I use to collect baseball cards as a kid and recently got back into them. After getting several cards that I don’t care for I decided to put them on ebay. After I sold a bunch I realized, wow, I really did not gain much profit back selling them on ebay. The reason is because of the following factors: ebay fees, paypal fees, usps fees and supplies.
I found a real useful ebay calculator that works like a charm to find exactly what you will get after everything is said and done. Here is a few examples of selling some items and how much you actually make.
This is a Ty Cobb card which I sold on ebay for $149.99.
- Insertion Fee $0.50
- Final Value Fee $12.00
- Total eBay Fees $12.50
- PayPal Fee $4.74
- Total Fees $17.24
- Total Profit $131.98
Another example is selling a card on auction for $0.99 and only have on bidder and it sells for $0.99.
- Insertion Fee $0.50
- Final Value Fee $0.12
- Total eBay Fees $0.62
- PayPal Fee $0.42
- Total Fees $1.04
- Total Profit $-0.82
This seller would actually lose money selling this card for $0.99.
I noticed a tip of selling on ebay to reduce some of the fees is to make the shipping higher and the price lower. On PayPal when you are dealing directly and if you are lucky enough to sell something outside of PayPal, have the buyer send the money as a ‘gift’, PayPalwon’t take out any fees.
I think everyone is better off creating their own ecommerce site and selling items there rather than using PayPal. That way you will only be hit with shipping and merchant fees. If you are interested in building an ecommerce site contact me to discuss pricing.
