eBay Fees

Once you have an account with eBay, selling items through the website is very straightforward. However, some careful planning is required to help ensure you get the right price and keep any fees as low as possible. This post outlines the different approaches to selling through eBay and, roughly, how much it will cost. I met someone recently who sells between approx. £4,000 ($6200) every month on eBay, with total costs of less than 30%. Now that's a decent living!

Auction, Buy Now, Make Offer 

There are a number of ways of selling an item through eBay, all of which can help to sell it for a reasonable price. These include the following:

1. Auction: This is one of the most popular methods of selling an item. It allows interested buyers to bid for a limited period of time. The highest bidder wins the auction when it ends and buys the item. 
2. Auction with reserve: A reserve price can be set. This incurs a small additional fee, (generally between 10 pence and £1.30 (20 cents and $1.75) but prevents your item from being sold too cheaply. In some countries, there is a minimum reserve price, whereas others have no such rules. 
3. Auction with ‘Buy it now’: A ‘Buy it now’ button can be displayed alongside your item, which often tempts people who really want to secure the item and would rather not take the gamble of losing out in an auction.
4. Classified ad: Items can be sold on eBay with a fixed price. This is popular for high-value items such as a car or property. A fixed fee is payable, depending on what is being sold. 
5. Make offer: This is often available with items that are listed for sale in a classified ad. It allows interested buyers to suggest a price to pay and wait for the seller to accept or decline the offer.  

Calculate Your Fees

It’s important to be aware of the costs incurred when selling an item through eBay. In some cases these can easily escalate and the final costs can be more than the profit you had hoped to gain from the sale. The fees depend on what you are selling and how you want to sell it. Here are the fees that may be incurred:

1. Insertion fee: General items (not cars, holidays or property) incur an insertion fee ranging from free to around £1.30 or $2 (or whatever the equivalent currency of your country), depending on the starting price. Large items such as a car or property have a higher fee (in the UK, a car currently costs £10–14.99 and property costs £35).
2. Buy it now: Can be included in an item for auction and usually costs 20–40 pence or, in some cases, is free. Exceptions include large items such as a car where a ‘Buy it now’ price costs roughly the same as an insertion fee.
3. Reserve price: eBay charges 1–3% of the reserve price, although in some countries this is free up to a specific amount. If a reserve price is included, the insertion fee is based upon this value, not the starting price. In some countries, a maximum fee for the reserve price is applied.
4. Sale price (final value): eBay charges 9–10% of the final value up to a specific maximum, depending on the country. High value items such as cars are charged at a particular amount. 
5. PayPal: If your buyer pays via PayPal, then PayPal will charge a fee for handling the transaction. It charges roughly 20p or $0.30 per transaction, then between 1.4% and 3.4% of the sale price (final value), depending on the amount. In some countries, a fixed percentage is charged for each transaction. 

The Cost of Selling on eBay in the UK
Selling a collectible book through eBay with a starting price of £15 will incur an insertion fee of 50p. If the auction ends at £35, then eBay will charge 10%, which comes to £3.50. If the buyer pays via PayPal, then PayPal will charge 20p plus 3.4% of £35, which is £1.19. So although the book sold for £35, you will be paid £29.61 because the fees amount to £5.39. There are also further additional (optional) fees if you include more than one photograph when selling an item and use other selling tools. These are covered later in a forthcoming post.

Watch Those Fees 
Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with all the bells and whistles of selling on eBay, which can help to tempt buyers into purchasing. However, it can become expensive, especially for low-value goods. Add together the cost of an insertion fee, reserve price, extra photographs, a colourful theme, the commission fee for postage and the 9–10% charged on the final price, and you can easily see the total fees exceeding 20% of the value of the sale.

Hot Tips

• Carefully calculate the total fees for a number of different ways of selling an item on eBay before deciding which one is best.
• eBay occasionally holds promotional offers where insertion fees are free or other fees are reduced.

There are So Many Ways to Sell Online!

Text is from How to Make Money on the Internet by Rob Hawkins (Flame Tree Publishing 2012). Available at all good bookshops, Amazon, and direct from the Publisher.

Coming Next:  eBay Planning

Setting up to Sell on eBay

eBay is one of the internet’s most successful websites for selling unwanted, second-hand and new items, ranging from toys and computer equipment to bicycles and cars. If you want to sell your own items on eBay, there are a few things you must do before you begin selling, including registering and choosing a payment method.

