Are eBay’s New PowerSeller Requirements Cheapening PowerSeller Status?
November 21, 2007Recently, eBay announced that they are changing the requirements to be eligible to take part in the PowerSeller Program. The program has been expanded to include the following:
- High volume “seasonal” sellers who make most of their money during the holidays.
- Sellers who sell a high volume of products with a low average sales price.
In layman’s terms, this means that you no longer have to meet the minimum three-month PowerSeller requirement of $1000 average sales per month. There is now a new “Annual Requirement” of $12,000 dollars or 1200 items in the past 12 months. And there is also a new “items sold” minimum of 100 items per month (no minimum dollar value) to be eligible under the monthly requirements.
However, in the name of fairness, they are requiring the PowerSellers sliding in under the new “Annual Requirement” to sell at least 2 items per month for the last 12 months. Therefore, you do have to be continually selling items on eBay in order to be an “Annual” PowerSeller.
What does all of this mean? We will discuss the easiest change first.
High volume “seasonal” sellers who make most of their money during the holidays
This requirement kind of makes sense. Let’s say that you are selling items that really fly off the shelves during the last few months of the year – during the Christmas buying season. Maybe these items pertain specifically to the Christmas holiday (or the other holidays that come about at the end of the year). Nevertheless, you make the vast majority of your money in a very small amount of time.
eBay is requiring you to sell at least $12,000 on an annual basis. This is no different than the existing Bronze PowerSeller requirement of averaging $1000 in sales each month. No different except that you are making all of your sales in a compressed time frame.
It is hard to argue with eBay’s logic on this one. $12,000 per year is $12,000 per year. Slice it whatever way you want. And eBay makes sure that you sell items throughout the year by having the 2 items sold per month requirement.
Okay, we don’t have a beef with the first new PowerSeller requirement. However, the second one is a different story.
Sellers who sell a high volume of products with a low average sales price
All you have to do to meet the requirements of Bronze PowerSeller is to sell 100 items on a monthly basis, or 1200 items on an annual basis. There is no minimum dollar amount that goes along with this volume.
Let’s put some hypothetical dollar figures to this new “volume” requirement. Let’s say you sell very inexpensive widgets that have an average selling price of $2. You sell your 100 widgets per month and are now allowed into the PowerSeller program. Therefore, you are now an eBay PowerSeller with a monthly sales figure of only $200, rather than the previous requirement of $1000.
Or, how about this scenario: Let’s say you are one of the eBay scammers that sells some sort of digital download for the princely sum of a penny ($0.01). You do this so that you can quickly build up your feedback before you go and prey on unsuspecting eBay buyers. Now you can add PowerSeller to your resume for the handsome amount of $1 per month.
Heck, if sales are really good, you can become a Titanium PowerSeller by selling only $150 per month. To reach this level, all you need to do is sell 15,000 of your digital downloads per month. Okay, this probably isn’t going to happen, but it could. Do you really want a scam artist reaching the top level PowerSeller status? It could happen!
Do these new PowerSeller requirements make sense? Suddenly, the PowerSeller program is now open to a far larger pool of eBay sellers. Does this marginalize the PowerSeller program any?
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The new high volume seller qualifications may be a blow to the egos of some sellers, but I don’t think it will have any significant impact on sales for most sellers.
Because many experienced sellers make a big thing of PowerSeller status, too many new sellers focus on becoming PowerSellers when they should be focused on making decent profits instead. It’s a well known fact that the two are not synonymous.
Neither do I believe, contrary to what eBay may say, that most buyers pay much attention to it. Many probably don’t even know what the icon represents.
I know several extremely successful sellers who choose not to display the PowerSeller icon because they feel it can actually be detrimental to sales rather than advantageous.
Just my two cents.
By the way, nice looking blog.
Thanks for the compliment about our blog, Gary! We love how it looks!
Interesting comments about PowerSellers. You are probably correct in stating that it is made out to be a bigger deal than it really is. Maybe it is just one of those carrots that eBay dangles in front of you to make you feel like you are a special part of the eBay community? Or does it really make a difference in the eyes of a prospective buyer?
We wonder if any seller has done a comparison of monthly sales with the PowerSeller logo showing vs. not showing. We didn’t realize that you could turn off the PowerSeller logo if you wanted to. Can’t know everything about eBay, now can you? We constantly are learning new things, which is good!
At first glace we were pleasnatly suprised by the change in policy. All of our sales happen over a 4-6 month period annually. Despite having 6 figure sales volume annually, we will still lose our powerseller ranking because we do not sell 2 products per month in the off months.
I have to agree with Gary, I believe the Powerseller Proram is fairly worthless. There are no tangible benefits for the Sellers, and most buyers don’t factor it in at all. I believe Buyers would rank 5-10 other factros above powerseller rating, including price, shipping cost, feedback score, feedback percentage positive, comments, appearance of your listing, etc.
Jessica, it sounds like you guys are a prime candidate to benefit from the new PowerSeller qualifications. Too bad about the part where you will still loose your PowerSeller qualifications because you will not be selling the 2 products per month in your off months. Maybe you can sell something totally unrelated in these off months, just to get your 2 sales a month. We have found that it really doesn’t matter what you sell on eBay, as long as the price is right.
Which brings us to your other point about other factors ranking higher in a buyers mind, then PowerSeller. We could not agree with you more about price being at the top of the list. We have found, time and time again, that eBay buyers shop strictly based on the price of the item. The vast majority of the time, they will buy from someone with the lowest price, even if their listing is horrible and their feedback has seen better days.
eBay is a wonderful beast, isn’t it?
In reposne to this does not affect buyers or sellers with the powersellers criteria:
This does affect buyers - Buyers are more likely to bid on more items if there are more “powersellers”. This in the end means more $$$ flow for eBay. Once buyers are “powersellers” they are acknowledged. Everyone needs to be noticed. This is the “serious” umphh, that sellers need to be commited. They are now seen as a respectable seller.
Sellers are affected also - Now there is more competition for respected sellers. Because now, there are more respected sellers. This means more drive for sellers and more $$$ for ebay. More competition = more powersellers and you get the point.
Why this is bad: Buyers are now buying from penny dealers as stated above from soomeone else. Sells are not really earned, they are bought from other people that want to “pad” their feedback. If you could buy a 1 positive feedback for a penny would you? Sure…
Why it is good: eBay profits. Many more sellers that are now capable of saying “I am a powerseller” and wanting to get in the mix.
Feel free to reply,
KR
Kirk,
Excellent points!
We also feel that the PowerSeller badge brings a certain level of credibility to a seller.
The 1 cent feedback issue is one that eBay really needs to address. This is really one way that eBay scammers quickly build credibility (by building their feedback ratings) and all legitimate eBay sellers lose in the end when eBay gets a bad reputation.
Unfortunately, eBay’s success brings the seedy element that wants to take advantage of unsuspecting buyers. Will this ever be totally eliminated from eBay? Probably not. Is there more that eBay can do to combat these issues? Most likely.
Many times we sellers don’t know why someone buys elsewhere, but sometimes they share the feedback.
We have had many people write back thanking us, and letting us know they found a similar product (tickets are specific, so there is never an exact match) for less money.
Sometimes the price difference is as much as $50, which is a lot of money. But what’s $50 when you are buying 10 tickets and flying in form a nother city for a game? To save 6 bucks a tickets and buy from someone with questionable feedback, or limited selling history.
Seems short sighted to me.
In my genre, it is so easy to counterfeit tickets. I can’t see making a decision based on price. But eBay is its own world, isnt it?!?!