written by Steve Grossberg
Anyone who lowers shipping in my own opinion, is foolish. Look at your own economics. Remember if you obtain the 4.8 Detailed Seller Rating on all 4 you get back 15% of your FVF. Look at me for example.
Items listed 40,000
Items Sold = 8,000
ASP = $14
So $14 x 1.23 FVF x 8000 items = $9800 FVF paid
$9800 FVF paid x 15% discount = $1470
$1470 savings divided by 8000 items = 19 cents per item
So in essence I have to say to myself will a 19 cent reduction in my shipping and handling move my DSR from 4.4 to 4.8? The answer is hell no it will not. Even if it did the ebay discount is not guaranteed as it is a 30 day rolling average and some months I may get it and some not.
However I could simply raise my shipping and handling by 25 cents and guarantee my only bonus better then the bonus ebay will pay out. Also remember this will not affect you in search unless DSR is 4.2 or lower. So ebay is not providing enough incentives to sellers here and putting the entire burden of fixing the problem on sellers. So in summary I would think most sellers would be best doing the math as I showed above for their own sales and raising your shipping and handling to provide you the same bonus or better then the 4.8 would have got you.
So ebay sellers, please look at your own numbers!
Excellent post, Steve! Those numbers show just how irrelevant that ‘discount’ is, as far as it being anything like a true Carrot to motivate sellers. It makes a person wonder if ebay thinks that everyone is stupid – or that they are the only ones that can ‘crunch the numbers’.
Applying your numbers to a seller of, say, DVD’s, that seller *might* consider the option of lowering their shipping by 19-cents, because their shipping cost is initially low. (it still isn’t feasable – your numbers are Spot On)
Apply that potential 19-cents to a seller of large Dolls that cost between $8-14 to ship (yes, as much as the doll’s cost). The 19-cents becomes absurd, at that point. This is the scenario presented by the majority of