1. Free shipping is a SCAM!
In order to offer so called "free shipping" you'll need to increase the price of the product by the maximum possible shipping cost. This forces all buyers to pay for the maximum possible shipping cost. Every buyer gets ripped off except for those living in the highest priced zone you ship to as this is what they would pay anyway (zone 8 or 9 depending on your settings).
Free shipping is heavily promoted by eBay for one reason only - because it means higher prices and more money for them.
What generally sells more? Higher or lower priced items? Why would you want to increase the price of your items and make them less likely to sell? Because you want to con buyers into thinking free shipping is a bargain like eBay does?
2. Free shipping is also labor intensive. Every time there is change in postal rates you’ll need to edit all your listings to reflect the increase cost of postage. Is your time worth nothing to you?
3. Calculated shipping allows each buyer to pay according to their location. You are not forcing all buyers to pay the highest possible shipping cost. You can lower the price of your items and sell more.
4. With calculated shipping you don’t need to edit your listings each time postal rates go up. Charge customers the retail rate while you pay the commercial rate. The difference pays the FVF on the shipping.
If you use calculated shipping with commercial rates then you’ll have to edit your listings each time shipping rates go up since you are paying FVF on the shipping.
5. What kind of games are you selling?
Video games recorded in a DVD/CD and housed in a CD case? If so, why would you ship them in a 6” x 9” envelope when such cases are easily breakable? A padded 6” x 9” envelope provides no protection at all - its a piece of paper adhered to a single layer of bubblewrap. Every customer complaint will waste you valuable time so why not take prevent such cases in the first place with proper packaging?
Get some small boxes.
6. Get an application like GarageSale to manage your inventory. Create a series of shipping templates once and then just duplicate them. If you are using Seller Hub you don’t know what you are doing and you want to waste your time.
7. Managed Payments will be forced upon you if you haven’t been already. Be prepared to give eBay and their Netherlands based payment processor Adyen, your bank account number, a power of attorney over your bank account, your social security number, name, address and copy of a photo i.d., with the possibility of them requesting additional information.
With Managed Payments your eBay fees will be immediately deducted from your sales receipts. You can no longer charge those fees to a credit card and earn a rebate from the credit card company. The money deducted for those fees will no longer be sitting in your bank earning interest until its time to pay your credit card for the given billing cycle thus you also loose interest.
Managed Payments also forces you to pay a FVF fee on sales tax eBay collects. First eBay told sellers that collecting sales would be free. Then eBay started routing sales tax through seller’s accounts to the seller had to pay the 2.9% PayPal fee on the sales tax.
Most categories have a 12.55% FVF, thus eBay will be making you pay a 12.55% fee on the sales tax they collect. Yes, eBay is forcing you to pay for collecting sales tax which earns them millions in interest before its transferred to each state.
8. I think it would have made more sense to determine the current selling environment of eBay before buying more inventory. As before, its dying market place which has to turn to scams to inflate its sales figure so eBay management get their bonuses before they leave.
