First of all, it's a no brainer. When you give something away, you lose money. Free shipping is a fad right now which eBay is promoting. One day the fad will end. I have no confidence that eBay understands that shipping costs money, and somebody has to pay for it, even if it's offered as "free." From the way they're promoting it, it sounds like they believe if you offer free shipping, an invisible, magical shipping elf will absorb the cost and all will be good. I think that's their basis for the useless, slap-in-the-face 50-cent discount for sellers who offer free shipping.

However, the truth is that there is no invisible, magical shipping elf to absorb costs for us when we offer free shipping. Somebody has to pay. And guess who that is? The seller. Of course there are several arguments. Can't we just build the cost of shipping into the item price? Won't buyers bid more if they don't have to pay shipping? I've heard that kind of garbage before, and let me tell you it belongs in the land fill.

My experience is if buyers know they don't have to pay shipping, they figure they're getting an even better deal if they in fact bid the same as they would have if they paid for shipping. That's how some of my items have ended, with buyers getting the thing at regular cost and not paying shipping. So the argument that buyers will bid higher to build the cost of shipping into the final price is a nice theory, but I haven't seen it work. Some sellers have, but you better be comfortable with the risk of losing your A if you want to play that way. I'm not talking about $2 or $4 shipping costs, I'm saying I've lost $15-$20 clean out. If that's eBay's idea of a great promotion, screw them.

So now let's say we build the cost of shipping into the item. It will be instantly obvious to bidders that they are indeed paying for shipping included in the item price, so that's really going back to square one. They know shipping is built in, so they decide whether they can accept that or not. The trouble with this little idea is that you are forced to guess how much you will build into the item price because you have no idea what the cost of shipping will be if you're not offering it, or how high the bidding will go if you have an auction. You will only know once the sale is complete, at which time it's too late to adjust the invoice. eBay wants us guessing and gambling with our money, which is even harder earned and more valuable in this tightening economy. They want us to take that risk and gamble with our money, but if it were their money would they be so ready to risk it on free shipping? What if I build $5 into the item price, but some guy in Alaska or Hawaii wins it, and it costs me $20 to ship there? I've been through that before, and I learned the lesson: when you offer free shipping, the winning bidder is usually going to be the guy who stands to gain the most from it, costing you a lot of money.

I think eBay is still trying to fool people into believing an invisible, magical elf will absorb shipping costs for them if only they offer free shipping and the free-incentive 50-cent subtitle--or that somehow, some way, it simply must work because it's free, and whatever eBay does is best for everybody. Well, let me tell you the truth. There is no magical shipping elf. Buyer's don't always pay more for an item if they know shipping is free, and building the cost of shipping into the item doesn't always lead to a sale, and it doesn't always work out for the seller. In fact, I have had no success whatsoever with free or reduced shipping. I've tried it several times on a variety of items and did nothing but lose my butt. You may say maybe I haven't tried it enough. But how much more money am I going to have to lose to prove that it doesn't work for me? If eBay wants to promote this free shipping fad, that's fine. But target it to the sellers who are using it and keep in mind that it doesn't work for many of us, so be sure to work with those of us as well.

If eBay really wants free shipping to be the next big thing, it better figure out how to keep it from cutting into sellers' profits. It better figure out how to offer some serious listing and shipping discounts, FVF credits, and other fee reductions just for starters. If eBay believes so much in free shipping, why doesn't it pay for our shipping? And by the way, the 50-cent discount eBay's offering for sellers who offer free shipping is at best a joke that isn't making me laugh. They should be offering me that discount on a regular basis just for the business I've given them--that we've all given eBay. It far from suffices as a meaningful incentive and does nothing to make me want to offer free shipping. Unless eBay is willing to step up to the plate and put some meat behind this free shipping fad and risk a little of itself, why should sellers gamble with their hard earned money to support it?

Now, if sellers offer me free shipping, that's great. Usually I pay more for the item so nothing is free. In the case that it actually is free, well congratulations to them for figuring out how to make money with that. I can't. So try to understand how I feel with eBay's big push for this, trying to cram another thing down my throat that isn't going to help me. What really worries me is that one day free shipping will be mandatory, and eBay won't help us. I don't put anything past eBay. It is capable of all stupidity. We've all come to the harsh realization recently that eBay can do whatever it wants, no matter how deeply it hurts its customers, or how intensely they hate it.

Hey, everyone in Congress, PASS THE BAILOUT BILL FRIDAY! Don't you care about all the people who's IRAs, savings, jobs, businesses and investments that are going to turn into CRAP if you don't! I'm one of them. Why do we need tax breaks for children's archery bow manufacturers? Forget about all the special interest crap or whatever it is that you don't like about the bill. I don't think everybody likes everything about the bill. Who cares? We just need it. Pass the bill now!

