eBay France will now give away Gallery for free – when you pay for listings. eBay, unlike Trade Me, charges a listing price, which varies by the size of the reserve. eBay France have now boosted that price, but every auction gets a picture in their search results for free.
Interestingly eBay.fr has also dropped the listing fee from €0.35 to €0.20 for auctions listed at €1 or less.
Perhaps they are learning something from Trade Me after all.
Lance Wiggs 
Interesting move there for France.
I was at a presentation this morning given by Kip Knight (eBay VP of Marketing and Brand Management). The view in eBay US is that if they drop the listing fee there, it potentially downgrades the sites “brand value” as it encourages a flood of listings for crap products(ie. the 12yo selling garage junk), which in turn crowds out the more quality listings.
I guess a user could always apply a search filter, but the US view is that they would rather leave that market to the other Auction sites.
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Interesting Shaneo
eBay’s brand value is so over pumped with big sellers that they could do well to extend their reach to everybody. Sellers also buy, and everyone loves to find a bargain.
eBay would know that secondary auction sites have virtually zero market share as it is a winner take all game.
eBay did miss out on the whole Craigslist thing, which, despite eBay managing to grab a shareholding, is listing tons of classifieds from which eBay gets no revenue. One could argue that their entry fees were part of them missing this market. That and lousy localisation.
Trade Me has taken the Craigslist market in NZ as they are better at local-local selling, they have flatmates, motors, property and jobs, and the entry price is zero for auction items. All in all TM’s numbers just stack up better than eBays on a population basis.
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