Quote:
Originally Posted by audiomikej
I just sold an item on ebay for $750. The shipping was $73.70. Ebay fees were $82.37 plus $24.19 to paypal. Total take was $106.56 or 14.2% of my gross. I periodically sell items on ebay but after this rake I am done. Ebay taking more than its fair share for the quality stuff I sell. It is not worth it for me to list on ebay anymore. I will sell for less through other channels but I will make more because I am not giving ebay 14%.
Ten years ago ebay was king. It was the go to place for everything. Then they started raising the auction cuts, pushing out the higher quality goods because the margins are thinner on more competitive popular items. Sending sellers to sell through other channels. What’s left is a bunch of low grade items that pop up on keyword searches. Things people are not really looking for (example ebay item 171168394132) and since they do not charge much for listing fees there is a lot of this unwanted stuff we must filter. Ebay could have been bigger than Amazon today if ten years ago it didn’t start raising its cut. Ebay would have been more efficient than Amazon too because they do not need distribution warehouses. Ebay needs to think of the people who sell goods on ebay as partners, not endless revenue streams. I would be happy to give ebay 5% of my gross to sell through. When you take 14% you take 75% of my profit. If I do not make money, ebay does not make money. When ebay takes too much it gets 100% of nothing.
If ebay wants to grow its revenue it needs to raise listing fees and lower the final value fees. Consumers do not like mining through pages of worthless listings on stuff that does not sell. Good sellers will not list through ebay if the final value fees are too high. Focus on growing your top line revenue and the bottom line will take care of itself.
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I hear ya.
I use to sell a lot of stuff on Ebay, I use to have 50-75 auctions running at a time every week and did it for a year or so. Their fees was outrageous then and this was back when every time you relisted an item that didn't sale you had to pay a listing fee vs now if your item doesn't sale you can relist for free until it sales. But this isn't what did me in as I was still making a decent amount of money.
What did me in was a new Ebay policy that said "screw you sellers". They changed it so that if you got screwed by a buyer, you couldn't do jack @$*% about it. You could no longer leave negative feedback for the buyer for not paying where use to, if a buyer didn't pay they would get suspended until they paid and eventually banned if they did it too much. But oh, this was hurting the buying experience and buyers is where they make their money, horse @$*%. They also changed it so you still had to pay closing fees even if the buyer never paid. They just expected sellers to just eat the cost and relist (for a fee of course).
Now I avoid Ebay all together except for really hard to find items.