New Ebay Selling Limits May Change Ebay Forever

NEW SELLING LIMITS
October 2010, eBay has changed it's policy once again, this time it seems quite serious! The Internet is alive with reports on blogs and forums about these new eBay selling limits. It is not yet clear what effect this will have and exactly which sellers this will affect. If you read the eBay website it seems to suggest that these new selling limits should only affect sellers with new accounts with a selling history of less than 90 days. If you read the forums and blogs you will see stories from sellers who have been selling on eBay for the past 5-10 years and have thousands of positive feedback that are saying now eBay has put limits on the amount of items they can sell in a 30 day period. For people who make a living selling items on eBay, this policy has the potential to be devastating. With this new policy it will make it extremely difficult for new sellers to start a profitable eBay business. New sellers will be limited to 10 sales per 30 day period, until they establish a good selling history. It will take an awful long time to establish a selling history when you can only sell 10 items per month. This will certainly discourage many people from marketing their products on eBay, as it might take months or even years to establish enough selling history to make a decent living.

WHAT ARE THE LIMITS?
New sellers are now limited to 10 items sold per 30 day period. The total amount of combined items sold and items listed can not exceed 10 items. Other sellers can expect a limit of 100 items sold per 30 day period. It is not clear exactly which sellers will be affected by these limits, but so far there are many reports from sellers in Southeast Asia that their accounts have been subjected to these limits. There are also reports from sellers in Europe and USA who have also been affected by this. Apparently these limits will increase once the seller has established a better selling history, however it may be impossible for sellers to achieve the ratings that eBay demands. Sellers from Asia have a severe disadvantage due to the detailed seller ratings. Sellers are given ratings for communication, item as described, shipping time and shipping charges. The problem is, when buyers buy items from overseas, they will never leave a good rating for shipping time and shipping charges because it will cost more and take longer than it would if they bought items from American sellers. It is actually possible to have your eBay account restricted or even suspended for poor customer satisfaction, even when you have 100% positive feedback.

HOW WILL THIS AFFECT EBAY?
These new policies could spell then end for a lot of sellers, especially Asian sellers. The sellers most likely to be affected are the sellers who sell lower cost items, replica items and counterfeit items.If these sellers are forced off eBay, you can expect the prices of many popular items to increase dramatically. The days of the amazing deals on eBay might have come to an end. It will no longer be possible for sellers to sell these low cost items in large enough quantity to make it worthwhile. The restrictions on the numbers of items sellers can sell, directly affect the amount of revenue eBay gets from final value fees. I am guessing that eBay stock price will drop and the prices of eBay items will increase to the point where there is no value shopping on eBay.

WHAT WILL EBAY ACHIEVE?
Well it is not clear what they hope to achieve with this new policy, many people think they are shooting themselves in the foot. This might get rid of most of the scammers on eBay, unfortunately for every scammer that is removed, there will probably be 5-10 legit sellers that are also forced out. They clearly must realize that this is going to cost them money in the short term, and it will also present new opportunity for their competition. The have never really had any competition, but this might just open the door for a real competitor. There is a huge demand for low cost replica and counterfeit items, and if people can no longer find these items on eBay, they will look elsewhere. There are plenty of websites selling these items, but the problem is that buyers have been more comfortable purchasing these items on eBay, well if these items are no longer affordable on eBay,they will look elsewhere. This might just be an opportunity for sellers to market their product on their own websites.

Read about this policy at the eBay policy page - click here