How eBay can make you LOSE money on coins/bills

They do take 10% of paper currency sales, which killed me on my last lot. Still made 15 dollars but so did ebay.

 

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On top of the monetary expenses that can be quantified, think of the time and effort sellers put into listing items and all the work necessary to complete fulfillment after the sale. While there are valid reasons to sell certain items intentionally at a loss, it better be the exception rather than the norm otherwise the seller better find another means of putting bread on the table.

 

I crunch the numbers and have not lost money yet. I won't sell at a loss. I don't need a hobby that loses me money.

From ebay:
"Great news for sellers with an eBay Stores subscription! Final value fees have been reduced for listings on eBay.com and eBay.ca in the following categories:"

It then says coins, bills, stamps, 6%
I don't have a store though. I have to look into it. I don't think I'm high volume enough to make use of it. I'll have to crunch the numbers...

 

Use this tool to help figure your numbers:
http://www.fees.ebay.com/feeweb/feeillustrator

 

Ok cool, it looks like the cutoff is $500. $500 in sales would be more worth it to have a basic store. Maybe I should start one. Only by $0.05, but that's the starting point to make it worth it.

 

ebay started out as the worlds largest garage sale (way back when), and now they are trying to flush out the riff raff. If you can't make it worth their while (store volume) they need for you to pay for the opportunity.

 

I think they are just worrying about the bottom line and forgetting those little guys that made ebay what it is today. That's capitalism for ya.

 

thats odd shipping is usualy cheaper then the usps

 

If you charge $1.69 what it costs to ship 3 oz in the US you lose money.. you'd have to charge atleast 1.69+10% to not lose money from shipping since they charge 10%

 

Yes, a profit for eBay.

 

That is the price if you pay yearly. My math was with the monthly fees. I don't always have the time/products to sell hundreds of dollars worth on ebay each month.

 

For the people who talk about how they lose money with their low selling prices and free shipping, no one is making you sell that way. Set a starting price that you can live with and charge for shipping. Lots of people do it and they still manage to sell. Free shipping is the most overrated option there is. Why should you take that automatic loss from your sale price when you don't have to? There are a lot of people out there charging $3-$4 to ship single coins and they're selling like crazy.

 

eBay actually gives you a better ranking in the Best Match search (which is what most buyers use) if you offer free shipping. It might make a difference if a few more potential bidders see your listing.

 

I suppose I'm not a standard buyer according to eBay. I almost never use Best Match search, only when I have a rough idea what I'm looking for and hope the search engine drums up something close to what I think I'm looking for. Otherwise I use: number of bids (for auctions) to see what is of interest to other bidders, lowest price first to hunt for cheap items, and highest price first to zone in on high quality items.

 

My point is, as a seller, some factors may need to be considered when setting shipping and whether to offer FREE shipping. But as a buyer, I don't care because I just factor in the S&H into my bids.

 

I think you make a very valid point. Everyone needs to customize their selling decisions based on their products and average fee percentages. Here is what I mean.

The real reason to offer free shipping to your customers is to obtain "Top Rated" seller status which yields a 20% discount on FVF & better exposure in E-Bay searches. That 20% discount is equal to 1.2% of the item price based on an E-Bay Store fee of 6%. But if your selling model is a lot of low value coins and your average item price is $10, then the base shipping cost of $1.69 represents 16.9% of your total item price. It makes absolutely no sense to offer free shipping to get a 1.2% discount while in the process giving away 16.9%.

However, if you have an E-Bay coin store that sells mostly higher priced coins with an average item price of $200, then the 1.2 % discount nets you a savings of $2.40 while the $1.69 shipping only represents 0.845% of your total item cost. Now I know what you guys are going to say, what about insurance and signature confirmation costs? Signature confirmation costs $2.10 for any coin valued over and as a seller you must buy that in order to comply with E-Bay rules in case a seller decides to try to rip you off which happens frequently. So if you want to add those costs into the fold factoring what percentage of your coins sell for more than $250, be my guest.

But the biggest ripoff on E-Bay is insuring your coins. The chance that the USPS is going to lose or damage your coin that is packaged securely in a padded mailer with a barcoded label is less than 1%, and I submit that it is far less than 1%, but lets use 1% for arguments sake. I submit that people should self insure (ship w/o insurance) unless the price of the coin represents more than 1% of your yearly sales. The math is complicated, and will vary from seller to seller, but each seller should determine their own threshold for purchasing insurance. But I promise you, if you are purchasing insurance for coins valued less than $100, you are absolutely losing money.

I guess the point of this really long post is that there is no easy answer to what you should do as an E-Bay seller. It is very much like the rest of life, it all depends on your circumstances.

 

Always use free shipping.

If you want to sell an item for $100 with $10 shipping, put it up for $110 "free shipping"

It doesn't change your fees. It makes your item sell better because it will be more likely to come up in search engines. Also, people feel like they are getting "free shipping" even though nothing in life is free. It makes it easier for them to see what they are paying and they like that.

 

Broseph, that sounds like a good strategy especially for B.I.N. items where sellers set the price. They take a risk however with low priced auctions starting at near zero. It's also not easy to stomach if buyers ship worldwide. I could offer free shipping to North America and eat the $5, but if I ship out overseas that ship cost could easily triple or worse, and it gets much worse with expensive and/or bulky items.