Last week’s eBay Seller Update held an interesting proposition for Australian sellers – share your listing on social media and in exchange receive lower fees on sales resulting from your social sharing activity.
From late April, if you share your eBay listings on social media via eBay Australia social sharing buttons, for a limited time, eligible sellers will pay a flat 2.75% category percentage fee (+ $0.33 fixed order fee) if someone clicks the link from the shared post and purchases an item within 30 days of clicking the link and during the promotion period. The purchase doesn’t need to be the item you shared – it can be any item from your store.
This is interesting as the reason that sellers choose to sell on eBay and pay fees (which in Australia with a store can range from 6.2% to 11.9%) is because eBay provides an almost unlimited flow of buyers ready to purchase your products. Basically, you’re paying eBay to do the work of finding customers for you. If you have your own website then you don’t pay final value fees but you have to invest to drive traffic and find your own customers so why would you do this work for eBay when you’re paying them to do it? Well perhaps a fee reduction to 2.75% would be incentive enough to drive social sharing behaviour?
Billed as a limited time promotion, it will be interesting to see how successful this is and whether it comes to the largest eBay sites such as the UK, US and Germany in the future.
How does eBay social sharing work?
- Share your listings by clicking on the ‘Share’ or ‘Share this item’ button from the seller hub active listings page, storefront, view item, coded coupon success page and more
- Items can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, WhatsApp and by Email
- You can also copy the link from the social sharing buttons
- Add an engaging caption and post your listing to social media
- Reach more buyers who might not shop on eBay yet
- Save on your fees. For a limited time, eligible sellers will only be charged a 2.75% category percentage fee (+ $0.33 fixed order fee). Buyers must buy an item from the seller’s store using the shared link within 30 days of clicking the link and during the promotion period
