Selling for Friends

rose_sparky

A friend has asked me to sell a couple of things, this won't be a regular occurance so they don't want to open an ebay account themselves.

I will deduct the ebay fees but I've been asked to take a little for myself for my trouble. Can anyone give me help on what to "charge" ?

thanks.

jenniferpa

I'm sorry, I don't have a suggestion for how much to charge, but having seen one or two threads about what can happen in this sort of situation from the buyer's point of view, I would stongly suggest you get the items in your hands before listing them. That way, you can be sure that they are as they are described, and you can post them out in your normal way. If anything goes wrong with the sale, it's your name on the line, so you need to safeguard that.

Sugar_Coated_Owl

I used to be a trading assistant on eBay. I still have one person who I sell for on a fairly regular basis (1-3 items max a month). I deduct eBay listing fees, FVF, PayPal fees and we have agreed that I deduct 10% for myself.

miss_angie1

I sell for a friend of mine and charge 25% after Ebay fees/paypal fees and it works really well. I've set up a spreadsheet in excel where I detail all items sold and it works out my commission and how much my friend gets. I then email her regular updates with details of payments I've made to her etc. 10% isn't much when you think of the work you have to go through, listing and packaging and posting so 25% is a fair amount to ask.

Sugar_Coated_Owl

I'd feel bad asking for a higher % of the end price. Perhaps I'm too soft. Oh well.

Hintza

I think 10% is too cheap and 25% a shade too expensive. I think I would be looking for say £5+/- for listing the item and 10%-15% of total sale price.

The real headache is the listing process.

Sugar_Coated_Owl

Some of the items that I sell for this guy only go for £0.99 I couldn't possibly take more than 10%. Perhaps if I sold more expensive items for him I would ask for 15%.

I guess it's just whatever your happy with.

rose_sparky

Hintza wrote:

The real headache is the listing process.

I find it's the packing that is the headache. I use an ironing board as my packing table, it falls over with shock when I actually get my iron out!!

Tribal

I read a lot about this subject way back on some chat board. The consensus was to charge a flat 50% absorbing all other costs including listing, email queries, assorted headaches from some buyers, and P&P costs. The reasoning was the amount of your time and work that goes into photographing listing etc., not to mention packing and posting. Seemed high to me, but these were "professional" people, who apparently handled a lot of goods of different kinds. Many people said they didn't have the heart to charge anything and some had a sliding scale depending on the value, but consistently they were patiently told by the "professionals" that they were undervaluing themselves. Do it for nothing and you will ultimately feel both cheated and that friends are taking advantage of you. The only rationale for selling for someone else is that they want to be rid of the items, have no time or inclination to do it themselves, and would rather have some £ than nothing for items. Otherwise they would bin the stuff. Whatever measly amouunt you get for them is more than they get by binning the stuff! And I certainly wouldn't sell sight unseen, without it being in my possession. I wouldn't want to risk my reputation by saying it is perfect, which it might be to the owner, but it has a great big dent that they have just "overlooked".

JohalaReewi

While you are selling for a friend and may not want to take too much, you need to take into account that as the seller, you are taking all the risk so you could get negged, chargebacks, etc which would damage your seller's account. You should take this risk into account so a 50/50 split of the profit would not seem unreasonable.

Hintza

I have to agree with Tribal. Fortunately I have only sold two things for others one for £500 and one for £1000 both were legit copies of Microsoft Server and I think I took 10% of net proceeds after all costs and rounded up to the nearest £10.

OK it was nice £150 or so but I can tell you the stress and worry about chargebacks etc did not make it an experience I really wished to repeat in a hurry. Totally different if I had bought the items to sell myself.

You can just imagine the reaction to the "I'm terribly sorry but the guy who bought your stuff used a fake CC through PayPal and can you give me back that £1,000 you made so I can reimburse PayPal"......eek!!!