Quick Calculations to Determine if Item is Worth Selling

[xvoodoomanx]

Just looking for some rough guidance to determine if item is worth selling.

Under the Managed Payments it looks like my categories have roughly 12 -13% Final Value Fees.

Also get charged 0.30 on top of FVF for each sale. 

I sell low dollar trading cards, used records mainly. A lot of my items sell for $1.50 to $6.

Now .30 doesnt sound like much but is a large percentage of items that sell for under $2.

Add in shipping and it seems like I am only keeping about 60-62% of the total value of items sold.

Is it no longer worth the effort to sell inexpensive items? Is there a certain minimim sale price you all use or keep in mind before even listing?

I have already figured out:

1. Keep items under 1 pound (unless qualifies for media mail)

2. Use eBay Standard Envelope for shipping trading cards.

But...so much of the percentage of my low dollar items is being eaten up by the increased fees under Managed Payments PLUS the 0.30 charge on top.

I would appreciate any guidance.

Thank you...

[Anonymous]

Never sell anything you aren't willing to give away free. That's all you need to know.

[xvoodoomanx]

Lol. 

That's actually good advice and probably accurate. 

But I was looking for something more concrete.

[soh.maryl]

When listing items for sale, it's a good idea if the seller takes into consideration the total costs of selling an item BEFORE listing it.

Your final value fee will be calculated on the total your buyer pays you, item price, shipping cost and state sales tax, if any.  

Not sure why you would "add in shipping" since your buyer pays you for shipping and you, in turn, pay the carrier.

Frankly, your prices pretty much guarantee that you won't make much, if anything, and that you will actually be paying buyers to take your things off your hands.  If that's your business plan, then okay.  There are many experienced eBay sellers who will not ever list anything for a starting price of less than $20 and plenty of others who would sneer at that price.

If you will study it carefully, in most categories the fee has increased minimally and the FVF is not your problem, it's your prices. 

[rosszonebricks]

I primarily sell 'low dollar' items as well, and I shoot for charging double what I paid for the item.  This comfortably covers all fees, shipping supplies/labels, etc, plus the income tax.  This also covers wiggle room for offering some small discounts here and there, the occasional re-ship/loss due to mistake and still provides me with a reasonable (but not OMG I'm getting rich overnight) profit.

[2013grotz · Accepted solution]

FWIW, I looked through a lot of your listings and what @soh.maryl said is something you need to think about.  I used to have a lot of old cards and ended up shipping a lot of them to a consignment auction simply for what you've run into, plus the fact I had probably 400 different cards in an album overall which would have been hard to portion out and sell on ebay.  I ended up running about 15-20 of the better ones (graded coincidentally) on ebay and had mostly good luck getting rid of them (though I didn't get my PSA fees back).

For a lot of what you have up on ebay for 0.99 or 1.49 or the like (if I kept them up), I'd try to group them into lots and then assign a fixed-price to those.  (I'm even thinking of that with some of my stuff I got at $6+.) I see a lot of your stuff is up for auction too.  You basically never want to start an auction for anything less than your absolute low price you'd accept as a starting bid simply for the concerns you're bringing out.  Plus you never know if you're going to get bidders at all, or just get one bid for your low amount.  Ironically, it's almost better to sell as fixed price on the site these days with how buyers are thinking these days (I want it now, etc, etc).

It's kinda tricky to figure out what will work for both you and the buyers, simply because of so many misconceptions and the like.  To wit, I had to actually educate a seller about combining shipping on multiple items I purchased from them.  I'm not sure if there's buyers that just assume they're going to get hit with a shipping charge for each item they get from a specific seller.

Anyway, please excuse some of the rambling there, but hopefully the point I wanted to make will come out.

[xvoodoomanx]

Yes,

I agree the issue is my prices. Perhaps my wording was a bit unclear.

The advice of taking into account how much it costs to sell an item before even listing is very important, I agree.

