Ebay is getting too expensive to sell on

[roverlordoffroadspares]

I'm starting to think is it really worth sellling on ebay, we get charged fees on what we sell then we get slugged again on a ebay fee on the postage. We don't profit on postage, and actually loose money, we also have to pay GST on the postage costs also . It we inflate the postage to cover these costs then the customer will shy away as postage is too high. If you increase postage to cover the fees then eBay get an even bigger slice as they take a fee on the higher postage charge.

Seems a win win situation for Ebay, but not so win win for the seller.

May be we should all start selling   just the item and stating postage will be charged separately direct to customer ?

Then ebay won't get a fee on postage cost .

  Ebay should take a good look at the situation, if it wasn't for sellers then ebay would have no revenue.

[lukaso12]

Just want to Amplify the opinions that eBay is becoming a seriously expensive option to sell anything now, 11% or more is robbery!! PLUS PAYPAL WHICH IS FORCED UPON YOU!!!!!
This is growingly unattractive to so many now, I and my peers have withdrawn several items and used other vendors quite successfully now without what appears to be expense and bureaucratic greedy explotation, I'm frankly disgusted to be paying some $270 in fees to sell a couch!! get real eBay and come back to earth or you'll inherit the reputation of being a greedy business which we don't need anymore of .. your making this service cost prohibitive to the very people that helped you grow it!

[davewil1964]

You are correct. ish.

If you are selling large pickup items that don't require a geographically large potential market, then eBay is not the ideal site.

If, on the other hand, you WANT that greater exposure, eBay is the best game in town at the moment.

Horses for courses, but it comes down to sellers researching their probable market and devising their selling strategies accordingly.

[thebossesaccount]

An alternative -

Rent a retail shop for (say) $500.00 per week plus overheads.  The physical shop will open 9-5 for maybe 6 days a week and you have assocaiated staff costs..

Now workout what your selling costs are and EBay will look pretty attractive.

[grevillea0_4]

I agree. Ebay is a rip off to seller when using its service to offload items. Not just Ebays fees they then slug you for postage fees on top of that. Just when you think you have been overcharged enough along comes PayPal and kick you in the guts again with their commission of 2.6% plus 30 more cents for their benefit. This is a total rip off to the seller who ends up walking away with a thready deal after all these rip off fees come out. I will never sell on EBay again nor receive the money transaction through PayPal. I will use a more seller friendly source to pedal my wares in the future. 

[davewil1964]

Good luck with that. And with setting up your own merchant facility - if you reckon Paypal charges a lot, wait until you start playing with banks.

[toy_master]

I agree it’s ridiculous fees going up and charging you on full amount even though you don’t make anything on shipping it’s like they’re the government charging what they want. They won’t have a business if we stopped selling. This model works if your selling second hand goods you just want to get rid of that you have had for years and not to bothered like what eBay was originally set up for. Now you have distributors and big companies selling on here so how can you compete with them. It’s wrong this should be $1 to list an item under $100 and that’s it with a 1% PayPal fee. Then people could actually earn money and no big business should be allowed to sell on here either

[knewdoors]

agree..after a pretty decent January the go-slow has began..my store is back in the dark until some algorithm decides OK we'll toss you some breadcrumbs of sales...its so annoying...and unpleasant...ZERO sales last week..you feel like nothing's going to work no matter how many times you try to improve things...and amidst all of the down side stuff you get charged massive fees not too mention the paypal slice...

[everard6920]

eBay, imo, is much more competitive than it used to be, largely due to the increasing number of international sellers targeting the Australian market. You need to look at ways to set your business apart. What you did ten years ago won't necessarily work in today's market. You might mean changing up what you're selling - anything from increasing your range to moving out of a product line entirely and into another.

At the end of the day, nobody is being forced to sell here. If you're not happy, then try different platforms, or do something else entirely.

Mine is a niche market. Nobody else sells most of the items that I sell. There are a few international sellers who sell some of my items. For those, I'm not the cheapest, but I am 1. local, 2. I use original photos, rather than the stock photos they use, and 3. I write descrptions, while they simply write something like "brand new!" in their descriptions. 

I'm doing just fine on those items, despite not being the cheapest. It's not always about price.