What is the deal witg Ebay fees?
 

I have been selling a lot of baseball cards and legos on Ebay lately, and I am getting tired of seeing my profit margin shrink with all the fees, especially the added value fee. Is there any advice any could give on the best way to lower the fees. I am not ready to open a Ebay store. Thank you.

Not selling that much but I agree. Crazy fees.

I never pay any added value or insertion fees on ebay. Since I am a Top Rated seller, my fees are usually just roughly 8% ebay + 3% paypal, and I don't have an ebay store either.

First, I think all of the added value portions of the listings for ebay are useless, so I would remove all of those from your listings so you don't have to pay any of those fees. The only added value feature that I think is sort of useful is the Best Offer part of BIN's. You can think about it and determine if that is worth the extra fee.

Otherwise, I only list when there is an ebay promotion for fee listings. These usually come out once a month, and they just had one with 2000 free listings. I usually just set my BIN price and move on, and just re-list every month.

^^^^^^^^^

Exactly what Gary just said is what I do. No need for "value" stuff. No store (your really have to sell a lot to make that even some what better). Use the "usually" monthly free listings. Most of the time set a start price with a BIN price. If they don't sell at either, can relist lower, without fee. It's still 8-10% ebay, and 3% paypal, but that's all it should be. If you price your shipping fees fairly, but with some profit, you can almost equal out the paypal 3%.

BST is good, but limited. My feeling between the two is: Net54 you have more "specific" buyers seeing you're stuff, but less of them. Whereas ebay you have more people, but can get lost in with the larger numbers of sellers (i.e less specific).

I quit selling when they said l had to take paypal. I didn't sell much, but didn't want them in my bank account with all the stories l have read on the ebay boards.

I had my bank account hacked through PayPal. Now we have an account just for PayPal and only add $ to it right before we use it and when I sell on eBay we pull the $ out as soon as we get it.

The fees do seem outrageous unless you have owned a brick and mortar store and then they seem very reasonable for the service they provide.

ebay fees
 

Open a store. It is only about 20 bucks per month and you will get 100's of free listings. Don't spend your money on the added value fees.

Overall, when considering everything, the ebay fees aren't that bad. However, their policies need a major overhaul to put sellers back on level footing with buyers. Sellers should be able to leave feedback, imo.

I've always found the bidder policy strange as well in relation to that. They allow you to block buyers if you enter an ID, but you cannot preemptively block zero feedback buyers (which have overwhelmingly been a trouble area for me). You can only change your settings to block those with negative feedback from bidding on your auctions. And because buyers cannot receive negative feedback, the only people that would have that are those who would sell an item and receive a negative. The system is just too flawed.

start a revolution
 

Join ebid.net and start a revolution!

I have a store (see below) and pay 3% max on all sales.

The traffic is not there but that could change if people started to wake up and abandon ebay.

I did it and you can too.

shipping
 

If you are selling single cards, there is a way to save money on shipping. Purchase 6x8 photo mailers. Put the card in a top loader, and put the top loader and the invoice inside the photo mailer. It will be 2 ounces, and since it isn't flexible, it will be non-machinable. Since it is less than 1/4 inch thick and less than 6 1/8 inches high, it becomes a non-machinable letter and you can mail it for 93 cents. I purchase bulk lots of photo mailers on eBay.

I also pre-print a label that I put on these photo mailers, so Post Office personnel don't charge postage due on the other end. The label says:

POSTMASTER: This mailpiece meets the physical standars for letters as defined in Section 101.1.1 of the DMM. Thus, letter prices are applicable. Also, the nonmachinable surcharge is applicable and the relevant postage is affixed.

I put this label directly under the return address label and this has eliminated any problems with clerks who do not understand the rules and want to charge extra postage.

This rule was put in place 4 years ago to accomodate Netflix, so Netflix could mail at a cheaper rate.

Anyway, this 93 cents rate can save you a lot of money if you sell a lot of single cards. Don't use this for high dollar cards, because this type of mailing does not qualify for tracking or insurance.