Getting the best value from eBay fees

Whether you sell a few or many items on eBay you want the best value from the fees you pay. A sound knowledge of all the many variations and permutations will ensure you do not waste your money.

This is the first of a planned series of articles about eBay fees, mostly aimed at the regular seller or shop owner. However, even if you only post a few items a year, you still want "best value".

Let's start with a basic Auction Listing.

One of the key elements you have to remember is the price breaks at which listing fees are calculated. These are as follows:
99p, £4.99, £14.99, £29.99, and £99.99.
Anything under 99p will cost you 15p. For a further 5p you can list up to £4.99. The next jump takes you up to 35p.

This explains why you see so many auction start bids and prices ending in .99p. Just moving the extra penny up from 99p to £1 will cost you an extra 5p in fees – not good value, as I am sure you will agree. Likewise moving from £4.99 to £5 will cost you an extra 15p.

Visit this page regularly or print it out to keep handy: eBay Fees

The main point here is to assess the real value, or lowest price you will accept for your item, and set the starting price to the most efficient opening bid. Many items have a notional value of about a fiver, so start at £4.99 or even £4.97.

Of course you always hope that the 99p start, with a saving on listing fees, will generate bids and the final sale price will be much more. We will return to that expectation later, but remember you MAY end up selling a valuable item for only 99p. Is that good value or worth the risk?

The next cost you have to consider is a gallery photograph.

This is a fixed cost of 15p and is the same on a 99p start or a £299 start. This means that on a basic listing starting at 99p you have doubled your listing fee. If you are listing in the £5 to £14.99 band the 35p charge goes up to 50p. Gallery WILL catch the eye of the buyer, but if your item is not photogenic, is of low value, or is very common item and recognisable (a book is a book is a book ... ), then you may as well save your 15p.

So you will see it may not be worthwhile bearing that extra expense on the cheapest items.

What you should ALWAYS do is use the "free" first photograph for every listing and make sure it is a good one that is sure to "catch" the reader's eye.

In fact, if you are doing a lot of listing, you need to be aware of every free facility available - on and off eBay. We shall return to more sophisticated fee structures and services in the next guide(s).

SUBTITLES
SECOND CATEGORIES
BINS
LOTS
BOLD & FEATURED
SPECIAL START TIMES

SHOPS

TURBOLISTER
EXTERNAL PHOTO HOSTING

etc, etc.

Thank you for reading ... please do not forget to vote for this guide.

Cornucopia Antiques