A few years ago I had gotten pretty lazy about keeping up with the official eBay fees and policies.  It got so bad that I even closed my eBay store after letting it whittle down to less than 400 items.  However, I turned things around once I started running the numbers and I hope if you are a frequent eBay user then understanding what the folks in San Jose (eBay HQ) are thinking will help you.

So how will the new policies that go into effect May 1 look if you are a buyer on eBay.  Well one of the things that they are going to incentivize is more auctions that have a reasonable starting price.  I'm not suggesting gone will be the days when some sellers auction off the same 1,000 listings they've had for years - but eBay is going to tempt sellers to list auctions that will actually result in a sale.

The intriguing thing about this update is that it actually gives lots of attention to the most unique aspect of eBay - the live auction.  In this update eBay seems to realize that is what makes them unique from Amazon their 400 pound rival in eCommerce.  So to make the auctions really special they want to discourage running auctions that really would be better off as straight fixed priced items.