topic Re: Small time seller in Selling

Small time seller

ardy01 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 04:04:20 GMT

Hi all, I don't sell much on eBay but buy a fair bit. I just sold a Nikon Camera and separately a lens.

Didn't think too much about it until I added up the ebay costs and paypal costs.

I was surprised to put it mildly, the total % cost for sale was nearly 14% - 10.9% ebay fees and 2.6% paypal fees.

My thought is how the hell do you guys make a dollar here?

Also won't be selling here again, I sold a bit about 8 years ago and don't remember it being this $$$ painful.

Good luck to all you sellers - you have gained my respect.

Re: Small time seller

gutterpunkz05 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 04:41:16 GMT

We manage to survive , by taking all costs into account before setting prices.

Combined ebay/paypal fees are pretty good, considering most traditional auction houses, will cost you 22% +/-

Re: Small time seller

padi*0409 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 04:54:45 GMT

@gutterpunkz05 wrote:

Combined ebay/paypal fees are pretty good, considering most traditional auction houses, will cost you 22% +/-

In addition many auction houses charge a "buyers premium" that goes directly to the auction house.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_premium

Re: Small time seller

kopenhagen5 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 06:40:46 GMT

The lens sold for 750, next time you know to list it for 850. No fees.

Re: Small time seller

chameleon54 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 11:26:06 GMT

@ardy01 wrote:
Hi all, I don't sell much on eBay but buy a fair bit. I just sold a Nikon Camera and separately a lens.
Didn't think too much about it until I added up the ebay costs and paypal costs.

I was surprised to put it mildly, the total % cost for sale was nearly 14% - 10.9% ebay fees and 2.6% paypal fees.

My thought is how the hell do you guys make a dollar here?

Also won't be selling here again, I sold a bit about 8 years ago and don't remember it being this $$$ painful.

Good luck to all you sellers - you have gained my respect.

I make a dollar by buying stock in bulk at discounted prices, mainly when businesses close down, and then selling the items individually at premium prices. This gives me mark ups of 500-1000% which allows plenty of room to absorb ebay fees, dead stock, INR claims and any other stumbling blocks that come along.

Another thing I concentrate on is simply churning as much stock as I can in the shortest time possible. This requires simple systems that can be replicated easily. Things such as standardised listing templates, standardised postage systems, good storage systems allowing timely retrieval of items etc.

Probably the most important thing is to sell stuff that buyers actually want. Individual items that not many other sellers stock ensures you are not competing in a race to the bottom. There is still very good money to be made on ebay and at the moment my sales are increasing due to improved international sales due to the low Aussie dollar.

Re: Small time seller

bimberiretrosystems — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:29:36 GMT

Just wait in five months time when your buyer breaks the lens and gets a refund through paypal-will make you even more angry-thats if they don't scam you before the item reaches them.

better off selling on facebook (like i have done) - no paypal, no fees, no dsr's, no silly feedback, no paypal scammers and six month reurns - almost a no brainer. I did an experiment a number of months ago before i stopped selling here. Listed a macbook on ebay - over almost three weeks - got about 110 views - item did not sell, on fbook got 254 views in three hours - with stats like that guess where it sold-posted with direct deposit to WA.

I don't know how people here do it either - never used to be rubbish like this years ago - i guess using this place is old fashioned and an old fashioned way to sell - these days with own website and places like fbook people have better ways to sell.

Just spoke to an individual who has tons of collectible cards and wanted to sell them online - guess where he listed them, not here-sold a few hours later for way more than he expected.

Unfortunately this place has not kept up with the times and can't compete with the biggest social media platform contrary what industry websites say (cash for comments anyone?)

Re: Small time seller

ardy01 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:30:24 GMT

Hi Kopen: unfortunately the lens would not sell for 850, I had it listed for 820 for a couple of months and offers were in the 600's.

regards

Ardy

Re: Small time seller

ardy01 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:37:30 GMT

Chameleon: Had a look and was surprised that nothing was listed. I assume you do this for some money on the side?

Re: Small time seller

ardy01 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:51:27 GMT

Hi Gutterpunk: I thought about this and what you say is true but ebay is not an auction house it is a market place to my mind.

They do not have people to pick the stuff up, phtograph it, display it and pack it up. They pay an auctioneer, bookeeper to handle the money, experts to ID stuff. That's off the top of my head from going to a few auctions.

I imagined ebay fees would be around 5% tops.

Re: Small time seller

lyndal1838 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 22:29:44 GMT

@ardy01 wrote:
Chameleon: Had a look and was surprised that nothing was listed. I assume you do this for some money on the side?

It is obvious that you are vry new to the boards or you would know that chameleon has more than one selling account.....he is probably one of the larger sellers on these boards.

