Selling on Ebay
Recent changes at Ebay may affect some of you who use the service to sell your items. Ebay claims that there are over 700,000 users who make a living selling items on the site. That’s out of a total 64 million users worldwide. Chances are, even if you don’t use Ebay, you know several people who do.
Wow! That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of money changing hands, too. How you get paid on Ebay has been a driving force of PayPal’s growth as well. Ebay owns PayPal and made the company the preferred way to pay for your purchases or collect your payment when the selling is done.
It hasn’t been difficult to get a personal PayPal account. You answer a few questions, provide them with a bank account and credit card, and you’re ready to move money around the world.
Ebay has even made it easy to show your acceptance of PayPal in your listings. There are numerous seals and banners you can display to let people know you’re ready to take their money.
So what’s the change that will affect you? If you will accept PayPal payments for your Ebay goods, you must now be willing to accept all PayPal payments including credit cards. Personal PayPal accounts cannot accept credit cards. To accept credit card payments you must upgrade your account to one of the premium services (Premier or Merchant).
Upgrading your account won’t cost you any money but when you accept payments you will now pay some fees. Generally, the fees are .30 plus 2.9% of the transaction. If you sell something for $50 your fees would be $1.75. That amount is subtracted from the transaction when PayPal transfers the funds to your account.
What this means to you will depend on how much you use Ebay. If you just buy there you may see some price increases from the sellers who look to maintain their profit margins. If you are an Ebay seller you may need to rethink your pricing structure to capture your increased costs. This policy goes into effect August 19, 2005.
So why would Ebay require you to accept credit cards? They say it’s to level the playing field and reduce buyer confusion. If you’re going to state that PayPal is an acceptable method of payment you must accept all forms of PayPal payments.
If you don’t accept PayPal you will not be required to accept credit cards. Many people who sell there only accept checks. It’s much slower than using PayPal and you don’t have the protections PayPal and Ebay offer. I’ve had to use Square Trade and PayPal’s buyer protection services to get money back from fraudulent sellers. It took a couple of weeks but I didn’t have to hunt the people down myself.
You can find more information about this new policy in the 7-15-05 “Updated Policy for PayPal Payments on eBay”.
Ebay is also discontinuing the Ebay Anything Points® program in the USA. Starting 8-15-05 you will not be able to use these in your listings and they will phase out completely by 2-28-06. If you’ve got some Points you need to use them soon.
Mike Myklin is an author, a lecturer, and an e-commerce owner. If you have questions about the Internet and e-commerce, you can send them to him and he will try to answer them in his column. You can also read this article on-line at http://www.myklin.com/.
Wow! That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of money changing hands, too. How you get paid on Ebay has been a driving force of PayPal’s growth as well. Ebay owns PayPal and made the company the preferred way to pay for your purchases or collect your payment when the selling is done.
It hasn’t been difficult to get a personal PayPal account. You answer a few questions, provide them with a bank account and credit card, and you’re ready to move money around the world.
Ebay has even made it easy to show your acceptance of PayPal in your listings. There are numerous seals and banners you can display to let people know you’re ready to take their money.
So what’s the change that will affect you? If you will accept PayPal payments for your Ebay goods, you must now be willing to accept all PayPal payments including credit cards. Personal PayPal accounts cannot accept credit cards. To accept credit card payments you must upgrade your account to one of the premium services (Premier or Merchant).
Upgrading your account won’t cost you any money but when you accept payments you will now pay some fees. Generally, the fees are .30 plus 2.9% of the transaction. If you sell something for $50 your fees would be $1.75. That amount is subtracted from the transaction when PayPal transfers the funds to your account.
What this means to you will depend on how much you use Ebay. If you just buy there you may see some price increases from the sellers who look to maintain their profit margins. If you are an Ebay seller you may need to rethink your pricing structure to capture your increased costs. This policy goes into effect August 19, 2005.
So why would Ebay require you to accept credit cards? They say it’s to level the playing field and reduce buyer confusion. If you’re going to state that PayPal is an acceptable method of payment you must accept all forms of PayPal payments.
If you don’t accept PayPal you will not be required to accept credit cards. Many people who sell there only accept checks. It’s much slower than using PayPal and you don’t have the protections PayPal and Ebay offer. I’ve had to use Square Trade and PayPal’s buyer protection services to get money back from fraudulent sellers. It took a couple of weeks but I didn’t have to hunt the people down myself.
You can find more information about this new policy in the 7-15-05 “Updated Policy for PayPal Payments on eBay”.
Ebay is also discontinuing the Ebay Anything Points® program in the USA. Starting 8-15-05 you will not be able to use these in your listings and they will phase out completely by 2-28-06. If you’ve got some Points you need to use them soon.
Mike Myklin is an author, a lecturer, and an e-commerce owner. If you have questions about the Internet and e-commerce, you can send them to him and he will try to answer them in his column. You can also read this article on-line at http://www.myklin.com/.
posted by Mike Myklin at 1:30 PM
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