ebay - relisting fees

[shopgirl]

Hi all.
Hope were are all off to a good start this week.

Ive recently been resorted to selling on Ebay due to problems delaying our e com site from launching.

All appeared fine and considering we have only used the basic tools ebay supply for marketing we have sold quite afew items.
We still had to relist alot of the catalogue due to items not selling first time and have found that ebay charge each time you re list.

Considering we havent been able to put up all our product range due to ebays rules and have had to cut the margins on some products to remain competative these fees just mean its un ecconomical to use ebay.
The profit we will make will mostly go on fees i suspect.

Does anyone else use ebay and if so what are your views and experiences?

[Nicksyb]

Hi

I'm currently using Ebay just as marketing for my site really. I find that the fee's are extremely high and for me I'm finding that I am not selling as much as I would have done a couple of years ago.

However it is a great marketing thing to do and I have seen a rise in the number of visitors to my own site.

[Steve2507]

Hi

I'm currently using Ebay just as marketing for my site really. I find that the fee's are extremely high and for me I'm finding that I am not selling as much as I would have done a couple of years ago.

However it is a great marketing thing to do and I have seen a rise in the number of visitors to my own site.Same here. We use it more as a marketing tool, however it is expensive and I'm looking at reducing the number of products we have on ebay.

[Fuffles]

Hi Shopgirl.
It is very expensive to list but it does bring repeat business from adding flyers to your parcels for your business.
Have you got a shop on ebay?
Listings last longer and are cheaper to list that way, although Final Value Fees are higher.

[shopgirl]

Yeah I have a shop on ebay and intend to keep it running once my proper website is finally launched as you all say for marketing.

But as a sole income, if i was just selling on ebay it wouldnt be worth my bother.

Ive noticed there are some listings that last a month. Does anyone know if this works out more cost efferctive?
If Im listing an item for a week and things dont sell im going to be charged about a £1 per item. So if the item doesnt sell over a month it costs me £4 and to be honest thats my average selling price. Plus Paypal fees. I may aswell just give things away.
Yeah you guessed. Im in a moany mood today:mad:.

[KidsBeeHappy]

Hi all.
Hope were are all off to a good start this week.

Ive recently been resorted to selling on Ebay due to problems delaying our e com site from launching.

All appeared fine and considering we have only used the basic tools ebay supply for marketing we have sold quite afew items.
We still had to relist alot of the catalogue due to items not selling first time and have found that ebay charge each time you re list.

Considering we havent been able to put up all our product range due to ebays rules and have had to cut the margins on some products to remain competative these fees just mean its un ecconomical to use ebay.
The profit we will make will mostly go on fees i suspect.

Does anyone else use ebay and if so what are your views and experiences?


Are you using Selling Manager Pro. If you relist through this then you should get the "relisting" element free. You do not however get the photo fees, or the marketing fees, or the gallery fees, or anyother add ons for free. And i think this is a bit of a "cop-out" as the actual listing fee is usually the smallest part of the total charges of listing an item.

Are you using an ebay shop, and listing your products as "inventory" listings?

[KidsBeeHappy]

Ive noticed there are some listings that last a month. Does anyone know if this works out more cost efferctive?
If Im listing an item for a week and things dont sell im going to be charged about a £1 per item. So if the item doesnt sell over a month it costs me £4 and to be honest thats my average selling price. Plus Paypal fees. I may aswell just give things away.
Yeah you guessed. Im in a moany mood today:mad:.

Hi

It's an Inventory listing for either 30/60/90 or GTC (good til cancelled). I think it's around http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/storefees.html. It's maximum of 11p per item for 30 days. You can get a lot more stock listed this way.

Set up all the cross selling links to your inventoried items, to drive traffic to them, and make your ebay shop as good as possible.

Kind regards
Sandra

[MarqueMyWords]

My ebay shop operates at about a 37% gross margin currently.

The ebay fees are quite high and if you have a shop, the exposure your items receive is always diminshing in my opinion. It is also very easy to sell something and forget that, because you have already relisted this item twice, the relisting fees will exist and eat into your margin.

My average spend on ebay and paypal fees combined per sale is (off the top of my head) around £1.50ish. Will have to check and maybe I can let you know the exact figure, of course it all depends on the value of the item etc.

I'm looking to move onto an e-commerce platform but at the moment I'm quite happy to operate through ebay solely as my business is (currently) quite small. However, I've been selling on ebay now for 3 years and have been running my ebay shop for 3months, it's definitely worth spending a little extra to move away from ebay and use it solely for generating sales leads through selling overstock.

[Kwackers]

I used to list about 200 items a week, relisting fees for items that didn't sell was free i believe, so check up on this.

[deviltronics]

^^^^ I think the relisting is still the same.

I have been using ebay for the last two years for selling graded consumer electronics such as TV's, Hi-Fi's, iPods, DVD Players, Nintendo Wii's etc. Have probably turned over £600k on there since we started.

Alot of people do say their fees are expensive, but if you think about how much traffic is generated through there I think it is reasonable.

I use turbolister, selling manager pro, a shop and I also have my own ebay account manager to give us tips.

Paypal fees can be on the high side, but can be reduced if your turnover is high. They don't tell you this, so its a catch, the form to do this is dug away so it is hard to find.

I can also tell you that the shop fees are much higher and you can't just have shop items without auctions, otherwise you will get very low traffic to it.

Overall I think ebay is fantastic if you want easy traffic to your products and has done my company very well (although they make about £1 million a minute, greedy buggers).

