topic Re: REDUCE MY FEES in Selling

REDUCE MY FEES

bmr4x4 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:44:20 GMT

How can I reduce my ebay selling fees. They are currently 9.5% of my sale. with Paypal another 3.5% thats 13% I am losing on every sale!! Is there anyway of reducing the final value fee?

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

i-love-my-sheep — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:55:26 GMT

Put the price of your stock up if you are losing out on every sale. If there was a way to reduce fees, we'd all be doing it!

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

horizon1907 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:09:18 GMT

bmr, I'm afraid to say that everybody is in exactly the same boat as you. There is no way around it.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

englishrosegardens — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:22:37 GMT

For a start you could close your shop and save $19.95 or more every month (depending on the type of shop you have). Your selling fees would increase to 9.9% but unless you sell a lot of items the saving on the shop fee would be more than the extra .4% in selling fees.

If you sold $1,000 a month, your selling fees would increase by $4 but you'd still save $15.95 if you currently pay for a basic shop. You need to do the sums on when it's worth having a shop and when it isn't.

You get 40 free listings a month if you don't have a shop and they can be either auction or BIN. Most people are able to use AR (auto relist) so the listings run for 4 cycles and still only count as one listing, so you could have 40 different listings run all month (or longer if you do them on 10 days) with the standard free listings.

Having a shop is of no benefit if you only have a few listings. You're only lining ebay's pockets. Yes, the fees do bite, but if we pay for extras that we don't need, we can't blame someone else.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

clarry100 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:28:29 GMT

We have 3 basic stores and our FVF's are 7.9%. I note you have a store so your FVF's should not be more than 7.9%.

Remember that with a store if you use auctions then you pay $1.50 for each one. You don't get these free, only your BINs.

Also PayPal fees are 2.4% + 30-cents transaction fee. So not sure where your 3.5% comes from.

This will change on 12th Feb by the way.

After that date if you have more than $2500 per month in aggregate sales the PayPal fees will be 2.2% + 30-cents.

If under the $2500 then you will pay 2.6% + 30-cents.

We have a total of 5 selling IDS and overall between ebay and PayPal fees we average just under 15% of total sales in their fees.

About pretty normal I'd say and if I knew of any other way to reduce this I would be onto it.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

robinsonmarineparts — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:11:29 GMT

@bmr4x4 wrote:
How can I reduce my ebay selling fees. They are currently 9.5% of my sale. with Paypal another 3.5% thats 13% I am losing on every sale!! Is there anyway of reducing the final value fee?

Sell less.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

digital*ghost — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:23:21 GMT

There are a couple of ways to reduce fees, and also to reduce the impact of some of the fixed fees (for example, the store subscription fee - $19.95 per month is better spent on up to 200 free listings rather than 10, plus more stock and variety etc, also tends to increase traffic, if you can manage it that is).

Not using free postage can reduce overall fees, depending on how your business model is set up and whether buyer have a tendency to buy more than one item. As FVF is charged on the total a buyer pays, it means the less a buyer pays, the less FVF eBay gets, which means if you can combine and reduce postage costs for buyers, everybody (except eBay) is a bit better off.

As far as I know, your eBay FVF should only be 8% with a store - it's fashion, tech accessories, media and collectibles that only go down to 9.5%.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

davidc4430 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:25:21 GMT

unfortunately this is how big business works, creat a monopoly then screw everything you can outta the mugs that have no reasonable alternative but to use your said monopoly. so until an alternative to ebay appears in the online selling market to give ebay some competition sellers will be screwed. not holding my breath waiting.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

wehavethatau — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 05:58:43 GMT

Make a ton of sales and apply for a better rate

My eBay rate is 6.8% and PayPal 1.5%

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

phantomchris1984 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 15:37:31 GMT

im shocked at the cost of fees these days.

i just sold some items with free postage,im not doing that again, im adding a small fee of about $2.50 or $3, nothing too much but it helps me out and does not deter too much.

so annoying that ebay charges a fee on postage now, a service they dont provide but we do.

