miamijim

You did it wrong...way wrong.

For a regular person selling goods on the side it's 12%-ish.

gioscinelli 

The thread is going as I hoped! Dialog, discussion, idea's, experience, suggestions, opinions are welcomed!

wphamilton

Maybe, but it was a successful business and my sole income for around 5 years.

I'm skeptical about 12% for a regular person, unless they're selling at a loss. Most people don't ever put the actual numbers to it and think they're doing better than the reality.

miamijim

Are you counting your cost for the item in with the 40%?

I just checked my June invoice:

Total sales: $3462.93

Final Value Fees: $358.04 10.33%
Final Value Fee on shipping: $18.90 0.5%
Insertion Fees: $32.70 0.94%

Total fees: $406.64 11.7%

So there it is...11.7% plus whatever Paypal is (2.4%)

I knows there're areas I can tweak, my insertion fees are high but I list in 2 categories and run my ads in 7 day cycles. If I listed in single categories for 30 day periods I'd save a lot of insertion fees. I really don't know what FVF on shipping is but I make up for that because I always charge a $1-5 more to ship an item than it really does.

wrk101

Paypal is 2.9% plus 30 cents per item. Sell $2 items, and paypal fees are huge. Sell $500 items, and its small.


In my case, I enjoy 20% off final value fees and no listing fees (doing about 25 items a month). Its a hobby. If it were a business, I would be doing a lot more listings for sure. But 99%+ of the people on this forum are in the 50 items or less territory.

An earlier tip I deleted, sick of deadbeat buyers (no pays)? Just go with buy it now, and check the immediate payment required box in your listing. No more deadbeats.

Jim, you need to look into what it would take for you to reach top rated seller status. I bet you are close, and you would save 20% on their fees, and around 30% on shipping. Its worth the hassle. Top rated requires 100 sales a year, $1000 minimum. And then you have to do all the other stuff. Would have saved you $100 last month.

wphamilton

No - I had 80% gross margin items. You're probably listing straight auctions with low or no minimum bids and letting the bidding set the price. That works with some types of products, not with others. What if your product is such that it may only have 50% chance of selling on the first listing, and with an expected final bid price of a fraction of what it would get later? You'd be missing a lot of potential profit. That's all irrelevant history now because the fee structure is different and I don't sell on their site.

I personally wouldn't be thrilled now with paying 12% commission fees to anyone, given that your own website would be 0%. An aggregator site provides traffic, and usually some convenience for those with a limited number of listings.

miamijim

[QUOTE=wphamilton;15838775You're probably listing straight auctions with low or no minimum bids and letting the bidding set the price. That works with some types of products, not with others. What if your product is such that it may only have 50% chance of selling on the first listing, and with an expected final bid price of a fraction of what it would get later? You'd be missing a lot of potential profit. That's all irrelevant history now because the fee structure is different and I don't sell on their site.

I personally wouldn't be thrilled now with paying 12% commission fees to anyone, given that your own website would be 0%. An aggregator site provides traffic, and usually some convenience for those with a limited number of listings.[/QUOTE]

I list mostly as 'fixed price'
My items on average take 3-4 7 day cycles to sell. I usually price on the high side of completed listings and tweak my prices if the item doesn't sell.
12% is a deal to reach a millions of people with no advertising!!

Bill,

I was wondering that myself. In the past I would seasonally reach power seller status...I've had those stats for 3 or 4 months now. I think my seller rating is too low, I briefly dipped into 97% range due to 1 transaction, a guy who posts here in C&V screwed me over on feedback......I guess you cant drop below 98% anytime during the previous 12 months.

It looks like its $3,000 in sales plus 100 transaction is the past year, I should be close to 100 but I'm not sure.

wrk101

NOPE. 80% of my auctions are buy it now, pay immediately, 30 day listing. Most go in a couple of days. No charge for listings.

I do like Jim, I research completed (SOLD) items, and price mine towards the high end. I figure the "got to have it now" crowd is willing to pay near the high end of actual sales to not have the hassle of an auction. If there is an outlier, I will ignore those prices. Ditto NOS, unless my item is truly NOS.

Starting my own web site? for 25 transactions a month? No thanks. I'd rather pay 12%.

Jim, one key to the top rated status is the detailed seller ratings. What trips me up is I only need 3 buyers to rate me a 1 or a 2 on shipping charge, and my top rated status is gone for 12 freakin months! As a result, I just bump my prices up and sell items with free shipping. You also have to ship within one business day (technically, you need to print a shipping label that fast, you can drop it off later). You also have to accept returns for 14 days. I rarely get returns. And with ebay's buyer always wins policies, you might as well take credit for accepting returns, as ebay will cram it back to you anyway.

Click on to seller dashboard. On that page, about 1/3rd of the way down, you will see this: Your performance standards on the last evaluation

Click on the words: performance standards.

