Not making any money.

[pistachio.enterprises]

We've been selling for a month now, and despite heavy sales we're not making any money. We need some advice; we're about to stop using eBay altogether. 

$14,766.49 (total sales)

-       816.26 (taxes)

- 3, 289.67 (eBay fees *)

- 1,550.20  (shipping labels)

------------------------------

$9,110.36 (net sales)

THAT'S ABSURD! THAT'S ONLY 62% PROFITABILITY! WHY IS EBAY TAKING 38% DESPITE US SUPPLYING THE PRODUCTS, DOING ALL OF THE WORK, AND HAVING ALL OF THE RISKS? BY COMPARISON, AMAZON (FBA) TYPICALLY COSTS SELLERS 33% BUT THEY DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU!! MOREOVER, WITHOUT USING PROMOTIONS, NOTHING SEEMS TO SALE DESPITE BEATING EVERYONE'S PRICES ON THE SAME ITEMS!

* eBay fees include $2,163.50 (final value fees) and $1,272.52 (ad fees).

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Your products may not have sufficient margin to sell on Ebay or any other internet marketplace.

Doing the calculation based on price+shipping and treating shipping in the same way as fees leads to results which are skewed.

Your shipping costs should be break even with the shipping you collect, unless you are foolish enough to offer free shipping on repair parts. And that would be your fault not Ebay's.

[monica-sells]

eBay is taking 14.64%

You are spending an additional 8% on optional advertising.....

Shipping (11 %) is not an ebay "take" it is the take of the carrier you use (USPS, UPS, FedX). 

Realistically, without your ad fees, you are doing fairly well..

Shipping is a thorn in the side, but not ebays fault

the only way you're not making money is if you are paying too much for inventory

[inhawaii]

You must be special.

I only pay 13.25% in fees.

[pistachio.enterprises]

Margins are more than sufficient. Prior to 2022 we were doing 1.6 million on Amazon alone. 

[pistachio.enterprises]

Without advertising, nothing seems to sale. Literally, every transaction we have has "promoted listing" beside it; in other words, it sold because of advertising. It seems eBay has algorithms in place that make it necessary to use their advertising otherwise the items will not sell, or sell so slowly that you'll be enticed to use advertising.

[pistachio.enterprises]

inhawaii: Thanks for nothing.

[yuzuha]

Sounds like your problem was that you didn't factor all of your costs into the item price. Here was my total take on two items I sold for $4.95 each last week:

 

[fern*wood]

Everyone that sells has to account for all fees/expenses in their pricing to achieve the profit they want.  Do you have to offer free shipping?  Do you incorporate that expense in your pricing?  Have you tried not promoting?  Something basic is wrong if you aren't making any money.

[argentphil]

All the judgements against eBay for the retaliation scandal and pill press sales ads up. We sellers pay for every last cent of eBays lack of leadership.

[ed8108]

You appear to effectively be requesting ebay to lower final value & ad fees for you to bcome a happier ebay seller.

Wishing you have good luck !

[dhbookds]

Quibbling about ebay fees is a waste of time (my opinion)..........they aren't going to change. 

We can't know what your true "take" is without knowing the cost of items(which we have no right to expect you to reveal).  .......your "WITHOUT USING PROMOTIONS, NOTHING SEEMS TO SALE DESPITE BEATING EVERYONE'S PRICES ON THE SAME ITEMS!" leads me to believe there may be room for increasing prices. 

As said..........the free shipping and the ad fees are hurting you.....so some reconsideration of those may be in order.  Adding a small shipping fee to everything or some, reducing the promo level slightly, etc.

Also, increasing the # of items which have the highest return.....and decreasing those that have a lesser return may increase your bottom line.........even if it doesn't substantially increase the $ value of sales.

It's not terribly hard to make sales if you are lowballing prices.....it's a good technique to get started.....  But after that comes the "tweaking" to increase the actual profit margin and that's probably going to take some experimentation...........

[lux.ra_14]

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@pistachio.enterprises wrote:

Margins are more than sufficient.

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 How does this square with "Not making any money" in the title line?

[deltilogical]

"$14,766.49 (total sales)

-       816.26 (taxes)"

Ebay shows several numbers in different ways - Are you sure the $816 was included in the $14.7K?  Ebay collects the sales tax but it is not remitted to you and it is not included in the Gross Sales amount, someone please correct me...I don't seem to remember seeing it in my data sheets...You're doing a lot better than I am this month let me tell you!

[pistachio.enterprises]

Having nearly $15k in sales but only $9k in net profitability while doing all of the work and assuming all risks  isn't making money. Again, with Amazon FBA, as a seller you will forfeit roughly 1/3 of your gross, but they do all of the warehousing, inventory, shipping, etc.  Why is eBay charging more than Amazon for less? Do they offer "seller insurance" for returns to ensure that we don't lost money?  (No.) It's absurd. 

Seriously, is there some benefit that I'm missing here?