Ebay - who makes money from this?

Becky

How many of you use EBAY to sell items?

I put stuff on there every once-in-a-while but I never seem to do very well.

By the time you pay the listing fee, the sellers fee and the (spit on the floor) Paypal receivership fees, you end up losing valuable pennies.

I have lots of old books and items that I will never use again, which are cluttering up our rooms but I feel loathed to pay all the fees and make next-to-nothing on them.

ctm_2

Go to a car boot sale and sell them there then! No fees other than the fee for a space.

Becky

What and get into haggling with people over 10 books for a penny? Or maybe throw in the car and the boot with a book for 5p?

Time constraints stop me from doing this unfortunately, which is why EBAY was more 'attractive'.

mike55_2

Becky? you might find this helpful http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=706640&postcount=1

i can't do short links to urls but there's also 2 threads about amazon in this ebay forum. look for apprentice tycoon's posts

tomstickland

Ebay can be hit and miss. If not many people want an item then it won't sell unless very cheap and even then might not sell.

black-saturn

You could try only accepting payment by cheque or postal order for cheaper items. This cuts out the paypal fees.

troll35

If you look at the ebay shops you find that a lot of sellers charge ridiculous postage to make up for the small auction prices they get.
My sister has sold quite a few things recently including some of my sons old (but excellent) toys. She recycles packaging keeping that cost to an absolute minimum but allows a small packaging cost into the postage charge which covers at least part of the actual selling fee. Her buyers have all been very happy

postingalwaysposting

I do but only at certain times of the year and when i have something that will 'make enough'. Ebay is a very hard place to make any money from due to the fees and the amount of people listing on it.

In this month i sold 20 items and made £240 after you take off fees, postage, packing etc etc. Not to bad i suppose for three days work but as i said before I will not be doing it every month as its not worth the time and effort

black-saturn

postingalwaysposting wrote:

its not worth the time and effort

I've found that. It takes up so much time to package the stuff up and wait in the queue at the post office. But I suppose its all worth it when the money comes in. I got out of debt because of ebay. So I owe it everything really.

Becky

Ironically after posting my message today I made a decent price on some computer stuff so I am pretty happy with it! :j

I just wonder how there are stories of people making a fortune. Or are they 'selling' all the SKY channels you could ever want, or 1,000,000 PS2 games on 1 disk...!!!

Juni_3

I do pretty well on most things except computer books which don't sell at all well. Going to give Amazon a go for those.

Personally I don't mind paying the paypal fees as handling cheques is such a pain. I'm thinking of making my next set of auctions Paypal only.

Ebay can be great but you need variety in what you sell as there is no depth to it.