Is it worth selling on ebay any more?

[richie1957]

I miss those days when I was able to run a fairly profitable cottage industry selling new & used CD's, LP's, & DVD's on eBay, but, alas, with the advent of streaming and online pirating, those days are now long gone.

Thanks to ever-rising eBay selling fees and Paypal fees, added to Australia's unreasonably high shipping & insurance fees, and lack of protection of sellers for uninsured items that are 'lost' during the shipping process - it is no longer worthwhile selling any item valued at less than $10 - especially international sales. Virtually no prospective customers are willing to pay insurance and shipping fees for such low cost items.

I'm better off just donating my collection to charity.

[wontthatone8]

Hi Richie 1957,

To answer your rhetorical question, my answer is a loud No!

The original concept of on line auctions was exciting for both buyer and seller. Over the years, this has changed to mostly Buy it Now items from major companies using ebay as a platform. The smaller seller has been deserted by ebay as fees and charges increase to the point where selling is unviable. Having to offer Free Post to compete with the majors just about kills off the smaller seller. Buyers no longer bid on auction items as they want the item NOW and can't wait to the end of the auction.I am lucky to attract a bid on the stuff I sell as auction items, meaning I have to make the start price higher in case I only get one bid. In the mean time, the pimply faced kids at ebay contact me regarding declining sales and suggest that to attract more bids I should start my auctions at $0.99, offer Free Post and Express Post as an option at a reduced rate. Also offer 0 days delivery time to meet "industry standards". These people making changes to ebay have never actually used their own system to sell anything.

Ebay is all about ebay profits. Their bottom line is more important than sellers exiting the system and going elsewhere or not bothering as the effort involved does not produce sufficient rewards.

I can't believe ebay has partnered with Spendle for item delivery. Swindle would be a better name if you read performance reviews. I am being bombarded with emails and ads on ebay promoting this company. I would like a cheaper alternative to Aust Post but Spendle does not do it for me. I also note that ebay seem to be herding us towards ebayPlus whether we want to or not. Another turkey from the kids at ebay who don't want to admit its a dud. So its a dud, but we will escalate.

[dazzledayz]

As far as Aus goes eBay is still the only real game in town ATM.

Amazon has not really broadened its offering, Gumtree is too localised and Facebook is super underdeveloped and full of numpties trying to sell a suitcase full of product for a few bucks.

I see plenty of sellers moving quite a bit in your product lines and I notice its older stuff that isn't streamed or available for download.

Prices have crashed here through overcompetition and lack of buyers though some numpties haven't worked out how to cost their efforts (I see plenty selling for what amounts to a near loss after costs, fees and post).

That seems to be the way of retail in Australia currently; margins have become wafer thin.

Until Morrison & Co decide to get off their high horse and start stimulating the economy from the bottom up, this will persist.

I knew what was coming on election night - Labor wanted to tax & spend, the LNP wanted to tax & keep.

The real problem is that even when these guys do get their surplus, they will have eroded their tax base to the point where they still won't be able to offer any economic stimulus without sacrificing said holy surplus.

Their economic management model is about 30 years old and looking very tired.

Ride it out is my advice, we are all suffering to some degree.

[love_of_cars]

Your post sounds a lot like a friend of mine who I've known for almost 20 years.  He has a physical shop selling pre-loved movies, CDs, books and so on.  He has hung on for as long as he can as E-books and streaming have taken over, and his older customers have all gone.  But just last weekend I found out he has started the process of closing down.  It was midday on a Saturday and he had only made one sale.

For him, it was the shop rent which was forcing him to give up.  For us sellers here it is the eBay and PayPal fees.  Life would be a little easier for us if eBay could somehow remove that 10% fee on shipping.  It makes our shipping seem more expensive than it has to be.

[padi*0409]

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@love_of_cars wrote:

Life would be a little easier for us if eBay could somehow remove that 10% fee on shipping.  

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They could. but then the dodgy sellers would start having $5.00 items with $100.00 shipping.

That was part (according to eBay) of the reason shipping fees were brought in.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@love_of_cars wrote:

Life would be a little easier for us if eBay could somehow remove that 10% fee on shipping.

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do you have any suggestions for how those sellers that build the price of shipping (what eBay call ‘Free Shipping’) into their Buy-Now price would benefit from removing the fee on shipping?  OR, should those sellers who offer ‘Free Shipping’ just view the fee on built-in shipping the price for offering this to buyer?

[dazzledayz]

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@padi*0409 wrote:

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They could. but then the dodgy sellers would start having $5.00 items with $100.00 shipping.

That was part (according to eBay) of the reason shipping fees were brought in.

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That wasn't the reason they introduced the fee, they simply wanted us to go over to "free" shipping.

A simple algorithm could have weeded out the postage scammers and would have actually been a good idea - anyone prepared to scam their eBay fees via elevated postage would have been more than happy to scam a customer.

