Is eBay a good platform for sellers

mainplayer said:

if buyers file a complaint of non receipt, they can always get a full refund.

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Not if you send Recorded Delivery and can provide tracking details...

John

I'm getting saddled up to get on my high horse again!!

Aplogies for the minor Icelandic Volcano type erruption that follows;

Ebay gives you a lot of whack for its "unreasonable fees". Where else would you get that much traffic to your online sales for such a small amount of money, that you only have to pay when you sell something.

Go price up getting a server, website, SEO and advertising and marketing that will generate the equivalent amount of visitors to your items as ebay brings you.

Oh, and then price up the costs of running a merchant account, and payment gateway, and compare those to the costs of operating your paypal account.

Ebay's rules regarding non receipt of delivery are no different to the DSR's that any online business needs to operate under. If amazon sent you a load of books and you didn't get them, would quite happily say "oh well, the Royal Mail lost them, never mind, you keep my money amazon"????? No you bloody wouldn't.

Ebay has to pay to market your items, it has to pay for the server and hosting, it has to pay for the staff to deal with customer service queries, it has investors that require a return, it has to pay developers, designers etc. IT IS A BUSINESS.

Welcome to the real world. Running a business costs money. And selling on ebay gets you quite a lot of traffic, quite quickly and you fundamentally pay for it when you make sales.

Oh, and there's no contract, no commitment, no upfront fees. You're not locked into any 12 month minimum tie ins, regardless of whether or not you're actually selling for a profit.

So, it's too expensive? GO and sell on your own website and see if you can turn a profit for less than the ebay fees that you're paying. What's that? You did that and it cost more than ebay???

Stop whinging and grow up.

Hi Boxby
Your "eruption" has certainly made me rethink the way I perceive the Ebay and PayPal fees - so I don't think I'll feel quite so hard done to the next time I list something!
Ebay is definately a great way to reach a large market and get your products to a wide audience.
Cheers

If you also deal in anything electronic, then ebay are slightly more on your side - if anybody complains they have bought something that doesn't work in a specific manner, they now ask for an engineers report, and the cost of this has to be born by the buyer, not the seller! So you don't have to do an automatic refund if somebody complains a digital video output does not function in a certain way - something I'd not even tried. This seems to be the only example of buyers losing their advantage that I've found so far.

My own circumstances are identical - low sales through my own web site apart from people who are looking for specific models, and then Google directs people to me quite often - people never find me by generic random searches - the kit's a bit too specific. Ebay generate steady, but not wonderful sales, but the margin is low because of the fees.

Boxbys post should be a sticky, very well put.

Boxby said:

I'm getting saddled up to get on my high horse again!!

Aplogies for the minor Icelandic Volcano type erruption that follows;

Click to expand...

That's the best post I have seen on here for a while. Well put.

Dire Straits - Money for nothing springs to mind!

having traded on ebay for 7 yrs, I have a mixed feeling on ebay..I love and hate it..

fee is high ..i normally have 20% profil margin (where 10% go to ebay & paypal fee which equivalent to 50% of my profit), but there is no doubt you can sell anything / everything quicky...It took me a year to generate my 1st order from my web..while I get my first order in ebay in few days...

In my opinion, if you only use ebay as your selling channel, it will be quite stressful because of the fee & competitors around you there.

for me, I sell on retail also (so for the same product, I have
high margin if I sell here in shop
medium margin if I sell on my web
low margin if I sell on ebay / bulk sell to other shops around

if I sell well in shop / web...I don't bother to sell on ebay where if things didn't go well, ebay can be my fall back and put me in a smaller loss..

unlike having a marriage, you can have different partners, ebay can be one..and u have to think if there are any other ways to sell

yeah you can certainly do better than ebay

I began on Ebay but have progressed to my own site and have not used ebay for 3 years now. There is a better return through your own outlet and I found it very frustrating. Ebay customers are only looking for the cheap, generic market so selling skills are not advantageous. It is simple selling at the lowest price.

Boxby got it exactly right.

eBay does what the OP has already said they can't do, which applies to many new startup businesses and that is get buyers to the site to see your product.

The listing fee is minimal, anything else is paid only on getting the sale.

The typical percentage all in for eBay/Amazon is 15%, where else can you find a commission only sales leads for just 15% of the sale price?

eBay is great value at 15%, certainly not greedy. What also annoys me is people think that Google are going to come along and offer a similar marketplace but undercut eBay, why?

eBay might not work for everyone but it's low risk to try and not difficult to work out the cost of sales.

I also think the reason why eBay works is because they only really get paid on results, therefore they are completely focussed on attracting buyers. Others offering a fixed fee sign up with lower seller fees in my opinion must be more focussed on attracting sellers. They are a business and they must work at what brings them income.

I would be interested to know what kind of price percentage PPC typically works out at for clients selling physical goods in the £20-50 region.