Ebay may not be his only income now but it has been in the past and he is very successful. If any advice he gives is applicable to you, you could do a lot worse than follow it.

Most of the responders on the boards have more than one ebay account and often the accounts used on the boards are posting accounts. Don't let the numbers showing here fool you.

Re: Small time seller

chameleon54 — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:13:29 GMT

@ardy01 wrote:
Chameleon: Had a look and was surprised that nothing was listed. I assume you do this for some money on the side?

Hi ardy.... As Lyndal mentioned, I use the chameleon id as a forum posting id only. and don't sell on the id. Ebay was my main source of income for several years and I sold enough through the site to pay my mortgage, car regos, send the kids to private school etc. The business got to the point where I was having trouble keeping up on my own.

It reached the point where I had to make some tough decisions. Either continue to expand my ebay business and employ people to assist me or scale back to keep it under control. The Chinese where starting to produce cheap copies of the items I sold and ebay policies and direction where unpredictable, so I chose to scale back and start another business venture on the side. ( a prime lamb production business )

With hind sight, It would appear that the timing of starting the new business venture was fortuitous and things have fallen into place with that one.

As a result I have scaled my ebay business back through natural attrition, lowering listing numbers from over 2500 to around 1700, spread across 3 ebay stores. I now spend around 2 full days a week on ebay but with recent improvements in sales could go full time again if necessary. With the lower Aussie dollar around 40 - 50% of my sales are coming from international sales and this is driving improved overall sales recently.

After all costs are taken into account, my accountants figures show I currently make around $35 per hour profit. When you consider this is done without any commute, sitting at home in my thongs and shorts, with river views from my office window, its not a bad way to make a living..

Ebay cops a lot of flack and it is true that some newer sites may be successful in selling some things ( particularly for local sales of larger, used items with local pick-ups ) , but for many smaller items and collectables, Ebay is still the Godzilla of selling sites with un-equeled global buyer numbers and simple selling systems.

Re: Small time seller

reallynicestamps — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 02:52:10 GMT

@ardy01

We do have an auction house like you describe, and yes we do spend a lot of time preparing and shipping lots.

https://sparks-auctions.com/2019/08/27/sale-31-on-september-27th-28th-2019/

We also have online live bidding, and mail a paper catalogue to about 500 collectors. More use the online catalogue.

And our fees are 15% Buyer Premium and 15% Seller Premium with a $25 minimum. Buyer pays shipping cost.

So for all our work we are collecting something like 30% or more of the selling price.

A little over double eBay and Paypal fees combined.

But eBay has expenses we don't have including the cost of vast amount of server space for more than a billion listings a day, which they keep available for 90 days.

And a customer service staff which is bigger than ours (which is basically Kate and Stephane in addition to their other jobs).

And more IT guys (we have a Matt).

When we had a retail B&M shop, one block from Canada's Parliament Hill, we had a staff of ten running store, website, eBay and other online business, and the auction. Once we (semi)retired, we were able to cut back a bit.

But some months eBay was our biggest seller. Often it was the second biggest income.

Re: Small time seller

gutterpunkz05 — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 04:08:07 GMT

@ardy01 wrote:
Hi Gutterpunk: I thought about this and what you say is true but ebay is not an auction house it is a market place to my mind.
They do not have people to pick the stuff up, phtograph it, display it and pack it up. They pay an auctioneer, bookeeper to handle the money, experts to ID stuff. That's off the top of my head from going to a few auctions.
I imagined ebay fees would be around 5% tops.

Last year due to weekend promos, I was able to reduce my combined ebay/paypal fees to 6%. massive savings, and yes very happy. But to expect ebay fees to be permanently set at 5%, is dreaming.

Ebay is a business, and unless they make a profit, then like all businesses, they close up shop.

Ebay has massive overheads, that would make a traditional auction house shudder.

For the service and reach that ebay provides, I reckon 10.9% is pretty fair. As for the paypal fees, I am more than happy to pay for the service, as it is the only form of payment I will accept.

I also deal with other traditional and online auction houses,on an almost daily basis, so yes I am more than happy with ebays fee structure.

Re: Small time seller

ardy01 — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 22:39:59 GMT

Thanks Guys, interesting insight into how you make a dollar here. The bit I was impressed with is the amount sold internationally. An unknown part of ebay I never expected.

Not sure I agree with ebays massive overheads, it is software mostly, I worked in that world for 20 years so I am skeptical of the costs. It has more to do with how they run the company than the size of the overheads. This software has been around in its basic form for a long while.

Re: Small time seller

max-power-models — Sat, 28 Sep 2019 20:28:56 GMT

I've moved to FB.