ebay's New Fee Structure

[Exhibitman]

It is a flat 10% of the gross INCLUDING shipping for a casual seller who doesn't have a store and doesn't do more than 50 listings a month, with no listing fees. BUT, you also take a 2.9% plus $0.30 paypal hit, and you also have to factor in postage and materials. As I see it, the OOP is actually greater than a number of auctioneer alternatives.

I just sold a raw card for $9.99 with free shipping. Under the new regime:

$9.99 gross
-$1.00 ebay fee
-$0.59 paypal fee
-$1.69 postage
-$0.50 materials [I recycle old shipping envelopes but still pay for tape, labels, card holder and ink]
$6.21 net.

My transaction costs will be 38.9% of the gross.

If I add a $2 shipping cost to the deal:

$12.00 gross
-$1.20 ebay fee
-$0.65 paypal fee
-$1.69 postage
-$0.50 materials [I recycle old shipping envelopes and cardboard but still pay for tape, labels, card holder and ink]
$7.96 net.

Paradoxically, the new ebay structure gives me an incentive to add shipping costs rather than offering free shipping as the company would prefer since I only lose 13% of the shipping charge to the fee structure.

Now, if I send the same card to an AH willing to give me a no commission deal and it sells for a $10 min. bid, I get $10. Even at 10% commission I get $9 for it. Even if the card was priced at $8 minimum bid, at no commission I net the same or better than ebay, and the Buyer pays the AH fee, the buyer pays the postage, I deposit a check.

Candidly, I don't see any reason to sell a solid card on ebay given the costs and alternatives, except to throw up a bunch of high starting price and high BIN items to test the waters and see if I get lucky. Not that it will affect ebay's logic any; there are enough people who won't break down the costs and who will pay for the convenience of ebay.