Dare to Share

Make sure you factor in your fees when you come to selling stuff on eBay. I’ve made this mistake on a number of occasions and it’s cost me dearly when it comes to the auction ending and working out the amount of money I’ve actually made from my sale.I’ll be devoting a post to selling stuff on eBay at a later date but in the meantime I just want you to understand the fees that are charged.

eBay charges you for listing an item and then you get charged a final sale fee, which can vary a lot depending on the final price. If the buyer buys using Paypal you’ll get charged by them as well and if you withdraw that money from Paypal and it’s under £50 you’ll get charged again! Yes, you do seem to be getting charged every step of the way.

First of all take a look at the eBay Selling Fees page - although this can be quite tricky to understand, it gives you a general idea of how much you’ll be charged. The best thing to do is use an eBay Fee Calculator (no this is not something made by Casio although it would be fantastic if someone made such a device!). There are lots of these around but most are either out of date, based on the US eBay or just plain tricky to understand. I use ecal eBay Fee Calculator as this seems to be the easiest to use and they seem to keep everything up-to-date with eBays prices, which seem to change from month to month. The beauty of this calc is that it will also calculate your Paypal fees so you get your total amount that you’re left with. You’ll be amazed at just how much both eBay and Paypal take from you in total.

Here’s an example: If you sell something for £100 using Buy it Now then you would only receive £88.10. If you sold the same item via auction and ended up with £100 (from a 99p starting price) you’d end up with £90.

Summary

There’s no real way of reducing your costs. You could cut out the Paypal fees by not having Paypal as a payment option but then you’re less likely to sell your item as people like paying this way. eBay really does have you by the balls being the only (well, the only one that people use) online auction site so can charge you whatever they like and you’ll have to grin and bear it.

The important thing to remember it to factor in your potential fees to your item’s price and postage and packing costs.

Instead of eBay you could try to selling locally using Gumtree or your local newspaper. It really depends on what you’re selling - if you’re selling a dvd then you’ll be more successful with eBay, if you’re selling a chest of drawers then Gumtree might be a better choice.