The significant changes that eBay
announced last week have merchants abuzz as they analyze and react to the impact
that the restructured fees, modification of the search and feedback functions,
and other changes will have on their sales and profits.

Of particular interest have been the proposed changes to fees, which involve
lowering the cost of listing items and increasing the commission eBay gets when
products are sold. There has also been much discussion in blogs and discussion
forums of eBay's plan to forbid sellers from leaving negative feedback for buyers.

While merchants are split on the potential benefits and disadvantages of the
changes, there seems to be a general consensus that, whether one supports them
or not, the changes represent a major attempt on eBay's part to alter the way
that the marketplace works.

"It's clear eBay is taking it really seriously that they have to improve
the buyer experience, and they're laying the groundwork for getting aggressive
about doing it," said Jonathan Garriss, executive director of the Professional
eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA), a group of large sellers that has often been highly
critical of eBay.

Garriss, also CEO of Gotham
City Online, an apparel store on eBay that also has its
own site, hopes that the proposed changes will be a first step of others
that eBay will take to fix what PESA considers key problems with the marketplace,
such as making the buyer experience more convenient and streamlined.

To that end, Garriss is encouraged by the proposed incentives to reward merchants
who provide superior customer service by giving all qualifying merchants preferred
placement in search engine results and offering PowerSellers additional fee
discounts based on their customer ratings.

"We don't want to lose sight of the health of the marketplace, and the
changes eBay is making are absolutely in the right direction," Garriss
said in a phone interview.

While he supports the concept of lowering insertion fees and shifting them
to the commission, he recognizes that, as proposed, the fee restructuring will
greatly hurt some merchants, particularly, in his view, those that sell lower-priced
items in high volume via auctions. Garriss hopes that eBay will take this into
consideration and possibly adjust the fee changes before rolling them out in
a few weeks in the U.S.

Lisa Witt, an eBay PowerSeller for eight years, says the fee changes will not
have much of an impact on her bottom line. A seller of fine jewelry, Witt says
the listing fees will remain too high even under the new fee structure.

"They need to dramatically change the fee structure if they expect seller
growth on the site. eBay should have a flat

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