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From the Editor – May 10, 2020

EcommerceBytes Editor Ina Steiner
From the Editor - May 10, 2020

It was interesting to see how online marketplaces performed in the first quarter of 2020, since it reflects how sellers on their platform fared.

eBay’s US GMV was down 4% year-over-year in the first three months of the year, but it reported a surge in buyer demand in April that resulted in double-digit Marketplace volume growth.

Amazon grew North America sales 29% in Q1 and saw an increase in paid unit growth of 32% worldwide.

Etsy, a much smaller marketplace, grew GMS 16% in the first quarter, and it saw over 100% growth for the Etsy marketplace in April. (GMS grew 32% in Q1 including its Reverb musical instrument marketplace.)

With stagnant GMV, eBay has been counting on revenue from Promoted Listing ads and Managed Payments, and in mid-July, it will migrate more sellers into the program.

That’s no surprise to sellers, but what did come as a major surprise was learning of eBay’s plans to roll out a completely new fee structure. Last week, eBay revealed it is merging payment processing fees into Final Value (commission) fees beginning July 20th.

Check the article in today’s issue for more details about this radical change and how sellers who are impacted are reacting to the news.

Happy Mother’s Day, and thanks for reading.

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Ina Steiner
Ina Steiner
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.

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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.

One thought on “From the Editor – May 10, 2020”

  1. Those folks, are slipping up, they are adding in the fees for sales tax in their commissions, h’mm surprised they haven’t then added all the commissions and then add in again another commission for the total once again, and again and again, oh they are saving us money alright, lets also factor in promoted listing fees to gain visibility or else the algorithms won’t show our items, personally from my time within the system along with having to do free shipping and free returns to get added visibility is making it nothing but a money game for ebay on our dime. pretty soon they will take 90% of our sale, live on 10% our final value take home, interesting program to say the least

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