I've been selling items that really cost me very little to acquire or were given to me.

As I have come to realize after being back selling on ebay for 2 months it may not be worth my time selling the $1 to $3 tradings cards and used $5 to $7 records.

Minimum sale price of $20 sounds lije a good ballpark for items.

[xvoodoomanx]

Thanks 2013grotz!

Right to everything you said and thank you for taking the time to look at my listings and respond.

I am going to have to re-think things!

[2013grotz]

>it may not be worth my time selling the $1 to $3 tradings cards and used $5 to $7 records.

Not so much "not worth your time", just think about making lots out of the lower-value stuff.  If you can put 5-6 items together and get even $10, you'd come out ahead.  FWIW, I list the stuff I do because I think I can get at least something out of them in the end.  If I don't, I either make them into lots or find other venues like garage sales (I know a couple of people that run them for charity, so it helps them out to get stock).

Don't be afraid to change up what you do with the stock you have that isn't going to let you come out ahead.

[xvoodoomanx]

Great advice!!

Thank you very much

[m60driver]

I try to net a minimum of $5 after costs and I just ballpark the fees at 15% and I have a good handle on shipping costs.  It takes me, on average, 10 minutes to take photos and list any one item.  You might be able to list cards well under 10 minutes using a cell phone.  But for me that $5 net comes out to $30 and hour.  I will sell for less to get rid of some old inventory that would not be a good fit for my local non-profit thrift shop where I donate my most of my buying mistakes.

[powell-memorabilia]

@2013grotz @xvoodoomanx 

100% agreed on bundling.  I just took a lot of smaller value items, bundled them, and increased the item pricing.  They are finally selling.  Buyers don’t want to pay $5 shipping on a $4 item, but are happy to pay $30 for a bundle of five.

[xvoodoomanx]

I need to work on making 'lots' out of my low dollar cards to increase the overall sale price when a sales does transact.

Part of my issue is that when listing my cards individually, I am able to finely target my listings in a way that the eBat search algorithm seems to like.

Foe instance, I can fill out all the Item Specifics in such a way ad to eesvribe exactly what the item (card) is.

Player. Year Set Condition etc.

I dont think this is possible to do when listing Lots....

[postingid7659]

How much is your time actually worth?

If I'm quick I can photograph, edit, write description and get listing going in about 10 minutes for an item from scratch.

If it's easy to pack in USPS boxes another 10 minutes or so to get it packed up and decide whether to print a label or pay at the counter.  

Then the trip to the post office is about half an hour if I have to stop and print labels and the line is short. 

So maybe I have 25 minutes average per item.  It's going to vary with how many items I sell in a given week, or day.  

Based on that I won't sell anything for less than $10, and if possible less than $10 profit. 

Baseball cards?  I'd get more value using them like clay pidgeons I think.   Unless they're old enough to be worth actual money. 

[mam98031]

The changeover to MP is likely the hardest on sellers that were in PayPal's micro payment program.  

PP also has a 30 cent fee for most of the sellers per transaction, so for most of us this is not a new fee.  But for those coming in from Micro payments in PP, they are use to paying 5 cents.  So this alone is a HUGE jump for them.

The only way to survive the move to MP is to increase pricing.  At the very least you need to raise everything by 25 cents.  But I'd suggest a little more than that because as you raise pricing so does your fees.  

Just round things off.  If you sell it for $4.70, then price it at 4.99.   Nothing can sell for .99 and free shipping.  You are paying your buyer to buy from you.  You need to increase those prices right away.

On your shipping that is 2.89, change that to allow for your fees on that money.  2.89 is media mail 1 lb rate.  You don't have to charge the exact amount.  Round high.  You have to package that item too and that costs money as well.

Where you can on these low $$ items, put them together and make a lot out of them instead of selling single cards.  

I respect the change can be very hard for some sellers.  Especially when you have to rethink and revise most everything you have done in the past.  I wish you nothing but the best.