How do you make ebay work for you? - FEE question

[horseshoe]

If I list 10 items and only 5 sell....the fees that i incur for all 10 eats into my profits and then by the time I pay paypal I make very little money.

Is there a sensible way of listing when it comes to fees?

[goingfor3]

You could wait for free / cheap listings days. I would say it's a rosk you take with ebay though some epople inflate P&P prices to include the costs of the fees.

[frogs]

I only list items I'm fairly sure will sell for a decent price.

I mainly do kids' clothes, and try to sell in season. GAP, Next, Monsoon and Boden all sell well as individual items.

If I have larger quantities of stuff from lesser brands (H&M, George etc) I sell it as bundles, which also works well, as long as you calculate the postage properly. In general, I aim to keep the postage costs reasonably low, but high enough to cover the cost of packaging and my time as well as the face value of the postal charges.

Wrt fees, I start the item at the lowest price it's worth my while selling for. I always put in a gallery picture, but never pay for any other fancy features. If I'm selling bundles, I do one photo for all the tops, one for the trousers etc as well as one photo of all the items together, which helps keep the costs down.

I have a spreadsheet in Excel where I enter the actual postage costs and the fees and deduct them from the sale price and postage I charged to work out the net profit per item. That way you soon start to see where you're undercharging and/or which items are not viable for sale.

hth

[onelittlelion]

You can get a free rekisting if the item doesn't sell but if it doesn't sell again I think you're charged. Are they duplicate items? If so then to list as one auction with multiple items available to purchase is cheaper but no free relisting.

[frogs]

I also don't take paypal -- it's cheque/PO only, or cash only if it's a pickup item. It does slow the overall transaction down a bit, but on low value items like clothes the risks are pretty low as the charges for having a chq bounce would be more than the item is worth, iyswim.

I'm not a big believer in waiting for free listings days, as the competition is much higher. If I'm buying on ebay, that's when I look for bargains, so logically it's not such a great time to sell.

[LynetteScavo]

What do you sell? If I'm selling clothes etc, I don't care if they only go for 99p, as they would only go to charity, but I do cover fees with P&P (just)

[LynetteScavo]

Oh, and I only do paypal, wouldn't buy anything that needed a cheque, and can't be bothered to cash cheques either.

[frogs]

Interesting how you can make it work with very different strategies! I try not to put things on that will only go for 99p -- it's just too much effort to be worthwhile for me.

It seems that the key thing is to have a strategy of some kind -- some people have large turnover of low-value items, others (like me) would rather have a smaller turnover of higher-value items. I've never had any problems with not accepting paypal, tho' obviuosly I guess there must be people who don't bid on my items for that reason. But my items go for pretty comparable amounts to other people's stuff, so it can't be a major factor.

[Pannacotta]

I also avoid cheap listing days, the times I have used them I have made much less than usual.
I think clear pics and details are good plus gallery pics, but other than that not too sure of best strategies.
I have done quite well with maternity clothes and baby things but less so with baby clothing - not tried to sell much but just wondering what is the best, to start at 99p and hopefully get some interest or start at a higher price and then maybe only get one, decent bid. Any ideas from those who have done this?

[frogs]

I start at whatever price I would not be massively pissed-off to sell for. Eg a nice Boden top I would be hacked off to sell for 99p, so I tend to start at £1.99. I generally don't list things I"m not pretty sure will sell. If I don't think it'll get much individually, I put it in a bundle.

[Pannacotta]

Thanks frogs, I prob need to have a search through completed listings and then decide, sometimes ebay seems too much like hard work