wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
Best regards,
Are you sure you have a basic store? That sounds like a starter store - 250 insertions, $.30 for additional insertions. A basic store has 1,000 insertions (ant least), and $.25 for additional.
Check here - https://www.ebay.com/sub/manage
All good til cancelled items use an insertion each month until sold - that does not change with a store or what store level you have.
What eBay brings to the party is buyers. So the question is, regardless of how fees are structured, do you feel you get good value for the total you give eBay? I made a good living for 15 years, so obviously for me the answer was yes, but it is a question every seller must answer for themselves.
You say you have bins of stuff to list, but the fee holds you back. There some easy things you can do to make better use of the 250 insertions, and some math that can help you decide if a basic store would be a better value for you.
Do not sell items for $1 with $7 shipping. The fees are going to cost you more than the $1, causing you to lose $ on the sale. Even $2 plus $7 shipping, you’re going to make about $.40, assuming you got the item for free. Either find a way to make a larger grouping of the item, or give the item away - it will save you the effort of packing and shipping for no profit. End the items that are not going to put $ in your pocket, and use the insertions to list higher priced items, so you make money on your listings. You can determine the lowest amount you want to make on each sale, and work backwards to what the minimum selling price must be.
A basic store on a month to month basis is $28. It saves you about 1% on final value fees. I assume you have a goal for $ to sell each month, so you can calculate what the 1% would save. How much more will you sell if you list more? You can play with some estimates there. eBay branded shipping supplies are not low cost, but the $25 coupon still counts for something - you can determine how much it would be worth for you. This way you can determine at what point the higher store fee would save you $ overall.
There has been no policy change. You are paying $.30 for insertions over the 250 included with your store. It is possible that in prior months, new listings were always within the 250, and only the renewal of prior months' listings were the ones that went over. These would have been paid from your payouts, if you had available funds, assuming you have your checking account selected as preferred for selling costs.
If you look at your sales performance report for this year, or a selected month, you can see any insertion fees paid - open the eBay fees section in the chart below the graph - https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales
You have a counter on your selling home page that tracks your free insertions - it changes with each relisting or new listing. It does not count paid insertions.
I am surprised there isn’t a reference to the item # attached to each relisting charge, as we had under the old billing system, but I have not had cause to go looking for it. I assume you have looked through your payment account for the charges?
eBay has never tracked insertion fees by item, but you can judge that by the age of the listing. The age is a better indicator, since the insertion fee is going to vary by how many items you happen to list prior to that item relisting.
In seller hub, you can add the original listing date to the display of active items, and sort on that column to see your oldest items.
You don't need to know which item the fees apply to for your taxes - but that doesn't change my opinion that the detail should be available. Have you looked through your payment account for details?Have you tried downloading any of the available reports to see if the details are there? I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly where the details may be found, so I will ask another mentor.
As I mentioned, I think age is a better indicator of failing items, but you make your own choices.
You can offer eBay the suggestion about tracking insertion fee by listing - see this page -
@mr_lincoln have you see insertion fees linked to item #s details? I haven't had an insertion fee or upgrade fee since we switched to managed payments, so I'm not sure where to look for the details, do you?
@wooden_flower wrote:
You don't need to know which item the fees apply to for your taxes - but that doesn't change my opinion that the detail should be available. Have you looked through your payment account for details?Have you tried downloading any of the available reports to see if the details are there? I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly where the details may be found, so I will ask another mentor.
As I mentioned, I think age is a better indicator of failing items, but you make your own choices.
You can offer eBay the suggestion about tracking insertion fee by listing - see this page -
@mr_lincoln have you see insertion fees linked to item #s details? I haven't had an insertion fee or upgrade fee since we switched to managed payments, so I'm not sure where to look for the details, do you?
Hi @wooden_flower and @brha619
First, Insertion fees are paid to eBay when an item is listed or relisted. For Auctions, eBay will Refund that to the Seller if the item sells on that particular auction cycle where the Insertion Fee was charged. This pic is from my Recent activity file where two train cars sold auction format that had been Relisted with a $ 0.25 Insertion fee each, note the values are in black. Had I Relisted them 3 times paying the $ 0.25 Insertion fee each time eBay will ONLY refund ONE Insertion fee that applies to the auction cycle the item sold in.
Here is a screen shot of my Recent activity file that shows the Insertion Fees charged to items I Relisted, these too are Auction format and the charge values are in red.
While the Recent activity file does relate a charged or refunded paid insertion fee to a specific item those Insertion fees do not appear to show up on the transaction details (I checked and could not find any 25 cent line items). This make sense since each time an item is Relisted it is assigned a new eBay Item number. And while an insertion fee may have been charged to a particular item under a new eBay Item number there is no guarantee that item will sell but the fees are still paid.
For tax purposes, the Reports page has the option to download a CSV formatted database which allows for ALL fees paid which includes Insertion fees. Here is an excerpt from one of my CSV files from late last year, Paid Insertion fees, Special duration fees for 1 and 3 day auction cycles, store fees, etc are grouped as "Other fees". The two 15 cent charges below the $ 59.95 store fee are EITHER Buy it now prices added to two auctions or auction format listings for out of category items, its been so long I forget which. All the 1 dollar charges are for special duration auctions.
So the bottom-line is that eBay does keep track of fees paid and they can be grouped into one big number for tax deduction purposes. Hope that helps ...
@wooden_flower wrote:
Thanks!
The recent activity is part of your payment account home page - https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin
You are more than welcome. Thank you for tagging me. I can see why eBay does what they do with the Insertion fees.
@brha619 wrote:
Thank you to you both for sharing your understanding of this application. Very detailed. This will take a few for me to circle back, review, and then apply.
As always, I am excited to learn more and to better perform within this environment. @mr_lincoln, While I am a huge proponent for the Excel application, it is my favorite. I believe that what I am looking for here is a "Dashboard" to be installed on each page that can quickly summarize key points as to how that particular page is performing. Working a full-time job, friends family life, etc. EBAY is a "side-hustle" or gig for many people. Having this dashboard, I can login to EBAY after getting home from work, print the days labels, box up the sales, review some quick stats and get on with the day.
Using At-A-Glance tables, decisions can be made within seconds, rather than downloading .CSV, formatting, sorting, reviewing... ETC.
After review of the above, if I still have questions I will follow with the Community, and/or Self-Help, and will possibly submit an application enhancement request.
Thank you.
I use eBay's Seller Hub as a quick glance to see:
-If something sold
-If things have bids
Seller Hub's overview page can be customized by moving the tiles around so they best meet one's need.
I have it Bookmarked so I just click on it and eBay opens to the page below. I have the Listing tile on the left, the Orders tile int he middle and a Selling Tools tile on the right. There is another row below this one but this is the "quick glance" for me to see what if anything has happened.
eBay has "canned" reports and information. Some may meet your needs and some may not. You will have to explore what they have for you and work with it as best you can.
