Old-fashioned auction dynamo, eBay, sent an e-mail to it’s members today detailing changes in their fee structure. Starting February 20th the fees to initially list an item regardless if it sells or not will be reduced.
Starting or Reserve Price
Current Insertion Fee
Insertion Fee (effective 02/20/2008)
$0.01 – $0.99
$0.20
$0.15 Lower fee!
$1.00 – $9.99
$0.40
$0.35 Lower fee!
$10.00 – $24.99
$0.60
$0.55 Lower fee!
$25.00 – $49.99
$1.20
$1.00 Lower fee!
$50.00 – $199.99
$2.40
$2.00 Lower fee!
$200.00 – $499.99
$3.60
$3.00 Lower fee!
$500.00 or more
$4.80
$4.00 Lower fee!
As an added bonus the $0.35 gallery fee has now been dropped meaning eBay will include a picture of every item in the search results. The price cuts up front came with an increase of the final value fees assessed at the end of successful auctions.
Closing Price
Final Value Fee
Final Value Fee (effective 02/20/2008)
Item not sold
No fee
No change
$0.01-$25.00
5.25% of the closing value
8.75% of the closing value
$25.01 – $1,000.00
5.25% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.25% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00)
8.75% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00)
Over $1,000.01
5.25% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.25% of the initial $25.00 – $1,000.00 plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 – closing value)
8.75% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.50% of the initial $25.00 – $1,000.00 plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 – closing value)
To put this final value increase into perspective here is a sample of fees for a range of final auction prices.
Final Value
Old Fee
New Fee
Difference
$4.99
$0.26
$0.44
$0.18
$9.99
$0.52
$0.87
$0.35
$19.99
$1.05
$1.75
$0.70
$49.99
$2.12
$3.06
$0.94
$99.99
$3.75
$4.81
$1.06
$199.99
$7.00
$8.31
$1.31
$499.99
$16.75
$18.81
$2.06
$999.99
$33.00
$36.31
$3.31
All calculations were done at http://www.ebcalc.com which allows you to change fee values.
Auctions that sell for under a dollar benefit the most with these latest changes as the lower insertion fee plus the free gallery upgrade outweigh the increased final value fee. Sellers who do a high volume of business will be hit hard as more of their earnings will come out of the already slim margins and go toward more fees.
eBay has been on the decline for the past couple of years. They are already the dominant auction site with a virtual monopoly on the industry. Computers have been getting more efficient as technology advances but apparently eBay can’t lower its costs fast enough. And let’s not mention that billion dollar Skype purchase which has done absolutely nothing to eBay’s auction business.
eBay has become a victim of it’s own success. In the beginning people went to eBay to find rare collectibles or heavily discounted items. Some even considered eBay to have the perfect business model as a middle-man connecting buyers to sellers with no inventory to keep on it’s own. Now eBay is littered with suspicious listings, outrageously high shipping prices, and generally more distractions to wade through in search of the desired item. The selling process is a laborious one requiring lots of time to specify all of the necessary options to help auctions stand out from the crowd. What eBay needs to do is simplify everything as much as possible starting with the listing process. They also need to focus on helping it’s biggest asset: the buyers and sellers. Buyers want a safe, friendly environment to do business in and sellers want the least amount of obstacles to selling their goods. More fees result in less incentive for sellers to consider eBay which results in a less lucrative market for buyers to enter. eBay should take a page from the Amazon Marketplace which provides a much better experience for both buyers and sellers.
That improved experience is why when I need to sell something to a stranger I turn to the efficient book dealer rather than the decrepit auctioneer.
Hot or Not is an iconic web 1.0 site with a basic concept: Look at a picture of a person and mark on a scale of 1-10 how hot they are. Command Shift 3 takes the same concept and applies it to web design. Frankly I find the web design implementation far more interesting than the original Hot or Not concept. But judging a website on a scale of 1-10 sounds overly-complicated. CommandShift3.com instead puts two websites side by side and it is your job as the all-knowing visitor to click on which one you like best.
