Fee Frenzy: Is There an Alternative to Markets Like eBay and Etsy?

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Sellers are reportedly feeling the pinch. Marketplaces like eBay Inc. EBAY and Etsy Inc. ETSY have continued to raise the fees they charge their sellers, many of whom are unhappy. The platforms have dominated the space for many years, and many sellers feel as though they have no other choice but to stomach the continued increases. 

Beyond increasing fees, some merchants feel the companies do a poor job of protecting them from bad-faith customer returns. A customer may claim something as defective or not what they expected and much of the financial burden is placed on the seller. To compound this, sellers can only leave positive reviews of customers on eBay. The company removed the ability for sellers to give negative feedback when they had a bad experience with a customer.

In the face of these fees and the worsening relationships between the platforms and their sellers, the founders of the new marketplace Ethair Market decided they would take matters into their own hands. They felt eBay and Etsy were more concerned about profits than they were with the experience of their users so they designed and built a platform that would have the opposite philosophy.

The marketplace was designed to improve what a marketplace can provide its customers, with the primary goal of supporting its sellers and their operations. Ethair believes that if the seller prospers, so will the platform.

The primary way in which this philosophy is carried out is in the reduced fees charged to sellers and the rewards they earn for each transaction. The final value fee is the primary fee charged to sellers on most traditional markets. Ethair charges a maximum of 8%, while eBay charges close to 13%. This reduction in fees is reportedly made even larger by the introduction of rewards. Every transaction earns 2% in rewards that are returned to the seller. That means 25% of the original fee is returned, making the effective final value fee 6% — less than half that of eBay.

This desire to improve the experience of the sellers also applies to buyers on the site. Buyers earn back 12.5% of every purchase and, critically, Ethair fully supports the use of several popular cryptocurrencies. The ability to natively use coins like Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum  (ETH) could be an important step in the adoption of the technology and is a service none of the traditional platforms offer buyers.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ethair, check out https://www.ethair.com/.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.