[taggingsupplies]

I think ebay is a rip off with all there fees where does all that money go to???? mmmmm

the fees go up and up, id love to see another website taking over such as tazbar.com i use them now i hope they become just as big

ive been selling on ebay for 6 years and i guess id never get rid of a fraction of the stuff if it wasnt for ebay so thanks for that

[shopgirl]

^^^^
Paypal fees can be on the high side, but can be reduced if your turnover is high. They don't tell you this, so its a catch, the form to do this is dug away so it is hard to find.

I can also tell you that the shop fees are much higher and you can't just have shop items without auctions, otherwise you will get very low traffic to it.

Overall I think ebay is fantastic if you want easy traffic to your products and has done my company very well (although they make about £1 million a minute, greedy buggers).

Hi Deviltronics.

Im starting to find many things are dug away on Ebay as you say. Ive mailed them about several points looking to do things better and cheaper but they wont tell you how to do this. Ive later worked it out for myself.

Thanks for the tip about mixing in some auctions too. Ive seen many shops do this and honestly thought they were doing it for fun (dont laugh ok:redface:). Ill try this one immediatly.

£1million a minute hey - gives me something to aspire to i guess.

Some great advice though guys thanks.
Im getting there slowly now.

[cornerstones]

Thanks for the tip about mixing in some auctions too. Ive seen many shops do this and honestly thought they were doing it for fun (dont laugh ok:redface:). Ill try this one immediatly.
.

It doesn't HAVE to be auctions that bring the buyers to look at your shop listings, 10 day buy it now listings will do the same job

[deviltronics]

^^^^ Correct. 90% of my listings are buy it now - gives the buyer the want it now, deliver tomorrow option. I meant both auction and buy it now.

[Chippie]

I think ebay is a rip off with all there fees where does all that money go to???? mmmmm

the fees go up and up, id love to see another website taking over such as tazbar.com i use them now i hope they become just as big

ive been selling on ebay for 6 years and i guess id never get rid of a fraction of the stuff if it wasnt for ebay so thanks for that

eBay is a business, why should they not maximise their profits??

[deviltronics]

^^^ Exactly my thought, if ebay was your business, you had no competitors, a stupid amount of customers, would you not do the same?


I see it the same as google adwords, both bring traffic to your products, both charge similiar fees, in my opinion adwords works out more expensive.

[taggingsupplies]

still to expensive

[deviltronics]

Well, try this.

Get two identical items that you now people will bid on and buy. Now put one product on ebay and the other on any other auction site of you choice. Put both up for auction and make sure the listings are identical (as much as possible). Start them and end them at the same time. I'll give you a tip, best days for auctions to end is on Sunday or Monday between 7pm and 10pm.

Once the auctions have ended subtract the listing fees and see which one has made you more money. I can gaurantee you it will be ebay.

And no shill bidding, you'll only be kidding yourself.

[taggingsupplies]

Devils Thanks for the time tip i never knew when the best time was, i guess it depends sometimes on what your selling. I know i advertise on tazbar and ebay and i agree with you, but still they make so much. still a fact

[deviltronics]

oh yes thank make millions!

[cornerstones]

As much as I HATE paying my ebay fees it's worth remembering that real bricks and mortar auction houses charge around 20% to sell your goods AND they make you wait 3 weeks for your cheque!

With time and experience you can pare back your ebay fees to the minimum because you'll have worked out the best selling strategy for your product and your market. I agree that the best time to close an auction is in the evening UK time but if you are selling internationally you have to take this into consideration and selling just at the weekend is better for the American and Australian bidders - in an ideal world they'd all use bidding snipers so they can key in their top bid and then go out for the day and forget about it, but this isn't always the case.

[Chippie]

Devils Thanks for the time tip i never knew when the best time was, i guess it depends sometimes on what your selling. I know i advertise on tazbar and ebay and i agree with you, but still they make so much. still a fact

And I for one couldn't give a hoot as long as I sell my products and make a healthy profit. I use banks too and they make a lot of money! And utiltiy companies! And Telecoms companies! And oil companies! What would it be like without them? It's just life. :D

[taggingsupplies]

Chippie Yeah Yeah Ok We Got The Message Get Back To Bed Now.

[Chippie]

Chippie Yeah Yeah Ok We Got The Message Get Back To Bed Now.

Your tone is so endearing! :D

[taggingsupplies]

:)no Problemo

[taggingsupplies]

CHIPPIE AND EVERYONE ELSE I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG LOOK WHAT EBAY SAID TODAY:
We're introducing some substantial changes (http://srx.main.ebayrtm.com/clk?RtmClk&m=57477&lid=355323) to fees on eBay.co.uk and we're delighted to tell you that these include a reduction in Insertion Fees of up to 33% and volume discounts of up to 40% on Final Value Fees.
http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/MyMessages/20081-708522251/images/1120_spacer-1.gif
These discounts will reward the sellers who continue to provide great service to buyers, as measured by their Detailed Seller Ratings over their previous thirty days of trading.
http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/MyMessages/20081-708522251/images/1120_spacer-1.gif
The changes come into effect on 20th February 2008, so make sure you're maintaining and improving your customer service now to enjoy the maximum benefits.
http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/MyMessages/20081-708522251/images/1120_spacer-1.gif
Find out more about the coming changes for business sellers on eBay.co.uk (http://srx.main.ebayrtm.com/clk?RtmClk&m=57477&lid=355324)

[Chippie]

CHIPPIE AND EVERYONE ELSE I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG LOOK WHAT EBAY SAID TODAY

We're all so glad you were right all along!! Somehow we never doubted you would be! :rolleyes:

[taggingsupplies]

Thanks chippie old chap