By no means should this post by me be interpreted as I have any inside knowledge of what be coming, this article basically shares my thoughts on the predictions the AuctionBytes article has made.

One issue that was brought up in the article was would eBay.com do to the stores as they have done on other international sites.  FYI: on other International sites eBay has done away with the store format listings but kept the store, where sellers inventory will be in a fixed priced format which does get higher ranking in eBay searches compared to store format.  Also, fixed priced format comes with a higher insertion fee in some cases significant compared the store insertion fee of less than 10 cents.  If this changes is implemented by eBay this would probably cause many sellers to either raise prices (unfortunately with a significant insertion increase the cost would have to be passed along to the buyer) or store owners would be more selective as to what they put into their store for inventory which could change the market including a shift in prices.  Remember when quantity is lower then demand the prices can increase.

Stores in core search results: eBay tried this several eyars ago and stopped a few months afterwards stating that the number of results that came up for a buyer was overwhelming to the buyer.  Personally I feel that sellers releaised that paying 3 cents insertion fee was the best price for an item and saw sales increase so they stopped listing in other formats - bottom line I think the cost to eBay was hurting the company.  I am not sure if they wil bring this back, however with the new search eBay has created the "overwhelming" number of results may no longer be a problem.

I also feel that if eBay does make this kind of a change I would hope that they would decrease the store subscription fee.

Feedback changes: It has been reported on various sites on the Internet eBay is beta testing a major overhaul of the Feedback system where feedback will include how likely a buyer would be to refer a seller to others.  This, as always, will be controversial, but I feel it is a move in the right direction.

Fee changes: I would be surprised if eBay did not change the fees.  When I started on eBay in 2001 fees were pretty straight forward, now it is more complicated where you feel you need to have a Ph.D to understand the fees before you list an item.  I would hope eBay would make insertion fees less complicated.

From the AuctionbBytes article  also speculates there will be some policy changes including limiting buyer and seller communication.  Since this is not official and I have no idea what if any limits would be placed, I will just say that as a seller (and as a buyer) I do not want any limits placed on how much I communicate.  As a seller you should communicate with the buyer as much as he or she wants and should do it personally - not with FAQ pages or auto responders.

AuctionBytes is saying there may three rounds of changes this year, this has not been confirmed as far as I know.  They also are predicting the first round will be announced in January and be implemented in march.  Again this has not been confirmed.  I would hazard a guess that if an announcement is coming ti will be after the Q4 earnings call (schedule for January 20th @ 4pm CT) and before the town Hall on January 27th.   Regardless of when changes are announced on eBay, I will be covering it right here.