How Much Does It Cost To Sell On eBay?
For any successful business before you start you should take a look at the expenses and not only at the incoming revenues. The same rule applies if you own or plan to open an eBay store. It might not seem like there is too much to pay to list an item on eBay and pay a small Final Value Fee, however all these small fees add up, plus there are also other costs that you might not have thought of. You can easily lose track of your costs if you ignore all the fees associated to a sale.
Insertion (listing) fees
A big part of your cost is going to be associated to listing your products on eBay. If you are listing your products without having an eBay store, you are entitled to 50 to 100 free listings per calendar month depending on the listing format and category. Once you have more products to list you will be charged 0.30$ per listing no matter if it’s a fixed-price listing or an auction.
There are categories where no free listings are available like Real Estate, Motors: Boats, Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Other Vehicles & Trailers, Power sports, and some Business & Industrial categories
Extras
Sellers who simply use eBay’s basic style listings might end up with fairly low costs, however if you want to make your products stand out from the crowd for each additional feature an extra fee is going to be applied. For example, if you would like to add extra pictures an extra fee is going to be applied. Or maybe you would like to give your potential customers more details about your product by adding a subtitle or have your title show up in bold, all these upgrades are charged with extra fees.
Final Value Fee
In case, your product is bought eBay will be charging you a final value fee. This fee is calculated based on the total amount of the sale calculated for each item.
The total amount of the sale is calculated as the sum of the final price of the item, shipping costs and any other amounts you may charge the buyer
Shipping Costs
Unless your sell an e-product that can be delivered online such as an eBook, photos, a game access code you will have to take into account all the costs related to shipping, such as packaging materials like wrap, boxes and bubble envelopes, insurance and the shipping price charged by the shipping company. When you set up your listing, you can add all the costs associated to shipping to your item sales price.
Pay Pal Fees
When you calculate the total amount you owe for a sold item you should take into account the Pay Pal fees. Pay pal charges differently depending on the total amount of sold items; the more you sell the less you have to pay. It is initially charging 2.9% plus 0.3$ per transaction for sales less than 3.000$ monthly and they charge you only after the funds have been received.
If at a first glance it does not seem much to list a product on eBay, you should add all those quarters, dimes or nickels and see if you will be making a profit after all
If you want to succeed you must take into account all outgoing expenses, as well as incoming revenues. To all the upfront costs like listing fees, Final Value Fees, listing options, and PayPal fees remember to add the cost of your time or the cost of taking the photos or any other hidden costs.
