of tiered sets of “final value fees,” and is going to use flat-rate fees instead, reports Reuters. Changes will start rolling out April 16.

Listing fees for many sellers are also going to be a thing of the past or will be less — for example, people who don’t sell a whole lot of volume and list items fewer than 12,250 times per month won’t be paying as much.

Sellers who only put a few items up a year will get 50 free listings per month and have to fork over 10% of the final sale price to eBay if the item sells. Previously, sellers had to pay $0.50 per item for full-price listings and only auctioned items got free listings.

“For most of our sellers the complexity of our fees were keeping them from being on eBay and preventing them from having full transparency into their profitability from selling on eBay,” said Michael Jones, vice president of merchant development. “There will be some sellers who will pay a little bit more on eBay, but most sellers will be impacted positively by this.”

Your turn, Amazon.

EBay goes after Amazon with fee changes for sellers [Reuters]

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