It doesn’t seem much to list an item on eBay, plus pay a small Final Value Fee. A few cents also go to PayPal. One by one, these minute amounts tend to breeze by even experienced sellers. You don’t really see your eBay fees, because they’re not directly deducted from your sales. eBay bills you at the end of the month. It’s easy to lose track of your costs. If you had sold the item for $100 and also charged the buyer $10 for shipping so the buyer's payment was $110, then eBay would take 10% of $110. EBay's fees cannot be related to what the seller actually paid for shipping, because many sellers (especially the largest and smallest ones) don't purchase their shipping through eBay, so eBay has no way of knowing what the shipping actually cost. When your item sells you pay 10% of the final transaction value, including postage. EBay call this a final value fee. EBay also cap final value fees so you will never pay more than £250 for a single item. All those nickels, dimes, and quarters add up. The hundreds (thousands?) of people who are selling items on the site for $1 can’t be making much of a profit — not even enough for a pack of gum! To avoid this low-profit trap, you must be keenly aware of every penny you spend on listing fees, Final Value Fees, listing options, and PayPal fees. Becoming complacent and blithely ignoring your eBay costs as you list items for sale can be easy to do. As a person in business for yourself, you must take into account outgoing expenses as well as incoming revenues. The cost of your initial listing (does your time to write and photograph not have a cost?) is just the beginning of your advertising budget for that item. You have to factor in the cost of all the listing options and features you use as well. After all that, you also pay a Final Value Fee to eBay after the item sells. Insertion (listing) feesIf you don’t have an eBay store, you are entitled to 50 free listings per calendar month (beginning at 12:00:00am Pacific Time on the first day of each month and ending at 11:59:59 pm Pacific Time on the last day of the month). That means the listings are free of insertion fees. After that, the fee is a straightforward $.30 per listing, whether it’s a fixed-price listing or an auction. Adding extra listing features adds more to the listing fee. For example, when you place a reserve on an auction, you’re charged an insertion listing upgrade fee based on the amount of the reserve price. Free listings are not available in the Real Estate, Motors: Boats, Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Other Vehicles & Trailers, and Powersports, and some Business & Industrial categories. What listings count toward your free limit? See the following:
If your item doesn’t sell, you do have the option of relisting your unsuccessful item. Your relisted item will count as an additional listing for the month. Writing a better title, starting with a lower opening bid, or adding a snappier description and better pictures may help in selling the item. Reserve-price auction feesIn a reserve-price auction, you’re able to set an undisclosed minimum price for which your item will sell, thereby giving yourself a safety net. Using a reserve-price auction protects the investment you have in an item. If, at the end of the auction, no bidder has met your undisclosed reserve price, you aren’t obligated to sell the item and the high bidder isn’t required to purchase the item. For example, if you have a rare coin to sell, you can start the bidding at a low price to attract bidders to click your auction and read your description. If you start your bidding at too high a price, you might dissuade prospective bidders from even looking at your auction, and you won’t tempt them even to bid. Symbols in the great gatsby ch 7. They may feel that the final selling price will be too high for their budgets. You want to get the auction fever going with lots of bidders! Everyone on eBay is looking for a deal or a truly rare item. If you can combine the mystical force of both of these needs in one auction, you have something special. The reserve-price auction enables you to attempt — and perhaps achieve — this feat. The reserve-price auction is a safety net for the seller but often an uncomfortable guessing game for the prospective bidder. To alleviate buyer anxiety, many sellers put reserve prices in the item description, allowing bidders to decide whether the item will fit into their bidding budgets. Should you have a change of heart, you can lower or even remove your reserve price after you receive a bid on the item. Placing a reserve price on one of your auctions means that the item will not sell until the bidding reaches the reserve price. When your reserve-price item does sell, you’ve sold your item at a profit. The reserve fee is based on the reserve price you set, so be sure to set the reserve high enough to cover the fee and still give you a profit. Why not spell out the amount of your reserve price within your listing description? That way, there’s a good chance the buyers will know what they’re in for. Why not also offer free shipping in a reserve auction to take the edge off.
If your item doesn’t sell the first time with a low starting price and a reserve, you can always relist it at a slightly higher starting price without a reserve. For first-time sellers on eBay, the rules around fees can be a bit confusing. Before you put your first item up for sale or auction, take the time to learn the eBay and PayPal fee structures so you're not left with unexpected charges when your sale is completed. Different Types of eBay and Paypal Seller FeesThere are several groups of fees that you should keep in mind as you sell on eBay. These fees aren't always obvious, so they can sneak up on you easily. Listing fees, for example, are not charged for your first 50 listings every month But if you exceed 50 listings in a month or list items in multiple categories, you'll pay a fee for every listing that you create. Many of the options that can be added to listings to enhance their visibility incur additional upgrade fees that vary on a per-feature basis. For successful listings (cases in which items sell), eBay also assesses a fee that is a percentage of the sale price. And don't forget the PayPal fees. If you accepted payment via PayPal, their fees will be automatically be deducted from the payment amount before the balance appears in your PayPal account. Figuring Out Your Exact FeesBecause eBay and PayPal fees are subject to change, it's generally not a good idea to rely on the fee amounts discussed on message boards or included in articles on third-party websites. Instead, always check the relevant eBay and PayPal pages for details on current fees. The most recent eBay fee table outlines eBay's fees in detail. This table can always be found simply by searching for 'fees' using the eBay customer support tool. PayPal's fees are generally easier to understand and calculate and are always available in current form on the PayPal fees page. If you're a new or infrequent seller on eBay, reading through these fee charts carefully can help you to understand how much it will cost you to sell an item on eBay. It can also help you calculate how much headroom you should leave yourself if you have a particular cash-in-pocket goal in mind after a sale. Use a Fees CalculatorIt's not hard to see that this is a complicated fee structure. Sitting down to calculate the precise cost in fees for a hypothetical sale can be a time-consuming and error-prone process, particularly if you're new to eBay selling. For this reason, it's a good idea for new or infrequent sellers to check the fees they'll be charged using an eBay fees calculator (these also typically help to calculate PayPal fees as well). Just be sure to check the 'current as of' date on the fees calculator to ensure that it's returning the correct, current set of fee calculations to you. Can I Get a Refund for Fees I Didn't Know About?In short, the answer is no. Don't spend your time trying to get a refund from eBay or PayPal with claims of ignorance as your justification. It just won't work. Instead, take a tour through the fees and fees calculators above and make a decision about whether you're still interested in selling on eBay, and if so, at what price.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |