If you’re active eBay seller or simply a person who sells used stuff from time to time on the World’s largest auction platform, you have probably heard a lot of rumors about recent problems facing majority of eBay sellers.

The main issues has always been increased listing fees, final value fees + PayPal fees. More recently eBay announced that sellers no longer will be able to leave negative feedback for buyers. Leaving sellers in a powerless position.

So is it really that eBay? Is auction era coming to the end? What will happen in the next 5 years? Well, I’m not a oracle but one thing is for sure – eBay is here to stay! For long time… Unless some major player takes it off the scene, I can see no reason why eBay should lose it’s popularity.

Yes, eBay constantly increases selling fees and for many people this causes a lot of problems. But they do not appreciate what eBay has gave to them in return – easy to use trading platform with unreal traffic levels, automated tools and free publicity. Is it still not enough for you? For a measly 15% (on average, insertion fee + final value fee + PayPal fee) you can start selling your stuff in front of millions of potential buyers. Try to achieve that with your own online shop, not talking about brick and mortar store.

You know why eBay increases fees? Because they can afford to do that! There are simply so many sellers on eBay that by increasing fees eBay don’t lose anything at all. Even more – they earn more money! At the end of the day, it’s not a charity organization. eBay is a multi billion company, do you really think they don’t know what they’re doing?

And lets not forget about customers. O.k., I agree that by not letting sellers leave a negative feedback to buyers, eBay has showed their ignorance and even Power Sellers can’t do much about that. It’s a shame. Can’t see the real reason behind this as buyers have always been more protected than sellers.

Here’s why – buyers do not care much about negatives. If they’re using eBay solely for purchasing goods but not selling, they do not care about having a negative feedback from the seller in return. Of course, unless their feedback goes below 95% at which eBay can simply suspend their accounts (not sure though if majority of eBayers are aware of this).

So my predictions are that eBay won’t go out of business simply because a lot of sellers are not satisfied with new listing fees, selling rules and feedback blackmail. Why? Because the same old supply & demand rules applies to eBay the same way as in any other market. If there will be significant loss of eBay sellers, prices will go up and many sellers will come back.

Not talking about increasing number of buyers & sellers joining from Eastern Europe and other parts of the World, where previously eBay was not accessible (because of PayPal’s limitations).