Register with eBay 

You have to create an account with eBay before you can start selling items through it. Depending on where you live in the world, eBay has a website relative to your country. For example, if you live in the UK, then visit www.ebay.co.uk, whereas if you live in the USA, visit www.ebay.com, and if you live in Australia, visit www.ebay.com.au. Some of these websites are slightly different, but in all cases there will be a ‘register’ button near the centre of the screen. Click on this to create an account with eBay.

Enter Your Personal Details 

It’s important to enter your details accurately and avoid any false information. You will need an email address that doesn’t have an eBay account connected to it. Choose a suitable user ID for yourself, which is at least six characters long, but be prepared to try a few variations as someone may have already taken the name you want to use.  Don’t forget to read through any user agreements and privacy policies to make sure you are happy to register with eBay. According to the registration web page, eBay does not rent or sell your personal information to third parties without your consent.

User ID Don’ts

An eBay user ID cannot include spaces or tabs, special characters or symbols (for example, £ or &), but can include asterisks, underscores, full stops and dashes. Your first or last name cannot be used along with email or website addresses. 

Password Pointers  

You will need to think of a suitable password to go with your eBay account. This will enable you to log in to your eBay account and sell items. eBay has some rules and helpful advice concerning passwords, which are as follows:

1. Password length: Your password must contain at least six characters.
2. Symbols and letters: The password should contain at least two of the following – upper-case or lower-case letters, numbers or special characters such as a question/exclamation mark, underscore or @ symbol.
3. ID or email: Do not use your email address or eBay user ID as the password.
4. Obvious words: Avoid using obvious passwords, such as ‘abc123’ or ‘Password’.
5. Personal stuff: Don’t use personal information that can easily be guessed, such as your name, phone number, or date of birth.

Identity Confirmation

After entering your personal details and clicking on the ‘Continue’ button, the next screen to appear may inform you that eBay needs to confirm your identity. This can be completed by either asking eBay to telephone you, or by entering details of your bank, credit or debit card. If you choose to request eBay to telephone you, an automatic phone call will be made to you (landline only) and a four-digit verification code will be read out. You will need to enter this code on eBay’s website to complete registration. If you choose to enter your credit or debit card details, complete the relevant fields. eBay states that it does not use these details for any other purpose than confirming your identity.

Paying for eBay Fees

eBay requires a method of payment to be set up to enable you to pay for advertising items and to pay any commission and other fees when an item has been sold. There are a number of different methods of payment, which are explained as follows:

1. PayPal: This has become a popular method of payment with a reputation for reliable and secure transactions. You have to create a PayPal account and either enter your bank, credit or debit card details. This will be used to extract payments or credit funds when you sell something through eBay. For further details, visit www.paypal.com. 
2. Direct Debit: Bank or Building Society account details need to be supplied to eBay and eBay will automatically send a request to your financial institution to deduct any fees for selling items. This type of payment takes roughly 19 days to set up.
3. Credit card: Enter your Visa or MasterCard credit card details online via eBay and payments will be taken each month for any fees incurred when selling items. 
4. Cheque or postal order: eBay can issue an invoice and payment can be made via a cheque or postal order. Once eBay receives the cheque or postal order, allow seven to 10 business days for the payment to clear. 

Receiving Payments

Items you sell through eBay need to be paid for and there are a number of methods of receiving payments. These include the following:

1. PayPal: All eBay sellers must offer PayPal as a payment method. This is a secure online payment method, which allows you to get paid quickly without sharing any of your financial information with the buyer. As a seller, the disadvantage of being paid using PayPal is that it incurs a fee  
2. Cheque or postal order: This is one of the lengthiest methods of payment as it is best to wait until the cheque or postal order has cleared before posting or releasing the sold item. However, this method avoids fees incurred with PayPal.
3. Credit or debit card: If you operate a business that can take credit or debit card payments, then this method can be used to receive payment for an item sold through eBay. However, this type of sale incurs a fee, just like PayPal.
4. Pay on collection: Most sellers prefer this method of payment, especially where the buyer collects or the seller delivers in person. No fees are incurred via eBay for this type of payment. 

Hot Tips

Your User ID for your eBay account is displayed when you sell items, so choose one that is relevant and certainly not offensive.

Replace letters for numbers in a password. For instance, a password such as ‘London’ could replace the ‘o’ for a zero to become ‘L0nd0n’.

There are So Many Ways to Sell Online!

Text is from How to Make Money on the Internet by Rob Hawkins (Flame Tree Publishing 2012). Available at all good bookshops, Amazon, and direct from the Publisher.

Coming Next:  Sell on eBay Fees

Planning to Sell Online

One of the simplest ways of making money on the internet is to advertise and sell unwanted items. But how much should you sell them for, when should you sell, how will the items be delivered or collected and who will buy them? This and the posts that follow will provide the answers. 

