Here is a snip from Scot’s post:

The big question – in this battle who is hurt worse?  Google or
eBay.  I’m going to go with eBay, they are much more reliant on that
quality google traffic than Google is on eBay’s ad spend.  Sure, eBay
is a top advertiser, but other advertisers will ‘fill-in’ so the net
loss to Google is substantially lower than eBay probably anticipates…

…(ebay traffic starting June 13 drops by 20-40%)

For those of you who don’t know, I was once a high flying eBay PowerSeller.  I had a warehouse, (I guess I  have a warehouse since I still pay for it), 4 employees and one of the fastest growing small businesses in the State of Washington. Then eBay lost their mind.  While the site traffic was taking a 50% dip, they decided to more than double the fees over an 18 month time frame.

eBay can not afford to lose the traffic that Google adwords provides them so I suspect that this won’t last long.

It is likely no coincidence that on the same day, eBay reported a 14% decline in quarterly revenue.

eBay’s answer to the dip in revenue?

Raise Fees and stick it to the sellers who are already fed up with eBay’s virtual doubling of it’s fees over the last two years.

eBay President of North America, Bill Cobb had this to say:

I’m confident the actions we’re taking are the right thing to do for
the overall eBay Community. We’ll more effectively deliver on our
buyers’ needs and expectations. And for sellers, these changes will
ensure that eBay remains a differentiated and distinct e-commerce
channel with fast inventory turnover.

Can Mr. Cobb lay it on any thicker? Another raise in fees is not better for the community. It is a band-aid on the drop in revenue more than likely due to the huge drop in traffic on eBay over the six months.

Here is a run-down of the new fees:

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

Some Store Inventory format final value fees also will increase, effective Aug. 22, 2006: