According to a newsletter sent by eBay to its members, eBay will allow sellers to list their first five items each month without having to pay a listing fee. In the past, eBay has offered large discounts to bulk sellers on eBay leaving the burden of cost on the shoulders of those who list only a few items at a time. Former users have said, “because of this, what used to feel like an online garage sale where some treasures can be found has turned into just another online store.”

With the new fee structure, eBay hopes to turn around sales on the site. The change allows sellers to list items without paying a listing fee for the first five items listed a month. This is aimed at bringing in new sellers and bringing back many of the sellers who have left eBay because of rate increases. In lieu of the listing fees for the first five items, eBay charges a flat 8.75% commission known on eBay as the final value fee. Those familiar with selling on eBay are probably aware of the final value fee as it is charged on all sales. Because of the flat rate final value fee offered with the first five items sold each month, sellers could end up paying more in fees by using the “first five items listed are free deal” than the traditional fee structure. When a seller surpasses the first five items listed per month, they will be subject to the insertion fees, but will benefit from the tiered final value fee system.

The reaction of the eBay community is mixed with many sellers stating that the final value fee system that goes along with the free insertion fees is “a hidden way to get more money” and “more punishment for the little guy.” Following the announcement on June 16th, eBay’s stock fell 1% closing at $17.23 per share. eBay stock hit its lowest point since 2001 earlier this year, closing at $10.43 per share on March 6th. The fee change has left many to wonder, will the free listings bring eBay out of its slump or will the change in the final value fee structure drive the auction giant further into the ground?

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Auctions can be monitored on the eBay website easily with the disadvantage that changes are only reported to the user per email sporadically or after logging into the ebay site. Software programs that monitor eBay auctions offer the advantage that the information are available in realtime on the computer desktop without having to access the eBay website.

This gives a user more control over auctions and the bidding process. JBidWatcher was recently mentioned in Joe’s post about winning more eBay auctions. The program is available for multiple operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac. Windows users can download a portable version or an installer.

The eBay software can be linked to an eBay account. This is not necessary for users who only want to monitor eBay auctions but becomes important for the sniping module. Sniping refers to late bidding on eBay auctions which computers can do way better and more precisely than humans.

Auctions can be added by adding their auction number in the program. Another, comfortable, option is to perform searches on the selected eBay site which will add items to the eBay item list automatically. A search for Google Phone or iPhone will for example add auctions of that kind to the items list.

Items can then be sorted by time, price, time left, seller or name. Hovering the mouse over an item will display an auction image of one is existing. The eBay monitor provides access to RSS feeds which come in handy in certain situations to check eBay auctions from smartphones or other mobile devices or to process the items further.

The settings of the software program are quite extensive and include options to enter eBay username and password, to switch to a locale eBay website, set the sniping time in seconds or to specify the web browser that should be used to open the items on eBay. The only thing that seems to be missing is a statistic function that can be used to monitor item prices over time.

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Auction Bloopers is a website that is offering a search for misspelled auctions at various eBay marketplaces including eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and eBay.de. The basic search requires just a search term that is entered correctly in the search box. The script will then compute misspellings of that search term and send the user to the eBay plattform that is displaying the search results for the misspellings.

Entering Playstation for instance searches for roughly 40 misspelled terms including laystation, paystation and plystation. That search alone found 302 auctions at eBay.com using on of the misspelled terms. A word filter can be used to exclude search terms from the results. Only the title of an auction is searched by default but it is not problematic to extend the search and include the description. This can be done on the eBay website directly.

The Auction Blooper’s website is displaying the most recent and most popular searches on their website as well in case you cannot think of anything that you might want to find.

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