Then about 1/4 of the way down, towards the right side of the screen, you will see this: View trending data

Click on it. This will show your ratings for the last 12 months. Click on "By Count" and you will see if you have any problems.


This trending data recap is pretty useful. It will show you transactions by month and $$, along with any low ratings (1 or 2 on the five point scale). The only place I have ever been gigged is on shipping and handling charge. On smaller items, bumping the price and offering free shipping is the way to go, as losing the 20% discount for 12 months and 30% on shipping rates is worth a lot IMHO.

Some other fine print from ebay (I don't have 400 auctions a quarter):

• Sellers with 400 or more transactions over the past 3 months are evaluated on their transactions with US buyers from the last 3 calendar months. For all other sellers, the rate is calculated from transactions with US buyers over the last 12 calendar months.
  
  
• To measure your overall performance accurately, we count 1 and 2 ratings only if they come from 2 or more buyers within any given evaluation period. If you have more than 400 transactions, 3 or more buyers must leave low detailed seller ratings before they are counted. Also, if the same buyer accounts for more than 80% of your 1 and 2 ratings in a single category, we will only count one low detailed seller rating from that buyer for each applicable category."
  
  
  
  

iab

Today, I got a package from Italy, purchased off of ebay Italia. An early 1930s set of Frejus branded hubs. I have seen only 2 other sets. One on ebay. The other on my bike. Soon after I bought the bike, the dealer (Italian) started selling on ebay. I think there could be possibly one other sets of those hubs in the US on a Frejus (not my size) out east. I have 3 of possibly 4 sets in the US. 2 came from ebay.

miamijim

Bill,

Thanks for the information, there's more information there than I could have imagined!!

I'm 6 transactions shy of 100 for the previous 12 months. What hurt me is that I only had 1 transaction from July of 2012 through March of 2013. By the end of the weekend I should have Power Seller status. Like you I try to include free shipping with all my sales, I just work it into the 'Buy Now' price. I wasn't aware of getting tracking info uploaded within 24 hours but I try to stay on top of my deals.

I clicked all the links you mentioned and I look good, 4.9X stars in all categories etc etc.

A few things I've learned is that 'free shipping' gets your '5 stars' and printing a label quick gets you '5 stars'. Also, if you have no direct communication with the buyer you get '5 stars'. As long as your ads accurately describe the item your good to go.

wrk101

Yes, this is another reason to offer free shipping. When someone flames you, they will flame every category they are allowed to use. By not having any direct communication, by offering free shipping, by shipping within one day, the only thing left is item not described accurately. Fortunately, as long as you do a good job in this regard, you should not get a repeat there. People just like to whine about shipping, even when your charge is fair. So by eliminating this possibility, its a lot easier to keep top rated seller.

wphamilton

You don't even get their email address any more? No direct communication? Wow, no wonder you think my methods were "doing it all wrong". I'd have 25 sales in a day, on slow days, and I don't think it would work if I couldn't have controlled the transaction and communications.

I was looking at the questions in OP more as a buyer. My own opinion, I'd far rather buy from Amazon or independent sites and only check that site as a last resort. If even then. No offense intended to the present sellers of BF but that's the honest truth.

rruff

Remember how cheap online auctions were in the beginning? For those of us who were online when ebay started, it was interesting to see how the monopoly came to be. Ebay was the first... which was a huge benefit, but it really wasn't that good. Several other sites that came later had better features and lower cost. But it was really tough to overcome ebay's inertia. Whether you are buying or selling, it's easier to just use the one that is already the biggest. Someone came up with a free service called AuctionWatch (I think) that allowed users to search several auctions sites at the same time. I thought that would truly give the competition a chance, but ebay got it shut down for legal reasons. I don't know what the details were.

So now ebay has a virtual monopoly and they can charge huge fees to do very little.

noglider 

I think the experienced sellers who have weighed in here offer enough proof that ebay offers a good deal to sellers, even with the buyer-skewed policies.

I agree it's not the place for the best prices, at least sometimes. After all, it's a world-wide market, and sellers only need a few customers willing to pay high prices for them to justify setting the prices high. But that's OK. I do have alternatives when buying. Craigslist (aka crowsnest) is for people who don't want to bother as much, so they are willing to accept less. And for new merchandise (and a few used things), Amazon is usually very good.

miamijim

A few weeks ago I auctioned an 8s Dura Ace derailleur, a 7402. It ended up selling for $13 or so...the buyer didn't pay so I opened an unpaid item case against him and had the transaction cancelled.

HenryG

Exactly. Ebay gives all the power to the buyers and nothing to the sellers.

gioscinelli 

Ebay policy is that the inventory and the money invested by the seller is Ebay's. Paypal policy is that the money held in the seller's account is Paypal's.