Ebay now takes a 14% cut of sales

[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 is 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.

[DarkneSS]

I've got about 70 sales on my account, 100% feedback. I don't sell on their anymore either, haven't in over a year. The rake is just wayyy too high. I will only sell things I'm making huge profit on or basically got for free. You need to be a super high volume seller to make it work. It is still a great place to buy from, just not sell.
They are basically going for the short term big profit which will cause them to lose down the road as sellers like you and I give up. I'm seeing a LOT of businesses of all types pulling this crap. They just want to get that one big sale off you then after that they don't care.

[midnighter]

That's why many of my automotive parts are still sitting in my spare room awaiting purchase by local pick up.

[Mr_Draco]

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.

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.

[OHIO SPEED]

Another great scam is paypal holding sellers money for 21 days. Now you multiply this by a few 100,000 sellers and that's a lot of money they collect interest on!

[LIM3]

YUP EBAY SUCKS.
i sell some stuff there frequently but only price it out after all the fees.
so i know how much i am getting i just do the calculations before putting a price. some people go in there selling a video game for 50$ and after its all set and done they made 35$ after the ship and fees

now im aware of paypals 3% fees and ebays 10% but are you saying they bumped it up to 14% without the paypal fees ? meaning a whole 17% ?

[nitto85]

Amazon charges less in fees, the only drawback is you have to wait about 2 weeks after shipping your sold goods to receive your money, but after that it does go straight into your bank account and has nothing to do with paypal.

[audiomikej]

Originally Posted by LIM3

YUP EBAY SUCKS.
i sell some stuff there frequently but only price it out after all the fees.
so i know how much i am getting i just do the calculations before putting a price. some people go in there selling a video game for 50$ and after its all set and done they made 35$ after the ship and fees

now im aware of paypals 3% fees and ebays 10% but are you saying they bumped it up to 14% without the paypal fees ? meaning a whole 17% ?

If you do the math in my example 10% + 3% = 14% because they calculate the 10% before they take out the 3% plus they are taking 13% of the shipping quote which is suppose to be just a pass through reflecting my actual shipping costs, and the listing fee. Total cut over 14%

[2010SLVRBULIT]

It sucks, but most of us have stuff to get rid of, just to break even...what else are you going to do w/ it, donate & write it off?

[sykb47l]

I also no longer sale on eBay for this very reason. Not only do they charge you a percent of the final bid but also to list the item.

[audiomikej]

List it on amazon, craig's list, or special interest forums like camaro5.com

[fab410]

I used to use ebay a while ago before they began charging for everrrything! Strictly Craigslist now (unless it's Camaro parts then I'll sell on here).

[Msmall143]

Ebay owns paypal, just FYI

[45thCamaro]

I agrees 100% with you. I only buy from eBay, never sell anymore. It's a ripoff. They charge you a listing fee, then charge you a percentage that the item sold for and then paypal gets a cut. Not to mention shipping. eBay was once great, but they have become too money hungry.