Unfortunately, including postage in the product price makes repricing after postage increases a real chore.

With postage seperate, a simple change of postage policy does the job for all affected listings.

[springyzone]

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@richie1957 wrote:

I miss those days when I was able to run a fairly profitable cottage industry selling new & used CD's, LP's, & DVD's on eBay, but, alas, with the advent of streaming and online pirating, those days are now long gone.

Thanks to ever-rising eBay selling fees and Paypal fees, added to Australia's unreasonably high shipping & insurance fees, and lack of protection of sellers for uninsured items that are 'lost' during the shipping process - it is no longer worthwhile selling any item valued at less than $10 - especially international sales. Virtually no prospective customers are willing to pay insurance and shipping fees for such low cost items.

I'm better off just donating my collection to charity.

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I'd be inclined to say no, it's not worth your while if you have a lot of second hand items under $10.

It's not 2004 any more. We also had a little cottage industry that ticked along nicely for a couple of years or so, selling bits and pieces, some new, some used.

We were the queens of the universe. We decided who got a refund or how we handled any problems (not that we had many and no negs). Nothing got lost, not in the days before people could claim. Still had lots of fees of course, even then.

Your main problem these days with second hand is people making claims as you know.

Plus, as unfair as it might sound, customers don't want to pay high postage for a cheap item. It doesn't matter that that might be the exact Aust Post charge. The point is it is a turn off, pushes the price way up.

Doesn't mean you're out of options though. For small, cheaper items, what i would do if I were you is see if you can make small bundles, like with like and list on gumtree or marketplace or your local buy/swap/sell. They won't move as quickly as in ebay, but they will move. Your LP's & DVD's anyway. The Cd's may be a lost cause.

Or hold a garage sale. You're not going to get top dollar but then if you only have small items, it isn't such an issue.

Ebay doesn't want home sellers of bric a brac selling here any more, that's my impression.

Ebay is still good for cheap things that are new & can be posted cheaply and for dearer things like collectables & quality brands.

[chameleon54]

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@richie1957 wrote:

I miss those days when I was able to run a fairly profitable cottage industry selling new & used CD's, LP's, & DVD's on eBay, but, alas, with the advent of streaming and online pirating, those days are now long gone.

Thanks to ever-rising eBay selling fees and Paypal fees, added to Australia's unreasonably high shipping & insurance fees, and lack of protection of sellers for uninsured items that are 'lost' during the shipping process - it is no longer worthwhile selling any item valued at less than $10 - especially international sales. Virtually no prospective customers are willing to pay insurance and shipping fees for such low cost items.

I'm better off just donating my collection to charity.

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A similar thing happened to the main products I have sold for nearly ten years. Technology changed making some obsolete and the Chinese where selling low priced counterfeit copies of just about all of my items. My sales where in decline along with my enthusiasm.  

It would have been easy to just give up, but instead I changed what I was doing to meet the new markets. I still sell the old products on two selling id,s, but I have gone to rarer items that the Chinese have not copied and highlight the quality aspects of selling genuine factory issued items as opposed to " Cheap Chinese copies ". This has worked to stabilise sales on those two accounts, but they will never be like the glory days of ten years ago.

The other big change I made was to do extensive research using the advanced sold items tool on ebay to identify a new market and completely new range of products that where in demand and attracting very high prices and profit margins. Around 3 years ago I opened a brand new ebay store from scratch to sell those products. This has proved to be very successful and the new store currently sells as much or more than the existing two older stores combined. I have recently had my best month of sales for a number of years with sales coming very close to those achieved in ebays glory days of seven or eight years ago.

So is it still worth selling on ebay ???   Most definitely, but you have to be prepared to modify what you are doing and adapt to changing market conditions and the ever moving ebay goal posts.

[zanadoo_56]

As a buyer, eBay is still the best hope for collectors....and I collect some varied stuff.

For records, I still collect vinyl, with CDs as an alternative if available.  However, there's been an increase in sellers who don't PLAY the records to assess their quality accurately, and sellers who don't bother to include track listings (and that's for vinyl and CDs).  It is very frustrating.  For recent CDs of originally scarce vinyl I did find some sellers of what I was looking for.  But they were large businesses with dreadful feedback and high prices.  I ended up ordering what I wanted on Fishpond.

For old books, I'm always relieved to find a small seller who has what I want, otherwise it's the big outfits with bad feedback and a very flexible attituden re what Good Condition means.  I've got some books in a series that I'd like to own but they need to be published in a certain decade and to still be in good condition.  I'm not interested in a print on demand copy or something on Kindle.  eBay is still my best hope but I have to be VERY patient.  For current books...Book Depository is the way to  go.

Other stuff I collect generally only can be found from small sellers, and outside eBay there is no one else.  So I thank God for eBay. 🙂

As for Amazon....overpriced and they never seem to have anything worth buying.