The original sale principle on eBay is the auction: Sellers place items on the marketplace for a specified time, and the user who has placed the highest bid at the end of the time limit wins the bid. For professional sellers, though, the fixed price offer is more enticing. This is where the seller sets the price for the offered product. Just like with Amazon, the product range is incredibly large: From toilet paper to delivery trucks, you can acquire almost everything on eBay. Certain offers are banned on eBay, though, including animals, weapons, pharmaceuticals, securities, and human body parts.
The costs accrued for sellers on eBay depend on whether it’s a private or commercial account. As a private seller, you have to pay a selling commission of 10%. eBay doesn’t charge individuals any fees for the creation of an offer (if you sell fewer than 300 things per month). Some additional options, such as extended photo galleries or captions, cost extra.
The costs are of interest to SMEs, though, who fall under the category of commercial use: eBay provides various subscriptions for eBay shops. Depending on how many fixed-price offers you want to create per month, the price could be anywhere from $39.99 to $4999.99 monthly. If you decide against a shop, and so therefore don’t get a subscription, a fee of $0.35 per item will be charged after 40 listings. Even as a seller with a basic shop, you get 400 offers for free and then only pay $0.10 per offer. A sales commission of between 4.5 and 10 percent is charged, depending on the type of product.
An eBay shop has other advantages. What Amazon looks to minimize can be enforced on eBay through its own appearance on the sales platform: the presence as a seller. With your own layout, you can better present yourself as your own brand and build up a solid customer base. On their own shop pages, sellers can present their entire product range and inform buyers on their other offers. To create more security (for sellers as well), mutual evaluations are an integral part of the system. Sellers can therefore make convincing arguments for themselves in spite of whether or not their price is favorable.
Not only your own shop, but also individual product pages can be designed with eBay relatively freely. You can customize the layout with your own graphic elements based on HTML to fit your marketing strategy. External providers have also established themselves for the design of premade or individual templates. In this way, less internet savvy retailers can also create convincing and professional product pages. Just like its competitor, Amazon, eBay offers various interfaces that enable use with other software.