The cool thing is you can see if you picked the crowd favorite and what percentage of people agree with you. If you like a site so much you can click through and leave a comment about it or visit the actual page. Too lazy to wade through the thousands of contenders? Then check out the Best & Worst sites in a variety of time frames. And if you are looking for something specific you can search by keyword or browse their tags.
While the concept is super simple to grasp, the impact of a site like this is a lot more compelling than the loads of CSS galleries that litter the net. The interaction and side by side comparison really set it apart in the showcase arena. I enjoy the simplicity of the site, showing me only two designs at a time instead of bombarding me with thumbnails like someothersitesdo. In conclusion, this site is a great way to get a taste of some great web design that is out there on the net while keeping it fun and engaging. I added my blog to the fray to see how it would stand up. Wish me luck, and we’ll see if my design chops can rise above the crowd.
Oh and in case you didn’t know, Command Shift 3 is the keyboard shortcut to take a picture of the screen in Mac OS X.
The people behind Revision3.com’s new look took a step into the limelight for the latest episode of the Revision3 Gazette.
Stephanie Chu, Mark Rebec and Ron Richards are the dedicated web team at Revision3 who have been laboring for months to bring the new Revision3.com to life and took some time out of their busy schedules to share with the Revision3 audience the answers to many burning questions.
They didn’t answer any of my burning questions as the three sat in front of a greenscreen with the new website scrolling in the background. If you agree with me that the new look is bland you will probably think the same thing about the 3-person team explaining the going-ons behind the browser.
Saving Private Ryan is a popular flick with a memorable scene depicting the invasion of Normandy, France. Here it is to jog your memory.
In 1998, when this film was released, the average filmmaker didn’t have the technology available to them to produce a scene at this scale. But as technology has trickled down to the masses, more and more ideas become reasonable to execute. With the state of compositing and CG graphics where they are today there is really no limit with what can be done yet still believable to the average eye.
Take these four guys who managed to recreate a D-Day invasion over a weekend with one camera and off the shelf desktop tools. They documented the whole process so you can see how everything came together. While their mini-scene is not as extensive as the big Hollywood film, the fact that they could even pull this off with such a micro crew is awe-inspiring.
Here we have a video mashup using the iPhone guided tour video found on Apple’s website with an original song. Plus the thing is catchy, hence I posted it below:
Kevin Rose’s Internet video startup, Revision3.com, unveiled its new look today. The homepage has been simplified providing an immediate focus with a large feature box that rotates through different site promotions. Each show now has it’s own section which is easily accessible from the “Shows” drop down menu along the top of every page. Streaming video flash players on each episode page have been bumped up to 555×337 which really draws viewers in. Each show has a plethora of different subscription formats which are only a tab away from the recent episode list. The overall restructuring is a welcome improvement, but unfortunately it came at the expense of visual design.
The new color scheme is drab and bland with a “corporate” feeling that first comes to mind. I suppose this is to appeal to advertisers that Revision3 is trying to attract to buy ad inventory but it feels like something from early 2000. The old design (pictured below) felt slick and cutting edge just like the network itself. But the worst offender of this new look is the typography. For one, it is a light gray (hex code #666666) and could stand to be darker (like #333333) for increased contrast and thus increased readability. The line-height is also not set leaving lines scrunched together making it harder to read. In short, the new design is missing the final polish which used to set it apart from other media websites on the net.
Daniel Burka has been the lead designer on most of Kevin Rose’s web projects but it looks like he didn’t have a hand in the new Revision3.com. He must be too busy working on Digg and Pownce, two sites I really admire from a design perspective. Luckily I have no reason to visit the Revision3 site on a regular basis except to subscribe to new shows. I hope they take a second look at things and update the style to match the new functionality.
I was making cool impressions of the zipper on my jacket while thinking about something and it got stuck. I did it a couple of times before with no problem. On the last time I must have pushed my luck too far as the blue goo started to seep in. Time to get a new office toy…
