Bambi and eBay

She's now officially up at auction, and this is one of those VERY rare occasions I opted for eBay. I had sworn off eBay quite some time ago, since its so full of fraud and the fees are just ridiculous. But, since I didn't know how to price this particular piece, I figured eBay would declare the fair market value. However... I didn't realize though how MUCH the fee structure changed until after I listed her.

You can see it here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html

They seem to be catering not to the sellers who have a few odds and ends they want to sell, or people who have something high-end to sell... but instead are catering to the Walmart/discount-type sellers who are buy in bulk to resell at lower-than-retail prices. This makes me sad, since it is another shining example of how our economy and culture is changing from mom-and-pop stores to favoring the huge buy-in-bulk giants. We've gone from a people who believed that all things good are worth waiting for to a people who only care about instanteous gratification. Quality and uniqueness all to often becomes secondary to a low price and having it now.

Sociology has always intregued me (it was actually my minor in college). One book in particular, called "The McDonaldization of Society" really outlines this trend and offers a really keen insight on it going on in our world right now. It was written by George Ritzer, and is a pretty interesting read if you've ever gotten frustrated with how there is a McDonalds or Starbucks around every corner. You can find it at Borders:
http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=1412954304

Back to eBay... the overall greed of eBay/Paypal is what really turns me off to the whole system. Here is what I found out when I actually did out the math. It cost me $7 to list that foal. That included the ad being bold and also a reserve price ($3). I also found out the charge for the reserve price no longer goes away if the reserve is hit. Hmm.

The new fee structure also says that eBay gets 8.75% of the first $25 (which is basically $2.15... I don't know why they don't just say that) and then 3.5% of the remaining final value. Ok. So lets say that the foal sells for the current bid amount, which is $200. So, according to this fee structure, I would have to pay eBay $2.15 + $6.13 = $8.28. PLUS the initial $7. So the total fees for listing the foal are $15.28. This is 7.6% of the total value of the sale. Then couple that with fees from Paypal (another lovely eBay company) which are 3.5%... and between the two of them, they've eaten into over 11% of your sale. YIKES!!!

Of course, by the time I actually did this out she was already listed. I will not be using eBay in the future, and I really encourage other artists to do the same. I will probably start using Auction Barn... if more artists use it, it will become THE place to find all the newest and hottest pieces, then it will enjoy huge popularity... and that of course benefits the whole hobby. But, as a hobby we need to make that effort. Of course its going to take a while to get it really rolling, but it has the potential to be the answer to the exorbitant fees that eBay whacks us with. Its kind of a Catch 22 (also a great book)-- no one wants to use it until it becomes popular... but it won't become popular if no one uses it. The more artists choose to use Auction Barn, the faster Auction Barn will gain popularity. So, the next time I need to auction something off, I will list it there.