its like as if i walk in the bank and they charge me a food fee and dont provide me any food, thats not a service the bank provides they arnt a cafe, and to charge something for nothing is illigal. a scam. so angry bout that.

if ebay wants to give me something for that fee on postage like free envelopes or stamps, but to provide nothing is illigal, its a seperate fee not a fee to list but on postage only!!!!

in the listing too write in bold that you prefer other options above paypal, some may still use paypal out of laziness but some may use cheaper methods.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

davewil1964 — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:07:03 GMT

Most will definitely use Paypal when a seller stresses they prefer not to be paid with it.

After all, the buyer doesn't pay the fees and goods and money have been known to disappear with bank deposit.

And eBay's fees on postage are legal. This was all thrashed out last year when they introduced it.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

kayaks2fish — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:09:50 GMT

Even at 13% the fees represent very good value for money.
No where else can you get such low cost of sales!
If you run your own web site and use Google Adwords to generate business it will cost you heaps more like up to 30%
If I could have a few hundred thousand in extra sales at 13% I would take it every day.
Our eBay fees run at 6.4% and Paypal at 1.6% but this is a product of volume.

You cant expect eBay or anyone else to give thier sales platform for free.
Being in business large or small incurs costs which need to be built in to your pricing structure

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

cq_tech — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 21:03:08 GMT

I don't believe anybody is stupid enough to suggest that eBay should be providing the service that they do for nothing, but having said that, I'd very much appreciate it if eBay would leave their sellers to their own devices instead of trying to run everybody's businesses they way they'd like to see them run. Their constant interference is becoming tedious and in many cases is costing sellers money. Sure, provide the venue and we'll gladly pay a fair price for it, but keep your grubby paws out of our businesses and allow us to run them the way we see fit. In other words eBay, butt out!

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

blue_arroz — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 21:59:58 GMT

@warehouse-clearance-sale wrote:
Even at 13% the fees represent very good value for money.
No where else can you get such low cost of sales!
If you run your own web site and use Google Adwords to generate business it will cost you heaps more like up to 30%
If I could have a few hundred thousand in extra sales at 13% I would take it every day.
Our eBay fees run at 6.4% and Paypal at 1.6% but this is a product of volume.

You cant expect eBay or anyone else to give thier sales platform for free.
Being in business large or small incurs costs which need to be built in to your pricing structure

How does one achieve 6.4% in fees for each transaction? I understand how you got the 1.6% for Paypal.

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

kizacks — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:13:37 GMT

....

Re: REDUCE MY FEES

digital*ghost — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:53:08 GMT

@warehouse-clearance-sale wrote:
Even at 13% the fees represent very good value for money.
No where else can you get such low cost of sales!
If you run your own web site and use Google Adwords to generate business it will cost you heaps more like up to 30%
If I could have a few hundred thousand in extra sales at 13% I would take it every day.
Our eBay fees run at 6.4% and Paypal at 1.6% but this is a product of volume.

You cant expect eBay or anyone else to give thier sales platform for free.
Being in business large or small incurs costs which need to be built in to your pricing structure

Value for money is a bit relative. I've heard some people say a McDonald's burger is good value for money just because it's cheaper than a gourmet burger at a fine dining restaurant, but cheaper doesn't necessarily truly mean better value.

And, 13% is probably on the lower scale of average cut for many sellers, particularly those who are not operating businesses at all, let alone high volume ones, and those whose items incur a postage cost that makes up a significant portion of the total sale price. (Case in point, someone selling $100 items with $5 postage incurred a minimal fee rise when FVF was introduced on postage. Someone else selling $20 items with $20 postage suddenly had their fees doubled on much lower-value items).

No one expects eBay to provide their services for free, but for what the majority of sellers here get, there's no way I would call eBay good value. (I'm an average seller, with a store, my fees are acceptable and I don't begrudge them....too much, but I can most certainly understand why many others do, especially when a lot of them have nearly tripled in the last couple of years).