What makes these "cheaper?"

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/130773402015?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

I've bought 3 of these so far, they've all worked flawlessly so far!, so i bought 2 from 1 more guy for 12 bucks and this for 8 bucks, the original ones i paid $69 (still is!) and that was for a clone from jaycar electronics.. so i thought i'd try $18 shield, it worked well, as i said already, no complaints here so i bought from 2 different guys the same identical boards except 1 guy with a higher rating wanted a dollar more, so i gave him 2 and bought 1 extra and the 8 shield guy just 8 bucks lol

Ethernet Shield W5100 For Arduino 328 UNO mega 2560

US $9.07
Approximately AU $8.74

How are they getting so cheap?

How are they getting so cheap?

Because you never know if they work. They just take the board layouts from the Arduino website and produce them as cheap as ever possible. If you have to get the included chips even in 1000s you pay more the $9 in normal situations.
But they never have to pay anyone for doing the engineering stuff, they just produce identical copies as cheap as possible. In some situations the chips are then fakes with just a copper plate in the plastic housing.

$69 is way too much though, I get them here in Switzerland for CHF 40 (~$45). Did you lookup the price for the shield with the PoE module? Your ebay clone doesn't include that module.

Did you lookup the price for the shield with the PoE module? Your ebay clone doesn't include that module.

The PoE module seems to casue more issues than the normal shields when trying to upload code to an arduino with the shield installed. Generally speaking, sellers tend to sell products for as much as they think they can get prople to pay, or to cover their higher overhead cost.