What Have You Got to Sell?

Before the internet, unwanted items were usually sold by placing an advertisement in the classified-ads section of the local paper, or by sticking a postcard-sized notice in the window of the post office or newsagent, or on the noticeboard of the local community centre. The internet has opened up a whole new market (a global one in some cases) and created a potentially vast audience of buyers. However, the first concern before you start thinking about selling, is listing the goods that you want to sell. If you’ve raided the shed or attic and found a wide assortment of unwanted items, note down their exact details and don’t sell them yet. First, it’s important to determine their potential value and work out the best way of selling them, giving thought to whether they can be delivered or collected.

Research

The starting point for selling items is to arm yourself with plenty of information and knowledge about the best ways and best times to sell. Speak to any experienced market trader or shop owner and they will know what type of stock sells well at particular times of the year, who their customers are, and what prices these customers are willing to pay.

Pricing 

Deciding on the price you want to sell an item for isn’t always easy. You may have paid a reasonable price for a bicycle five years ago, but it may only be worth a tenth of its value now. The easiest way to fix on a price is to look for similar items that have sold and find out how much they sold for. Websites such as eBay allow you to search for items that have been sold by selecting ‘Completed listings’ down the left side of the screen. It’s also helpful to look for similar items that are currently for sale to help determine whether you should sell on the same website at a cheaper price.

New to Old

Sometimes, second-hand prices of equivalents may not be available, so it might prove difficult to ascertain a reasonable selling price. If this is the case, find out if the item is still available to purchase brand new and how much it sells for. In many situations, sellers calculate the second-hand price as around 50% of the brand new price, but check for versions, editions and updates, which may affect the value of your item. For instance, a first edition of a book is usually worth more than a later edition.

Valuable and Collectible

Where an item is of collectible interest or appreciating value, it’s important to arm yourself with as much information about it to ensure potential buyers are assured they are buying a genuine product. If possible, look at the same items for sale elsewhere and find the features that are highlighted in the description. Does it help to have the original packaging or specific accessories? Are there any serial numbers or manufacturer’s markings that signify a genuine item? Can you obtain any information from a collector or auction house to confirm a product is genuine and collectible?

Auction Behaviour 

If you can find items already selling that are similar to what you have to sell, it’s worth spending a few days watching the auctions. Look at the history of the bidding to see whether all the bids are placed at the very end of the auction. See how many different bids are made and, although you won’t be able to see who bids, you can see the number of people bidding. 

Timing

Selling an artificial Christmas tree during summer isn’t going to be as easy as selling it during the weeks leading up to 25 December. Whilst some goods are in greater demand according to the season and weather, it may be less easy to determine the best time to sell others. Expensive items that are not obvious gifts may be easier to sell if you avoid times of the year when most people have large expenditure to outlay, such as around and after Christmas and during July and August, when many people are on holiday. 

Timing and Competition

If the marketplace in which you want to sell your product or products is already flooded with similar goods, this might not represent a good opportunity. That said, you may be able to turn this to your advantage, if, for instance, you sell at a cheaper price than the competition and offer more features or accessories to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, if you are selling an electronic toy, but don’t want to offer a cheaper price than the rest of the similar toys for sale, include extras such as batteries and accessories.

Delivery or Collection 

It’s essential to decide whether you want to deliver an item you are selling or insist that the buyer collects. In the case of delivery, you may want to use a courier service or a similar service with a traceable delivery. This will help ensure the item is delivered, minimizing the risk of the buyer claiming they have not received their goods (which can affect your ratings on eBay and other selling sites). However, it’s important to calculate the cost of delivery and state this when selling the item, so you don’t lose out on postage costs.

Collection Capers 

If an item you are selling is simply too large, difficult, heavy or fragile to post, then it’s important to stress that collection in person is the only method. However, be prepared for buyers to insist that a bicycle, for example, can be dismantled and boxed for collection by a courier. Even if the buyer arranges the collection, you will still have to source the packaging and box the item. 

Hot Tips

• Don’t try to make a profit on postage. Some buyers are dissuaded by high delivery costs.
• An item can be watched on eBay by selecting it from the results listing, then click on the button labelled ‘Add to Watch list’.
• Honesty pays. If you are trying to sell something that is defective, such as a bike with a broken chain, make sure potential buyers are aware of this.

There are So Many Ways to Sell Online.

Text is from How to Make Money on the Internet by Rob Hawkins (Flame Tree Publishing 2012). Available at all good bookshops, Amazon, and direct from the Publisher.

Coming Next:  Setting up to Sell on eBay