Interesting changes are afoot at the world’s biggest fleamarket and online auction site.
Firstly, the charges for a number of categories will change from March 1, 2007. Listing fees are being reduced and simplified, which is nice at first glance. But, if you’re one of the many, many people who sell comics, DVDs, music and video games, then you’re in for a shock. The Final Listing Value is now up to 9%!
Ebay’s own example shows that selling many of these items will now have an increased cost to the seller, and it seems to suggest that you’re better off listing items for an unfair price to get the maximum cash, rather than offering a fair price. Could this see low-margin sellers looking elsewhere? Take a look at the examples for yourself, and note that they all assume an item needs to be listed twice to sell.

There’s also the news that Ebay is delisting ‘Real Money Transfer‘ items when they correspond to video gaming. RMT is basically the method for selling your gold or other items harvested from World of Warcraft etc, and converting them into real cash.
Interestingly, however, Second Life is exempt, due to questions about whether it is a game, or a virtual world.

The repercussions could be that low margin sellers and World of Warcraft gold farmers both start looking elsewhere to make sales. And coming at the same time, it could give a significant boost to any alternative route to market.
It also suggests that virtual money making could increasingly move towards the likes of Second Life, whose makers, Linden Labs, have already stated their intention to be behind the framework for the 3D Web 3.0.
And finally it highlights the problem of monopolies in the online world, as much as in reality. Do I accept that I’m going to be paying an extra £1 in fees for every DVD and game I sell, in addition to Paypal costs and postage? Meaning that I get less reward for the pain in the backside which is Ebay trading? In addition to the risks that sellers seem to shoulder by using Paypal?