BEWARE of eBay final value fee of 10.0% for sellers!

StaffsSW

The fees are taken from the money that the buyer sends.

If your £10 sale as above went through, you would only receive 9.46 into your paypal account from the £10 the buyer sends.

Once a month, ebay will bill you for their fees, either by DD or from your paypal account.

The stars are left by buyers when they leave feedback. Anything less than 4.2 on average can/will place your listings lower in search results, despite the description of a 4 star rating being "good"!!

Adding a bit over stamp price for packaging is generally acceptable, serious postal gouging is selling an ipod for 99p and £50 P&P, however it's not unusual to get complaints from people who pay 10 or 15p over stamp price, and even people who offer "free" P&P will rarely see a full 5 star rating. Just do what you would like to see if you were your own customer.

My own rule of thumb for my items is roughly stamp price +25p packaging on most items, or maybe £1 or so on bigger or more fragile items.


Edit To add - As a business seller I buy packaging materials in bulk, and try to average out the costs over all sales. It's obviously different for private/occasional sellers.

tara747

Thanks for the tips. I am only a private seller so don't really manage economies of scale. I also have to take into account travel costs to get to the post office etc, and I don't charge much over the *actual* postage.

Edit: just checked my paypal account, you are right!! Eek!

So... how do people make money selling a DVD for 99p with free postage (for example)???

VanyaHargreeves

Well I'm guessing postage will be around 61p, there's 24p paypal fee, and 10p ebay fee.
So, you'll be making 6p, around about.

gregmac666

tara747 wrote: »

So... how do people make money selling a DVD for 99p with free postage (for example)???

They don't, and they're daft for listing them at that price.

Some DVDs go over £1 in postage if the package comes in a slightly larger slipcase & then goes into a jiffy bag for the posting, as it can make the package too thick to be a 'large letter' & so becomes a 'parcel'. It's a nightmare that I have fallen prey to in the past.

When eBay enforced free postage on items such as DVDs & CDs they were actually shooting themselves in the foot, because now most people know that listing items at 99p, although free, is going to cost them more than what they make if the item only sells for the list price.

Luckily ebay have now reinstated maximum postage fees for these items, so you can charge for UK shipping. PHEW!
(They give an explination as to why they were doing it, but it's basically them admitting that enforcing free postage was wrong & has most likely hit their profits).

http://sellerupdate.ebay.co.uk/april2010/free-shipping-replacement.html

I believe you can not list CDs & DVDs with a max postage of £1 for 2nd class post, which will cover most if not all of your costs. However, it's still worth checking to see if anyone else is listing the same item as you - if there are several copies that are all on 99p & not attracting bids, it's not worth listing the item as all.

SimonPointer

I have been an eBay seller for a long time now and have a good rating and 100% positive feedback. I am not a powerseller or anything, jut use it get rid of things I don't want any more, and often feel that even though I don't make money, it's a good way of turning things I don't want into cash, and also a good way of recycling.

Having said that if you now account for both lisitng fees and the ridiculous 10% selling fees, plus paypal fees, which of course you get charged on ur eBay invoices too, all the agro with postage and packing and then the silly buyers who want to pay nothing and then expect Amazon service, it simply isn't worth it any more.

That's a shame really, because the alternatives are limited. The fact of the matter is that eBay never used to charge these fees and was always reasonable before. No matter how they publicise their fees, ripping people off is not right, and the fact that the selling fees are by far the highest and very much less than transparent tells you all you need to know about eBay arrogance.

It's simply not viable any more. The last sale I made I listed about 20 items, of which about 12 sold, and one was removed early. Total selling price was £500 including postage and packing fees. Final eBay invoice was £111 and I spent about £70 on post and packing (and I was lucky that 4 of the 11 buyers wanted to collect too) and of course paypal took their cut and charged on the final £111 invoice.

I doubt if I managed to actually keep any more than 25% of the value of the goods, and if I factor in my time and effort for writing lsitings and packing up and sending items then there is no way I made any money.

I think this could be the death of eBay if they aren't careful. The reality is that many sellers will stop selling there, and if the there are less great buys then buyers will also stop going too - and I hope so.

For me I am going to try to find an alternative, and in the UK in the summer I think I might try a few car boot sales or similar. Gumtree is a good alternative for some things and will keep my eye on eBid and other eBay competitors for a while with the hope they may get more popular and take off. Perhaps if we all use them as a boycott to eBay then that would be a good thing.

Of course failing that I could just list on eaby and pay listing fees to get the publicity, and then point the buyer eslewhere to make the sale and then end all my auctions early. I am sure that's against eBay rules, but what goes around comes around, and I think I have nothing to loose if they close my account anyway.

Maybe Martin and his team and all of us eBay people can think about good altrenatives to eBay selling and post them here. That way we can all vote with our feet and go elsewhere.

See you eBay.

cyberbob

Bye then. you'll find that selling most other places will cost you more

custardy

SimonPointer wrote: »

Of course failing that I could just list on eaby and pay listing fees to get the publicity, and then point the buyer eslewhere to make the sale and then end all my auctions early. I am sure that's against eBay rules, but what goes around comes around, and I think I have nothing to loose if they close my .

and why would the buyer do that?

cyberbob

SimonPointer wrote: »

Of course failing that I could just list on eaby and pay listing fees to get the publicity, and then point the buyer eslewhere to make the sale and then end all my auctions early. I am sure that's against eBay rules, but what goes around comes around, and I think I have nothing to loose if they close my account anyway..

I think that attitude shows why you have failed as an ebay seller

soolin

You obviously haven't been on ebay as long as you say you have. In the 'good' old days I would pay 25p to list a £4.99 book, plus another 15p for gallery, that same book now only costs me 10p. Yes FVFs have gone up but you only pay that if something actually sells. So if you are paying lots in FVfs then you are sleling lots, which as a seller si surely a good thing?

Maybe Martin and his team and all of us eBay people can think about good altrenatives to eBay selling and post them here. That way we can all vote with our feet and go elsewhere.

Generally there is no alternative at all to Ebay. yes there are specialist sites, I do very well on Amaozn for instance, but a true rival where I can sell anything from books to make up and through to antiques does not exist. It is quite unreasonable for me to use small ads or Gumtree for the 100+ items i have listed at any one time. Also over half my sales go overseas, so that immediately counts out any local type one off selling platform.

patman99

ebid is one alternative, but they have fewer sellers. However, every item that gets listed shows-up on google shops as well.
Anyway, has anyone been to a bricks and mortar auction house?, both buyer and seller pay vat + a hammer fee. This usually adds up to 27% for each party. Makes feebay's fees look quite reasonable to me.

As a regular seller of items, I find spending £20 on ListingFactory to be good value. You get to use nice templates and as many photos as you like without paying ebay a penny in listing fees (unless you are an Ebay business user of course).