This bill should have been passed last week. Quit all of your bickering and get the thing into law NOW!

NOW!

Vote YES Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello, eBay and fellow readers. Let me first make this clear that I openly invite eBay to go back and read all of my blog postings from the beginning. Nothing but good tips there. I don't want to ever hear eBay said I didn't speak my mind before changes were made. I've spoken before changes, and I've spoken after changes. And I'll speak as long as I'm a member of eBay. I have the solution that will cure eBay's financial troubles as well as restore the vigor to both buying and selling.

It's simple. Give the power back to the people. Reduce mandatory selling standards. Reduce power perks for power sellers and truly level the playing field. Let sellers decide how they want to run their businesses, not you. Give us the power to sell. Make listings free and hit us when we actually make a sale. Give us the power to control our accounts. Maybe we don't want to participate in the feedback system. Give us the power to turn it off and on. Give us the power to do what we want with the listing space that we do pay for. Give us the power to tell the real truth. When a buyer rips us off, let us tell the world. Let us focus on getting bids, not meeting your requirements.

I propose a Seller's Bill of Rights. eBay sellers should have the following rights:

• The right to fair listing placement, regardless of how we've performed or how much money we've shoveled into eBays coffers. Openness is one of the eBay Community Values, yet I see a system that's closing tighter and tighter, so that soon all but the most elite sellers will be able to trade profitably.
• The right to equal perks. An individual's financial status should not determine rights or privileges. Great sellers should be rewarded with perks regardless of how much money they shovel into eBay's bank account. Give the rewards to all of us. All great sellers work hard, but not all great sellers are PowerSellers, and not all great sellers will be PowerSellers. As far as equality goes, give us a truly equal voice in feedback. Equality is one of the eBay Community Values, yet I don't see it at work anymore.
• The right to work for ourselves. eBay's standards have choked out the average seller's ability to have any fun selling. Not only are the standards different, they're jacked way up, so that unless we enslave ourselves to them, we have no chance of getting any rewards or recognition. Sellers should have the right to work on their own business models and let the customer's feedback be the sole judge of their performance, not eBay.
• The right to accept any payment method we choose.
• The right to be heard (not just to speak) regarding things that affect us. We can all speak our minds, but to be heard by eBay is still just a pie in the sky dream. What are the chances anyone from eBay will read this? And whether I send a suggestion through the postal service or through eBay's system, all I get is a canned response saying my suggestion will go nowhere. That's the opposite of hearing.
• The right to be protected 100% from unscrupulous buyers.
• The right to have fun.
• Insert your right here. What rights do you want that eBay isn't giving you? Let's work together to come up with a seller's bill of rights.

I have 100% feedback. But I'm still fighting for change because I see eBay going downhill towards ruin in the next 5-10 years if it doesn't seriously evaluate some real improvements. I think all of us largely agree eBay's just not as good as it used to be. And by that I mean fun, easy, and profitable. It's actually gotten worse, and no matter what eBay says, there's no guarantee all these changes will turn things around. Nobody can say for sure, but I believe it's more likely eBay will be suffering terribly in terms of profit, membership, and sentiment in the next 5 years if things don't pick up. I don't want to see that. I want to see eBay get back on track.

I have to make one more comment about the free shipping incentive because it's such a joke. eBay, if you want to give us a real incentive for free shipping, then give us one. Don't give us half an incentive or a slap in the face incentive. Give us a free listing. Give us free FVFs. Pay for our shipping. Pay for a package of features that add up to something, instead of a measly 50-cent subtitle.

Fifty cents is a joke, and it's not even in cash. I'm sure some people will take it but I won't. The purpose of us selling at the end of the day is to make profit. If all of our customers are happy, but we've lost all our money, guess what we're out of business anyway. I just sold a Wii Fit for $135 and it cost $20 to ship, which the customer happily paid for. You expect me to forfeit that $20, which is actual cost, in order to receive a 50-cent subtitle on a fixed price item? This incentive is so bad, I could write an entire Jay Leno monologue about it. Stop slapping us in the face for everything that we do and start giving us some actual rewards.

A lot of changes you do, eBay, it feels like you're just laughing at me from the sidelines, pointing at me and making jokes about all the hard work I do while you set back and come up with the next stupid rule or standard, or reward just to rub a little more salt in my wounds. I know it looks like free shipping is the cat's tail right now, but it's neither original nor workable for everybody. I don't have time to go into the all the details but I just want to inform you that it does cost actual money to ship something. I can't just drop it off at the post office or hand it to the carrier without paying some sort of postage. That postage is called "cost." And it will always be there. So asking me to do it for free in exchange for 50 cents is ridiculous. Give me something real.

