selling on Ebay questions

[funola]

I haven't sold any stuff on ebay for quite a while. Maybe a few years.

How do you determine shipping so you don't lose out by charging too little? Last time I sild an item in Ebay I recall they had a say on how much shipping should be and it ended up costing me more to ship than was allowed.

[JimFreeh]

Originally Posted by funola

I haven't sold any stuff on ebay for quite a while. Maybe a few years.

How do you determine shipping so you don't lose out by charging too little? Last time I sild an item in Ebay I recall they had a say on how much shipping should be and it ended up costing me more to ship than was allowed.

I bought an electronic scale (thru eBay) and then I box, weigh and measure the package. When you set up an auction, you can insert these values, and specify which type of shipping and eBay will do the calcs for you and give the looker the cost to ship to his addy.

Sometimes, the program will not take surcharges or rural delivery into account, and you also have anticipate the fact that eBay takes a percentage of the shipping charges as part of their vigorish. I generally add 1 pound to the weight, and overall shipping has been pretty much a wash for me.

Jim

[Mölyapina]

What are you looking to sell? Generally I weigh the item and the add about 4 oz for packaging and get a quote... if it is big & bulky, I take the item's dimensions and add to them enough to protect the item and give those as my dimensions.

[cooljjay]

I've sold on eBay since 2003....up until last year.....I can tell you, no matter what you will lose money on shipping and pay out of pocket.....bidders don't want to bid on items with high shipping prices.....and eBay now charges final value fees on the cost of shipping....last I calculated, between eBay and PayPal fees were typical 15%.....I would look at other completed listing for the same item and then average a cost....to keep competitive....

[rscurtis]

i use USPS for smaller items, and UPS for larger items. I calculate flat rate shipping to Perry, OK, which is just about in the middle of the continental USA. Sometimes I'm the bird, and sometimes I'm the flagpole, so it averages out in the end. If I can get a buyer's exact address, I'll give an exact quote.

[alabbasi]

I ship flat rate with a min of $15 and only through Fedex as USPS has given me too much trouble in the past. When there is trouble, it's impossible to sort it out (never a person on the other side of the line, no escalation path).

Factor in cost of packaging and the fact that paypal and ebay now charges based on the percentage of the total and not just the item.

[Mölyapina]

I think that they now charge the fee on shipping as well because some people were lumping a large part of the item cost into the shipping cost.

[jab0028]

As others have stated, ebay now charges final value fees based on shipping prices. In the past they didn't do that and I remember people selling fixed auction items for cheap and charging excessive amounts for shipping. I was just looking into selling on ebay after a long break myself. I think the route I will take is fixed priced auctions with free shipping. I will take a look at past sold items and come up with a price based off of that. To me it is easier to do that than have to deal with setting a reserve or setting a shipping price. In the end it turns out the same since they now charge final value on both the selling price and shipping. Plus for some reason people always like free things and think that they are getting a great deal when they see free shipping.

[cooljjay]

Originally Posted by Jooseppi Luna

I think that they now charge the fee on shipping as well because some people were lumping a large part of the item cost into the shipping cost.

That's the exact reason they did it....because people were getting sick of the crazy fee structure....do you know its actually cheaper to sell at Christies and many action houses then on eBay? And they do all the work......eBay is trying really hard to get rid of the used market sellers and trying to become amazon....they actually wanted me to give warranties on the vintage electronics I sold....towards the end, I started selling them as not tested for parts! Because it was easier and I stopped shipping over seas.....I had some good buyers and would just resell at a loss out of my garage because it was less hassle....

Now I suspect you also know, that if you do over 200 transactions or 20,000$ in sales a year....you have to file taxes as a small business and pay self employment taxes......everything gets reported to the IRS now...

eBay is no longer fun like it was when I started.....its stressful and cost a lot of coin....

[Simpler=Better]

The best way to do it is calculate a roll it into the product price and advertise "free" shipping.

[Diesel911]

Quite a few People I have bought items from on eBay have used USPS Flat Rate Priority Mail Boxes or Envelopes with Delivery Confirmation.
You don't waste time scrounging around for a container to put the item in and as long as the item fits and is below the max weight you know what the shipping cost will be.

When I sold the little Tools I used to make I used USPS First Class with Delivery Confirmation. That ended up being an actual cost between $2.50-$3.00 shipping for most items.

If I had a something that I knew would cost more I packaged it without sealing it an took it to the Post Office and ask that to weigh it at tell Me some of the ways it could be shipped. In My case the Post Office is down the Street from Me.

[lorainfurniture]

No other website allows you to expose your merchandise to millions of people like eBay does. The reason it has become slightly difficult for sellers is because of all the deadbeat sellers peddling garbage as gold.

I can't help but complain sometimes either but its for the better.

Christie's and Sotheby's has a sliding commission scale. If the item is over 1 mil I bet the fee would be 15% or less

Local auction houses take 50 percent of the sale price on items valued below $20.

50% and they expose it to 100 people.

[JimFreeh]

When I'm looking at an item on eBay, free shipping is irrelevant to me. It's the total cost to get it to my door that is important.

You can order your eBay search results to include the price + shipping so you can see the total amount sorted from low to high.

Look at my previous post, #2. A good seller can manipulate the shipping cost so it is customized for each bidder. This averages out, true, but it helps to minimize the gain/loss risk to the seller. I add 1 pound to the actual weight to take care of the fees and any unanticipated surcharges. Weight is figured by the pound, so adding a few ounces will not always make you whole.

If it's a small part that will fit in a flat rate rate box, then this works well especially when you are selling a low dollar part, and/or a high density item.

I give the buyer a choice of UPS or USPS, on occasion one can be significantly less expensive than the other.

Jim

[Diesel911]

Originally Posted by lorainfurniture

No other website allows you to expose your merchandise to millions of people like eBay does. The reason it has become slightly difficult for sellers is because of all the deadbeat sellers peddling garbage as gold.

I can't help but complain sometimes either but its for the better.

Christie's and Sotheby's has a sliding commission scale. If the item is over 1 mil I bet the fee would be 15% or less

Local auction houses take 50 percent of the sale price on items valued below $20.

50% and they expose it to 100 people.

The eBay and PayPal fees kind of substitute for the rent you would be paying if you had an actual Store.

[Zacharias]

Originally Posted by Diesel911

The eBay and PayPal fees kind of substitute for the rent you would be paying if you had an actual Store.

Or the costs and hassles associated with setting up your own website, payment processing, etc. Agreed.

Where I take issue is the fact, while a virtual goldmine -- eBay has trouble spending all its accumulated cash -- they provide nearly zilch human support. They have applied a very clever level of automation to their site, to be sure, and you can probably do 90 percent of stuff without human intervention.

But the fact that there is almost no real-time call centre support for the other 10 percent is inexcusable. I had a complicated issue on a transaction last year, went through the hoops to get an authorization number to speak to a live agent. Then was connected with some barely literate woman somewhere on the Indian subcontinent who read from scripts that said what I had already read for myself on the site.

Luckily the buyer and I were able to come to an accommodation and the situation was solved that way.