The biggest change is the new fee structure for sellers listing products for sale. eBay is lowering the listing fee — the upfront cost to list an item on eBay — and increasing the Final Value Fee (FVF), which is the amount the seller pays to eBay upon sale of the item.

With the listing fee going down, we might see an increase in the quantity and variety of items for sale on eBay, adding value to eBay as a whole. Or we might see a surge in junk listings, where sellers list anything and everything whether or not it has a chance of actually selling, because they only pay the FVF if it sells.

The higher Final Value Fee, on the other hand, is computed as a percentage of the sale price of the item. So a higher FVF will hit big-ticket items harder. Sellers may be less inclined to list high-value items on eBay, because they’ll have to pay a more significant fee to eBay when the item sells.

EBay may have calculated these fee changes so that the aggregate fees would end up being a wash — lower listing fee, higher FVF, same final revenue to eBay — but those calculations may not take into account the unintended consequences. The unintended consequences could result in eBay turning into a giant yard sale, full of low-quality junk from garages and attics that may sell for $1 or $5, but few or no listings of higher value items, such as digital cameras, electronics, valuable antiques and collectibles, or other such merchandise.

The new CEO of eBay also announced that he wants to increase emphasis on fixed-price sales, which means a corresponding decrease in emphasis on auction sales with bidding. Again, I’m not sure, myself, that this will be a good move for eBay. eBay owns the auction marketplace. By moving toward a model like Amazon, eBay will be competing in the marketplace that Amazon owns, instead of focusing on the marketplace that eBay owns.

A couple of months ago, I would have yawned and said, “So what?” But now that I’m deriving a portion of my income from eBay, I have a vested interest in what eBay does and the effect on the eBay marketplace. I hope these moves have positive results for eBay, which will ultimately mean positive results for eBay affiliates. But I’m not at all sure that will be the case.

That line has stuck with me for a couple of weeks now, popping into my head at odd and random moments.

I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about “giving something a try” to “see what sticks” — or how many clients I’ve had take that approach. Unfortunately, if you don’t go all out and make available all the resources that are needed to compete in the chosen area, chances are, nothing will stick, and you’ve just wasted whatever time and other resources you did put into it.

If you’re going to compete with the big boys, you gotta compete like the big boys do. I need to write that line on a sticky note and refer to it every time I consider doing a PPC campaign on the cheap, or making a lame web site to see if it has any success. And I’ve gotta keep that line handy to toss at clients when they balk at spending the money that’s needed to really make their web site a success.

Setting up the stores in Cafe Press was a little confusing until I figured out the system. If you sign up for the basic (free) shop, it seems that you’re better off promoting just a single design, which you can place on multiple products. With the premium shop — which costs a monthly or annual fee — you can sell the same product but with multiple designs. Since I’m just starting out with Cafe Press, I didn’t want to spring for the premium shop, so I created two shops so that I could promote 2 different designs. You can create as many basic free shops as you want, and I’m considering adding a couple more shops using the same basic concept for the design.

So far I have to say I’m impressed with Cafe Press. They made it easy to set up my shop, select my products, upload my design, add appropriate titles and descriptions, etc. I left my shops opted in to the affiliate program, and tagged my images so they would appear in the Cafe Press Marketplace for relevant searches on the Cafe Press site.

I’ll report again after my shops have had a chance to get some traffic — I don’t know if I’ll make any sales or not, and the product designs I used give me a limited time for this concept to work.

According to the article at the International Herald Tribune, the French law prohibits discounting books by more than 5 percent (and Amazon’s free shipment counts as a discount). Supposedly, this law “was meant to assure that the French public had equal access to a wide variety of books, both high-brow and low-brow, not just heavily marked-down publications.”

The French need a a lesson in Econ 101. It doesn’t work that way. Government-imposed price floors most emphatically do not guarantee consumer access to a greater choice of products; rather, they generally result in fewer products and less consumer choice, and at higher prices.

You go, Amazon! I’ve been a satisfied Amazon customer for many years. I might just hop over there right now and buy some more books. Because one can never have too many books. Thanks to Amazon’s great prices and free shipping, I can buy a lot more books than I could if I had to pay artificially inflated prices imposed by the government.