Selling Low Priced Items

[colexsell4u]

I Notice A Lot Of Sellers Put Items On Ebay Worth Little As $3 To $10, Is It Really Worth It, As Ebay Fees Come Out Of Everything Sold??

[digital*ghost]

Depends what the item cost to begin with, I suppose, and the reasoning behind the pricing. I have quite a few items priced between $3-$10, and I feel it is worth it. I don't make a lot of profit on those items, but they're intended to be higher-turnover lower profit items to create / maintain / increase range and traffic, and they require much less effort from me to list and package. 

Some of them, I price that low because I want to get rid of them and I figure I'm better off with at least some, if not all, of the money I originally invested. 

[zelly888]

On a $3 item you would still make $2.70 so if you sold 100 items you would make $270 out of $300 to me that's a great outcome.

[bigbrickshop]

A great outcome? Not when you take out the cost to purchase the item, the PayPal fee and any listing fee.

[bigbrickshop]

Some high volume sellers will list some low cost fast-selling items to keep up their DSR percentages. They'd make little or no profit, or maybe a loss, on the items but would treat them as advertising.

[zelly888]

Theres no paypal fee when payment goes into your bank account.

[zelly888]

If you're in the business of selling then you have to be a Capitalist so if you don't make a profit then well that's just not good enough in my books.

[digital*ghost]

There's always more costs than the most obvious ones, so when I price something, whether it's under $5 or much higher, I always consider store subscription, PayPal fees, eBay fees, stock cost (including a percentage for shrinkage - be it loss, replacements, faulty items), packaging costs, running costs (that would be net access and hardware) and so on, and then arrive at a price that will cover those - sometimes individually, sometimes collectively, as well as allow a little for re-investment. For these items, I also look for things that no one else is generally selling so that I don't have to compete (price-wise). 

I have higher priced items, so I don't often have to go to special effort or expense to post a $3 item.

The lower priced items also help maintain cashflow, which I have found to be just as important as profit percentages, because they're currently allowing me to expand a little more rapidly than I have been before I introduced them. 

[davewil1964]

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@zelly888 wrote:

Theres no paypal fee when payment goes into your bank account.

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How do you convince the 95% of buyers who prefer to use Paypal to trust you, somebody they've never met?

As you have to offer an eBay defined safe payment method, of which Paypal is the most popular, you are generally going to be hit with some sort of fee. On the whole transaction, including postage.

[bigbrickshop]

I agree d*g. You can't have the same profit mark-up on every item and offering a variety of items at different prices usually leads to buyers making multiple purchases.