Ebay pushing sellers to spend proceeds on Ebay

[donnanewbay2]

Ebay is now pushing sellers to spend their Ebay proceeds at Ebay...this after making tons of money from sellers with their so called promotions. I've bern a seller on Ebay for 18 years. Until the past couple of years I never had to pay extra to "promote" my listings.  Some sellers are paying upwards of 25% in final value fees, which I refuse to do. And now they want us to take our earnings and spend them on Ebay. A bit greedy of them I think.

[lamber9347]

---

@donnanewbay2 wrote:

<snip> If you don't promote your listings Ebay seems to make sure no one sees them.

---

This is untrue and simply your 'perception'. I've never used PL and am quite happy with my ongoing sales....

[shado-x]

never blew my proceeds on Ebay.. I paid bills.

Expenses, not bills.  lol.

[soh.maryl]

Not sure why that's a problem.  Those messages about spending your money on eBay can be safely ignored.  ALL businesses in general want you to spend your money with them. Why should eBay be any different?  

[lamber9347]

---

@soh.maryl wrote:

Not sure why that's a problem.  Those messages about spending your money on eBay can be safely ignored.  ALL businesses in general want you to spend your money with them. Why should eBay be any different?  

---

I know, right? Doesn't basically every business say, come spend your money at our place? Doesn't every car dealer say the same thing? Isn't that just regular advertising? 

[hartungcards]

Until the past couple of years you never had to pay extra to "promote" your listings?

There was a time when you promoted your listings for free?  Uh......what?

[yuzuha]

---

@retro_entertainment_collectibles wrote:

That's incorrect sort of.  I used a different PC w/ VPN and did searches only to find items not promoted had many a listing of totally unrelated items to my search appear far before mine.

---

Unrelated items aren't going to affect whether your item sells, though. If a buyer is looking for a purple elephant lamp and there are only 13 purple elephant lamps listed, they're going to see all of the 13. They're not going to buy an iPhone case just because it showed up in the search if they're not looking for an iPhone case.

[mam98031]

Promoted listings is a TOOL that sellers can CHOOSE to use or not to use.  For some sellers promoted listings work very well, for others they don't and for others they simply don't use them at all.

Ebay is pushing nothing about Promoted Listings nor are Promoted listings a new tool.  Ebay certainly lets us know this tool is available for us to use, but it is absolutely the choice of a seller to use it or not.

You do not "have" to use promoted listings, you "choose" to.  Blaming Ebay for the decisions a seller makes in how much they are WILLING to pay in additional fees to promote their listings is NOT Ebay's decision or fault if you will.  The seller made that decision on their own

I know that most sellers would never get even close to 25% FVFs but I suppose some feel they have plenty of profit to allow for such a high FVF.  The minimum FVF that a seller has to agree to if they want to use Promoted listings is 2% more in FVFs.  Anything above that is the choice of the seller and the seller alone.  Why any seller would be willing to double their FVFs is a bit crazy to me, but I'm confident you are right and some sellers do that.  Most unlikely go that high.

This is nothing to do with "greed" of Ebay.  If you don't like it don't use the optional tool it is as simple as that.  It is not true that you can't get any sales without using them.  The vast majority of listings / sellers on Ebay do NOT use the tool.  Just look at the Ebay stats.  You can Google that and find out on your own.  Only about 250,000 US sellers out of over 6 million even use promoted listings per some of the stats out there.

It is simply a choice for Each seller to make for themselves.  To use or not to use.  Again PL works great for some sellers and not so much for others.  We all have to make this decision for ourselves.  There are no right or wrong answers to using it or not.

[jaboncollc]

Monica, no, the "invitation" is not going away. We click to close it on our Seller Hub, and as soon as we navigate away and go back to the hub, there it is again. We have to close it and close it and close it. I'll admit it's very annoying.

Why do we have to sign up for it anyway? Seems like a no-brainer to just make the funds available for use at check out.

So why are they pushing it? Do they make even MORE fees off of it?

Either way, I'm not signing up. I give ebay enough money already, like thousands per month.

[jaboncollc]

The problem is the "invitation" is not going away. We click to close it on our Seller Hub, and as soon as we navigate away and go back to the hub, there it is again. We have to close it and close it and close it. I'll admit it's very annoying and blocking my normal data.

Why do we have to sign up for it anyway? Seems like a no-brainer to just make the funds available for use at check out.

So why are they pushing it? Do they make even MORE fees off of it?

Either way, I'm not signing up. I give ebay enough money already, like thousands per month.

[chapeau-noir]

This is called 'peer conformity' - individuals who cannot think for themselves - we're supposed to grow out of this after teenhood and think for ourselves. 

[mam98031]

Ebay's site, Ebay's rules.

But why that pesky message won't go away is a good one.  I've been trying to get rid of it for days and it messes up how I have my Seller Hub set up at a glance.

devon@ebay 

elizabeth@ebay 

Can we get the MP team to allow us to close this darn message and make it go away.  Or are they going to require we sign up for it before it will go away????

[movieman630]

That along with the new IRS limits for 1099 will get a lot of beginners or "clean out my attic" sellers in trouble.  When their tax bill comes due but they forgot to not spend their earnings on ebay. 

I would argue further that ebay has been acting more like an employer than a platform when it comes to selling.  Right down to deciding IF our listings will get seen or not.  If they're going to turn the platform into a "gambling" site where the earnings are treated like monopoly money then perhaps they should be responsible for witholding income taxes to. 

[meme6253]

If You Don't Like It, Just Ignore It!, It's Your Money.

[mam98031]

---

@movieman630 wrote:

That along with the new IRS limits for 1099 will get a lot of beginners or "clean out my attic" sellers in trouble.  When their tax bill comes due but they forgot to not spend their earnings on ebay. 

I would argue further that ebay has been acting more like an employer than a platform when it comes to selling.  Right down to deciding IF our listings will get seen or not.  If they're going to turn the platform into a "gambling" site where the earnings are treated like monopoly money then perhaps they should be responsible for witholding income taxes to. 

---

Unlikely.  It is late November now.  If sellers haven't been putting away for potential taxes they will need to pay by now, it isn't likely they will by the end of the year.

FYI, the new minimum threshold on the 1099K does not and has not changed the tax rules.  We have always been responsible to report our income no matter what the minimum threshold is on a FORM.

Funny how some react to something that by popular demand sellers wanted.  From the beginning of Ebay onboarding most sellers into MP, one of their biggest complaints was they couldn't spend the money in their MP account to buy other things on Ebay like they could when we used PayPal as our money processor.  I'm unsure why some think there is some sinister motive by Ebay for allowing this and it was a welcomed perk when we use PayPal.

[motortown_inc]

Here is my 2 cents. The fact is Sellers are eBay's customer not the buyers. No sellers means no buyers. So like any business the goal of ebay is to extract as much cash as possible from sellers, their customer.  As noted by others this is something some folks have asked for.  This gives the ones that asked the ability to spend easily on ebay, hence more revenue for ebay without having to endure any costs from processing credit cards. So those that want to spend can, and ebay makes more money. Not a bad  business decision on behalf of ebay. I myself will not use it as doing so would rob me of the cash back points I would get on my credit card for purchases made on ebay.   Two final points to make,  I am not an ebay cheerleader, and I do think your post  does have some merit.

Have a safe and happy holiday !