How does the seller make any money from this? Just wondering.

GDB2222

I bought an eBay item for 99p.

I guess it cost the seller 10p for the item itself.

I guess they pay eBay 9 or 10p

Someone packed it. At minimum wage, they are earning 20p a minute. It must take at least a minute?

Envelope, and heat printed label 5p.

So, that accounts for say 50p of the sale price. Leaving 50p for postage and hopefully a little bit of profit for the seller.

It was posted RM 48 hours tracked delivery. That would cost me well over £1, just for the postage.

This is quite a large seller, with over 300,000 feedback. And they have sold over 1000 lots of this item. So, are they making a loss? Or do RM deliver their stuff practically for nothing? What’s going on?

soolin

It could be a loss leader as even on a business account there is very little postage, even letter size that will get anywhere near 50p.

Jemma01

They probably sell these things hoping you'll add other products and save on combined shipping. The whole selling on eBay I found expensive, makes the item not worth selling.

Baldytyke88

RM franked is 88p, could be lower with discounts

Newbie_John

Well you bought 1, they may have lost 50p, someone else buys 10, they earn £5. Total of 1000s sold is £££.

People may like it and recommend to others, they may also want to see the demand or it could be that competition lowered their price so did they, and once competition is gone they will go back up?

RFW

There are quite a few possibilities. There are advantages to selling small items that may lose a few pence if there are higher ticket items from the same seller. It can help keep post costs down with Royal Mail and also with Ebay. As I say there are a few other options, some covered above, another is that they may well just be losing money and don't know what they're doing!

GDB2222

The item I bought is a set of screws and caps for fixing a car number plate. The company mostly sells car components costing in the £10s to £100s region. So, maybe they just don’t notice that they’re losing money on these little packages of stuff?

forgotmyname

Are they making a profit if the items they have were free? I went to an auction and bought a cage with what I
thought was just the one item. Crossing my fingers that all the parts were in there I bid and won. When it came
to empty the cage into my car there was also several other items underneath.

Some of the items were brand new unopened BOSCH SDS drill bits which I sold for more than I paid for the cage.
The other items I gave away to friends and the local charity shop got the rest.