My fees to Paypal/eBay after 10 trading months......

ormus

the punters are weird. you can never understand them.
my mate sold 2 items on xmas day!

everso908

great to read,, have you guys try nochex?
its meant to be cheaper than paypal, for the fees and stuff. might be worth a look
https://www.nochex.com / co.uk

StaffsSW

Blue_monkey & windswept - do either of you have off-ebay websites as well?

Ebay is a great way to get new customers, but for repeat customers it is better to refer them to your own site with only a merchant-service fee as a variable tranasction cost. eBay/Paypal have already taken a slice of your revenue, so why let them take it again?!

windswept

blue_monkey wrote:

Yes, me too, I do know what you mean. one little tip - might be too late for this time though, join the Market TRaders Federation (NMTF), it costs around £60 a year, but you get lots of beneifits and access to cheap insurance as well. I got my merchant account without a monthly fee (is usually £20 a month) but I do not pay this on either my internet trading or with my merchant account. you have to tell the you are a memeber though and that you do not usually pay as they won't give it to you otherwise!! But just a thought for the future. I beleive I get about 1.8% on my cards and 28p for debit cards, but it is something to think about. It is hard work with the website as so many people are doing the same things. however, we are thinking of specialising locally so who knows where it wil go. We got back of holiday a few weeks back and I am finsing it hard to get my act together and get things listed and start again - I will do I know, but for now it has been very slow. The funny thing is we put a note on the website that we was closed, everyone ignored it and we got more sales in a week of being closed than we did any other time. one lady called me the day I got back (I had been in 2 hours) asking where her things were and that I did not sound like a proper company. Through gritted teeth I wanted to tell her s** off but I kindly explained we chad closed the site and had posted a note to say this and that I had been back in the country justa few hours!! Typical though right.

They big up this new eBay express but with 1800 items for sale before I went away I did not sell anything through eBay Express at all. It has been pants lately - or is that just my shop??

Done and done!
the first thing we did when we set up in october , was join the nmtf, primarily for the free P.L. insurance, but when we found out we could also get a merchant account cheaply the it was doubly worth the membership fee, I take it you're with adelante then? can't say I am too impressed with their cust. service, we have had to chase them for weeks to finally get everything in place! they never return phone calls and lied to me on at least two occasions because I already knew the answer to my q's from Lloyds cardnet.
If we can get our website noticed and selling, it will be the greatest thing ever!
I am just itching for easter now, as that's when the outdoor events season kicks in again, I wont even think about ebay then!:p
can't wait to try out our new , massive ,3m x 3m stall.

martindow

I have a site and accept credit/debit cards using merchant accounts but I also offer Paypal as an option. I pay a bit more in fees but a sale is still a sale. It has definitely increased sales. My theory is that there are lots of people with a few (less than 50) pounds in Paypal that they don't want to pay a fee to withdraw. They are keen to spend this money where they can. About 10 per cent opt for Paypal.

windswept

stevew8975 wrote:

Blue_monkey & windswept - do either of you have off-ebay websites as well?

Ebay is a great way to get new customers, but for repeat customers it is better to refer them to your own site with only a merchant-service fee as a variable tranasction cost. eBay/Paypal have already taken a slice of your revenue, so why let them take it again?!

If you have read the posts properly, you will see that we do.;)
I have a link from my ebay shop to my website, and yes it is allowed if you follow the rules of linking to a page with no items for sale i.e. our home page.:p
It really gets my goat that so many ebay shops can flout all the rules openly and they get away with it! If I was to report every single violation that I have seen in only the last 2 days, I would be reporting 24/7!:eek:
I made 1 tiny mistake and got my listing pulled :mad:

blue_monkey_2

I take it you're with adelante then?

No, did not deal with Adelente, my first mchine I bought through Vodaphone and the next one I bought Privately when I founf someone had one for sale. that ended up going through Chip n Pin Solutions who were the absolute worst people to deal with. I get my line rental via Vodafone, account ia Barclays (set it up myself, not with a 3rd partly like Adelaente) and bought the machine outright so no 3 year contract to deal with.

Blue_monkey & windswept - do either of you have off-ebay websites as well?

Yes, we have an off eBay webite as well and sales are picking up. The problem I find is time but that will come when the kids go off to school and then fingers crossed it means I can get more items from eBay onto the website. I always mention my website address, you can have it on your ME page but you should mnot mention it on your eBay store page - you can get in trouble for this so be aware, however, use your email address and put, any questions the please email us ...... and the end but, if the same as your website address, will get people looking as they see the address!! Be careful of putting it on your store page though as I have been told it is a definate no-no and you can be reported for it. I could be wrong but better safe than sorry.

StaffsSW

:embarasse :embarasse mmm... Perils of late night surfing...?

I'm in the process of putting my online shop together - I have the hosting, domain and bare bones of an e-commerce site, but for now the domain is directing into my eBay store.

In the meantime, I have got a load of free (well +P&P) business cards from vistaprint with the web address to enclose with all posted items. The store traffic report is showing me that it is sending a fair few links through already. I need to check the legal intricacies of this before I do anything, but I have also been keeping downloads of my transactions which includes email addresses. I think data protection and/or spam laws would prevent me from making contact with them with this information though.

The About Me page is indeed the only place where general outside-ebay links are permitted, and I've noticed more and more affiliate links popping up on them as well, and there is nothing obvious in the eBay rules that forbids it??