For those of you who have a Nintendo Wii, a new AP article was posted today regarding sellers being upset with eBay changes. It's funny how the free press seems to hit the nail on the head when it comes to the reality of eBay, while eBay itself still has its nose stuck up in its hallucination that all is great, and eBay is just a big happy cloud of success for all involved.

The basics are this: the average seller is hurting more now than ever; it's harder to be a seller on eBay now than ever; it's harder to make a profit on eBay than ever; there's less personal freedom on eBay now than there ever has been, and that's always been a huge draw to sellers coming here; and there's more change this year than probably the in company's entire history.

SOME of the things are no brainers that eBay should have implemented a couple years ago, like limits on shipping and handling, lower listing fees (should be free, IMO). But others continue to baffle all but eBay--standards so tight, the keys are popping off my keyboard; so many freaking rewards for the biggest sellers, I wonder why I'm even here. Do my sales matter? And even further tightening of ratings. Soon all but the highest elite sellers will be vanquished from the eBay marketplace.

As the man in the article said, the only thing keeping me on eBay is the inconvenience of leaving.

Think about that statement. How many sellers now share that sentiment? Is that really good enough for eBay? I'd hate to think so. To think that the only thing keeping us great sellers here is nothing but the inconvenience of leaving.

But I'm afraid that's pretty much it. I'd leap to another site at the drop of a hat if there were one that got it right. Unfortunately, eBay's the best, but that doesn't mean it has its act together. Things are declining all around. Its stock has declined. New accounts are steadying out. Now, in the stock market, these things would be a sign of a downturn rather than an upturn. Yet eBay keeps its head in the clouds, looking at everything but the reality that its changes stink higher than its nose is pointed.

You know what? People never made eBay what it was. I'm beginning to think it was the diversity and character of the items themselves. Did the first great auctions have perfect sellers behind them, or fantastic items? I don't think who you were was as important on eBay 10 years ago as the item you were selling. Was it hot? Was it rare? Was it in demand? Now there's so much hoopla surrounding that, it all takes away from the core experience: bidding on great items.

Talk about a level playing field. Everyone had pretty much the same shot 10 years ago as far as listing placement. But now there are rewards for people who achieve a level most of us will never see, rewards for the super elite. Double discounts? Give me a break. I mean literally, give me an actual break on something as a seller. Might as well buy a rich person another Lamborghini. A nice little bonus for them, meaningless for the rest of us hard working great sellers. All of those bonuses are fine for the people who want to devote their lives to achieving it, but for those of us who just want to be great sellers, small as we are, pretty much the only think keeping us here is the inconvenience of leaving. I mean I really do have other things to do besides enslave myself to eBay in order to achieve the best ratings, discounts, listing placement, and all that other hoopla to finally earn eBay's approval. That's such a sad eBay, it makes me want to barf.

eBay, it's time to actually listen more to your customers (sellers).

The following is a letter I wrote to the eBay suggestion team:

I'd like to say selling on eBay hasn't been as fun since the new changes and boosted requirements. I have enough pressure in my daily life and I really don't need eBay's added pressure to perform in order to get even the most standard treatment and listing placements and star ratings. I now find I'm working for two people: eBay, and my regular boss. On eBay, I used to be working for myself, according to my own standards, which earned me 100% feedback and high ratings on their own. That was fun. But when you take away that fun, there's nothing else you can do to save profits. eBay's losses will take care of themselves, and the company and product will decline or stagnate until the fun is put back in. So many changes have been made and I couldn't even suggest where to begin, other than the dozens of blog postings I've already written on eBay and hundreds of community board posts. Maybe one day I'll experience the fun again, but every time I sell, the star ratings and seller standards hammer me back down to the point where I almost feel like giving up. The bar is too high. Just a thought from a small seller who's given eBay over $4,000 in sales.

P.S. to readers: I think now that eBay has satisfied its buyer-experience kick, it's time to rejuvenate the selling experience. The added requirements, standards, and hoopla it takes to be a good seller has deflated the seller experience in my view. It's time to bring the fun back, and that means letting us succeed according to our own goals and standards, and not having to answer to a market dictator. I want eBay to know that I'm the same great seller under these new standards as I was under the old standards (or lack thereof). Yet, because of where the bar is positioned, my listing placement is lowered, it's even harder for me to get discounts, getting good star ratings is ridiculously difficult, and the feedback system is really a messed up way to run a trading site.

