EBay Drops Developer Program Fees

Filed in archive E-Commerce on December 9, 2005

I think EBay is finally trying to stop biting a hand that feeds them. Back in September I talked about how stupid it was for EBay to charge developers to use their API (here). Well it looks as though the company has decided that to get rid of all of their monthly fees that until recently developers had to pay for the privilege of using their API (a bit of sarcasm there in case you didn't notice). This happened in the middle of November and was a story that I would assume got buried because I didn't pickup on it and I get their developer newsletter!

Why developers had to pay a fee to begin with is beyond me and the primary reason why I wouldn't use their API for a production application. I would assume that it stopped many other developers as well because Amazon has around 120,000 registered developers and EBay has only 20,000 (source).
Developers are driving traffic to their site, creating new interfaces and building new ways of interacting with them. So why would EBay charge developers to do R&D and direct traffic to them in the first place? Here is a link to their old pricing model and here is a link to their new pricing model for developers.

I'd build an Amazon storefront on a whim and not think a second thought about it. With Amazon my only up front costs are the $10's for the domain name, $10 per month hosting fee and, most expensive, my time in building the storefront (but building the storefront is what I get the most pleasure from so it balances out).

The minimum $500 monthly fee that EBay was charging stopped me in my tracks. After a few months of that and a person needs to do some serious number crunching to determine if their storefront idea was such a good idea. The metaphorical pushcart and the entrepreneur pushing it would not go near that type of upfront expense.

Anyway, I think they finally woke up and it is a good thing. In my opinion this is a win-win for developers at large and EBay. I'm sure the number of registered EBay developers will start increasing quickly.