eBay fee > 13% including postage, makes it critical to assign a product price. any formula?

[au.sri2]

hi

I was on ebay for 8 years, selling and buying. Never bothered to calculate what ebay is charging me after sale proceeds. 

But after a recent sale of a single product, and checked the details of variable fee charged and it is 13.4%. So, after deducting the postage charge and the ebay fee from the total money paid (including postage) by the buyer, what is left is less than my product purchase price. That is a LOSS. 

Then I back calculated the product price, to have at least few cents of profit. Then you know what i get was a very high selling price.  For your information, the original supplier has also an online shopping and listed the price of product much less than my CALCULATED product selling price on eBay. 

Its looks strange to me of this VARIABLE FEE as a percentage and that includes postage charges. I chatted with ebay agent and not convinced with some logic / suggestion given.  One suggestion is offer free postage if the buyer buys more items. This means unless a buyer purchased more items to avoid postage charges, i cant make any profit on single item sales. 

Also, he suggested to have subscription to reduce eBay fee. this is more tricky. May be works out for a regular and dedicated online business having lots of products to sell. But not like me who do sell only sporadically. [long story short is this much short. 🙂 ]

Share your views and ideas, please 

[shiver_me_shrimp · Accepted solution]

You can send anything in them as long as they don’t exceed 20mm thickness including packaging. Same with untracked letters. I was refunded by auspost for a game I sent that got lost In the post. They asked me what the item was and how much and then refunded it.  They didn’t say I couldn’t send games as letters.
You can select tracked or untracked letter in the postage section. I wouldn’t bother with registered. I wouldn’t even bother with tracked for such low value items...

Just don’t go charging $9.50 for post and then send it in a $5 envelope or you’ll get some angry customers. I myself have an intense dislike of postage gougers, because I usually know how much things cost to post. 

[neuvecottage]

As your items generally are low value. Try sending your item to yourself in a standard no tracking envelope. Under 20mm thickness and your fine. Weights do vary though, so check with the Post Office. You really need to have thought of all this along time ago, before selling. Due dilligence is a must for success.

[au.sri2]

Thank you. but the minimum postage (parcel) is $9.30. The product actually has around $3 worth, say. Then how can boost up its value?

[au.sri2]

Thank you. I understand. Seen the envelopes on net. will try.

[au.sri2]

Thank you. will try. !!

[shiver_me_shrimp]

If you want to add more value, try bundling your items / selling them as lots.
Example “5 spice Sample pack”. Then add the value of 5 items together and discount it a bit. Then you only have to pay one lot of shipping and one lot of fees on the shipping instead of 5.

I should add that the medium and large tracked letters carry a maximum weight of 500grams.