I think the business model that works is obvious: sellers first, buyers second. Both should have a supreme experience, no doubt. But without happy sellers, there's no eBay at all. The buyers come for our stuff, and our stuff only. eBay provides none of our products. Buyers provide none of eBay's revenues. Every dime eBay (and its PayPal sibling) makes from its core product is taken directly as a commission from sellers' income and has nothing to do with buyers giving money to eBay. Sellers do so much work for eBay, we're practically employees. Selling for myself is fun, but selling for eBay is not, and that's what I feel like I'm doing. I think it's time we get some better treatment.

I hear Griff and the guys at the town halls say all the time that if the sellers stick with the changes, they'll win. But that's not what it's really about in my view. Maybe we'll win, but then again maybe we won't. Maybe eBay will become such a disgusting place to trade nobody will want anything to do with it. If eBay claims to know the future, I want them to deliver me the weekly winning lottery numbers before they're drawn. Nobody knows the future. I mean it's no secret eBay's rolling the dice with its new Coke approach, which I pray gets pulled out of the oven before it gets fully baked. It's about the principle of sellers already being great and asked to choke on changes that eBay's stuffing down their throats without asking first.

Trading now isn't as fun as it was last year. I'm more afraid than ever to make a sale. And that's bad business for all of us.

From a buyer's point of view, excessive shipping looks like a good deal. The item price is low, and the shipping is high, but in the end it adds up to an overall bargain in the buyer's eyes, so he makes the purchase. Buyers for the most part have no need to care if sellers are charging excessive shipping in order to circumvent fees, as long as they're getting a good deal. But it's good sellers who are hurt by this.

For example, tonight I found an auction for 10.5x16" padded envelopes. I was shopping for this exact type of item. I compared the cost on various sites. The going rate for a case of these envelopes was about $30 for 50. The seller had 75 envelopes going for $4.90, plus $25.95 shipping. Curiously, that adds up to about $30.85, approximately the going rate for those envelopes.

So let me illustrate. What the seller is doing is charging $4.90 on an item he knows is worth at least $30 by itself. But since he knows the item is worth $30, he can't just charge $4.90 and actual shipping costs. So he chooses to collect the rest of the item's value through shipping costs which are more than what he could possibly pay. In the end, he collects the item's full value through the low item price + excess shipping. But by listing the item at $4.90 and making up the rest in shipping fees, he circumvents (avoids) the listing fees and FVF fees on an item that would sell for $29 anywhere else and instead pays only fees on a $4.90 sale. So the seller gains a profit edge over other sellers because he's paying less fees but getting the same price for his item.

Now, I wouldn't care about this if we could all do it. But it's against eBay policy to circumvent fees through excessive shipping, so we can't all just do it. And I don't like it when another seller gains an unfair edge by violating policy, so I get upset and report it when I find it, and I pass the lesson on to you. Sellers like this hurt eBay. You can help make eBay a better place by avoiding these practices, not supporting them, and reporting them (through the reporting link on the bottom of the auction).

I want to believe in eBay's promise that if we stick with the crappy changes they've thrown at us sellers, we'll "win." But test after test, I find the changes just don't work. eBay says if we aren't getting high stars, we should simply change our practices. To what? I can't ship any cheaper than I already am. Can't. C-A-N-'-T. Cannot. So my stars for shipping charges aren't enough to get better listing placement. eBay doesn't have our backs on this. Their lousy requirement is holding me back. What's the answer when eBay's requirements beat us to a pulp and we can't fight back? Curl up into a ball and keep taking the blows?

Like I said, I know it's all supposed to be for the greater good, and the "appropriate" perspective is that only of Matt Halprin's, not our own. But again, the evidence that I come up with from my own trading experience is that some of the changes just don't work no matter what I do. These changes, the ones eBay keeps claiming will make sellers win if they stick it out, are not working for me. What's the answer?

Well, since eBay probably won't be answering, let me answer. The answer is if the system is the only factor in my reduced shipping charges stars, which it is, than the system needs to change, not me. I'm asking for your help eBay. You're the one who's leaving me hanging. My only choice is to sell somewhere else or stay here and continue to get lowered listing placement even though I'm providing the same fantastic auctions and services I always have. Your choice is similar. Either help people like me out by changing the system, or continue to hurt your good sellers by keeping the rule in place, thus lowering their listing placements. We both have choices. So I choose to stay here. What's yours?

I make this guarantee to you, eBay: the buyer who doesn't find my listing will find a listing from someone who cares less.