Excessive Ebay fees keep small sellers from becoming big sellers and thats not diverse

[percgrabbe-0]

Excessive Ebay fees keep small sellers from becoming big sellers and thats not diverse. How is a little guy ever supposed to get ahead. I would list way way more here if the fees were not so excessive. So would a lot of people. Dont you dare complain about cluttering the site. You have no idea what people will buy or used to buy here. Its the whole point of ebay.

[msjoe-59]

I'm sorry but their fees are not excessive at all, I many small sellers feel the same way obviously by the sheer number of them that there still are on this site.

[percgrabbe-0]

Yes the fees are excessive. Say you have 150 x $20 items the fee is $52.50 and if your sales are slow its not worth it. 

Dont even get me started about the merchandise, ok?

How can you have a diverse ecommerce site if you limit what you sell and who sells it?!?

[percgrabbe-0]

There may be lots of sellers here but the buyers are few and far between and the overseas and big box seller have too much advantage.  They even advertise on your listing you pay ebay for. 

[irinahat]

Any auction business or consignment store would have fees and a certain % that they want.

I pay 10% final value fees on items that I often make 10x profit on because I got them at a garage sale or thrift store. 

When you buy an item for $1 and resell for $100 or so, you start to care less about final value fees and listing fees.

Yes, listing fees were a nightmare for me at the start of this whole journey over 15 years ago, but, if one plans to become a bigger seller, getting a basic store would reduce listing fees by a whole lot. I have a premium store and when I run out of free listings, my listing fees are 10 cents each.

As for final value fees, as I said, even auction houses and consignment stores demand a final % of the selling price, so what makes people think that a global-wide auction site wouldn't have fees?

Yeah, fees are there. That's why you have to be careful about profit margins. Don't invest $100 in an item that you can only sell for $150, for example, because the fees will ruin the profit margin.

I personally try to pay very little for my items. And by very little, I mean I'll show up to a garage sale and I'll make a huge pile of 100 items that someone will often sell to me for $100 for example, making each item worth $1 or so. Then I resell those things for $10, $20, $30, $50, and sometimes $100+ and I don't much complain about fees because I know that I only invested $1 to begin with on a particular item.

Yes, it's going to take a while to build up to this point, but lots of us have done it.

Besides, the only one stopping you from becoming a bigger seller is you. If you want to sell more, then invest in a basic store, and once your listing limits permit you to list in the thousands, upgrade to a premium store. Yes, it's more expensive but you get 1,000 free listings + listing fees drop in price dramatically.

This time last year, I had 400 items listed. Now I have 1,100+ items listed and I'm currently expanding.

So all in all:

1) If you want to expand, increase your selling limits by calling if they're not where you want them to be at.
2) Find inventory that's super cheap. Then, final value fees and all that don't seem so terrible when you invested so little.
3) Keep listing every day.
4) Make sure to upgrade to a basic store and then premium once you've reached 1,000 items or so.
5) Keep calling for limit increases

And there you go, a basic timeline of how you CAN expand and get ahead. If I went from 400 items to 1,100+ items in less than a year, then it's not impossible. 

[percgrabbe-0]

Sorry to say but I once had an ebay store and it was the same story. You still have to pay monthly fees just lower fees plus the subscription so ---- if your sales are down --- they still take the subscription money monthly as opposed to just monthly fee(!)

In fact sales were actually slower when I had one and defects seemed to be more plenty.  I felt like an even bigger target for scammers. 

I like selling on ebay I just dont trust them enough anymore to subscribe to a store right now. They havent convinced me I should again.  Especially at this time of year (summer) when sales are slower online.  Maybe just before Christmas we are talking October maybe September (Fall).  

[luckythewinner]

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Say you have 150 x $20 items the fee is $52.50 and if your sales are slow its not worth it.

If a seller is paying $52.50 in insertion fees for 150 items, then that seller is making poor business choices.

• With one non-store selling account, my fees would be $35 because I would have 50 free insertions.
• With a basic store store, my fees would be $22 and I would have 250 free insertions.
• With a starter store, my fees would be $22 because I would have 100 free insertions.
• With two non-store selling accounts, my fees would be $17.50 because I would have 100 free insertions.
• With a starter store and a non-store account, my fees would be $4.95 because I would have 150 free insertions.
•  With three non-store selling accounts, my fees would be $0 because I would have 150 free insertions.

How can you have a diverse ecommerce site if you limit what you sell and who sells it?!?

eBay already has diverse ecommerce. There are 1.1 billion items here. eBay does not limit what you can sell and who sells it - the seller uses his business plan, market research, and common sense to decide what to list here.

IMHO this argument is nothing more than an excuse for not having any semblence of a business plan.

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@percgrabbe-0 wrote:

Excessive Ebay fees

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Amz = $1 plus 15%

Poshmark - 20%

^^THOSE^^ are excessive.

There's nothing excessive about 10% of the total amount paid.

"But, but, Paypal charges 30 cents plus 3.5%!" 

And so would your own merchant account, if not a higher cost. Want feeless payments? Take cash.

These are normal operating expenses. You have to figure ALL of that and more into your item pricing. You have to add ALL of your fees - venue plus Paypal, your item cost, your profit, your expenses such as paper, tape, ink, boxes, etc., your time, your self insurance and anything else - THAT is your item cost. If it's too high and you're priced out of the market, you're paying too much for your stuff. If I sell something for $50 I will not pay more than $3-5 for it.

[percgrabbe-0]

I am talking about listing fees mainly the FVF is ok and Paypal isnt ebay. Its a separate company. 

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@percgrabbe-0 wrote:

I am talking about listing fees mainly the FVF is ok and Paypal isnt ebay. Its a separate company. 

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If you have that many items, open a starter or basic store. Problem solved. I pay $21/mo for 250 fixed and 250 auctions along with lower FVF, OR open other IDs to sell on if you only want the 50 free listings.

[irinahat]

I was one of the first people to reply on this post and I mentioned that stores lower listing fees drastically and have many perks.

Here, I'll even attach an image:

[lewisburggold]

Its the little sellers that make ebay.  its the little guy that has the rare stuff you never see and have the chance to get.   The big sellers dont have that rare stuff.   Nor are they going out to the little shops and flea markets to find this stuff when the little is.  Best regards

[percgrabbe-0]

When you get a store your items move into a different table and things apply to them like the way they stack listings on top of each other categorize them and I dont feel like they get seen in the same way on ebay.  The forum is littered with sellers right now saying sales are down the moment they open a store and store related problems abound.  Plus you are stuck with $21 in additional monthly fee whether you make sales or not. Its not a lot granted and the fees for store listings are cheaper but do they get seen in the same way. Ebay is saying no. The experience will be changing/changed.

[percgrabbe-0]

The point you are missing is that other sites dont charge these fees and ebay buyer traffic is slowing.  Its summer. People in the USA go on vacation. 

[percgrabbe-0]

Anyway getting back to diversity ebay themselves asked how we can make the site more diverse. 

Allowing sellers to sell here without collecting fee until the sale is made is one way to level the playing field for all sellers big and small. 

It also would mean the sellers are more diverse and more diverse items would be available on ebay. 

Ebay could once again become an opportunity for someone without a lot of money to set up shop instead of a dumping ground and a slanted marketplace that only caters to the bigger sellers with deep pockets.

You know like that "other" site that charges $39.99 a month just to subscribe. The one with the huge warehouses that treat their employees like slave labor and doesnt even give them adequate bathroom breaks. 

Think of the ad campaign blitz!