As we announced back in February, as part of the eBay UK Spring Seller release, one of the changes coming on June 1st will be changes to the Selling Manager Pro offering. There was a lot to digest in the various updates and we wrote a number of posts at the time and you can find a summary of things that were announced here.
Coming at the start of next month, Selling Manager Pro will only be available to merchants who have signed up for an eBay Shop. If you have an Anchor or Featured eBay Shop, it will be free as part of the package. Basic Shop users will have to pay the current fee of £4.99. It won’t be available to those who don’t have a shop.
So if you don’t have a shop and use SMP, you have to make some decisions. Obviously, if you have a Featured or Anchor Shop, and use Selling Manager Pro, then you have nothing to worry about. Even as a Basic Shop user it’s no change. Your service will be unimpeded and the costs the same. Here are some questions to ask otherwise:
How valuable do you find Selling Manager Pro?
It’s a handy helper for any seller of a decent scale. It can help you revise multiple active, scheduled or draft listings and also relist unsold items. You can print postage labels for up to 200 listings at a time and also leave Feedback for up to 200 buyers in one go using saved comments. It’s a useful time and effort saver for sure but maybe not vital for everyone.
And is Selling Manager Pro worth the price of an eBay Shop?
A basic eBay Shop, the lowest tier of membership, costs £25 and Selling Manager Pro is another £4.99. Depending on the value you get from SMP, it’s likely not a price that’s hard to justify. And don’t forget you get a stack of other things when you open a Shop. Again, you need to determine what’s best for you based on your activities.
This move from eBay is an attempt to give shop subscribers more value for money and make subscribing more attractive to merchants. But it is also slightly cross-making that they are removing access to other users who might very legitimately utilise SMP but don’t require an eBay Shop presence.
But there is also an nudge attempt here to create greater clarity of the seller journey. What eBay’s essentially saying is that when you need SMP then you also need a shop.
If you need to know about whats on offer from eBay Shops you can check out the eBay information page here.
3 Responses
What a silly idea.
All eBay keep doing is requiring eBay sellers to jump through hoops on speed of dispatch, delivery times etc and set the standards bar by everything the big companies can do with their infinite resources and influence on their wholesale purchase prices and postal rates plus large IT departments.
So now eBay take away the tools from the small sellers that help with that.
Yet another nail in the coffin of small sellers on eBay of the ever increasing unlevel playing field.
i use Magento and m2epro i can do all what eBay seller manager dos plus a lot more i have auto print set up via google cloud order come in from ebay get print straight out even tell me how i make per item after cost so i know my profit on every item sold have auto feedback as well list templates the only think i cant get it to do is replay to eBay customers