Guys, I wanted to comment on EBay fees. I know everyone likes to bitch about them but they are providing a service and deserve to be compensated. Whether the fees are excessive is up for discussion.
I had a set of alt brackets for sale. I offered them here 1st for $85 plus shipping OBO and got no bites, I posted them on EBay for an opening bid of $60. They got bid to $105 plus shipping so by opening it up to a wider market I netted about $10 more after fees and they sold within a week.
I will say its BS that they charge fees on shipping fees but what can you do? if they didn't people could game the system by listing everything for $.99 with $xx as a shipping cost. Up you cost of shipping to cover the fees.

Just sayin'.

 

I have been a seller on ebay for some time now and do not have any negative comments on their charges either.

My biggest issue with ebay is the select few ebayers that bid and win your items and then refuse to pay for them. You complain to ebay and they don't do anything.

 

ebay figured out what people were doing with the shipping. I remember seeing items for really cheap prices but the the shipping would be multiples of the selling price. I didn't realize at the time they were avoiding ebay fees. I am assuming they have not always charged fees on shipping.

 

I am sure this is why they now charge fees on shipping. Long ago when we did ebay a lot, we saw this all the time. Super cheap item and very expensive shipping.
It was even worse then the super expensive shipping was not disclosed until you bid and bought!

 

Ebay has been in the news recently, and it sounds like they're about to drop listing fees for sellers, at least in some instances. The idea is to better compete with Amazon and the sellers in the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon charges nothing to list an item for sale in the Marketplace. It collects its fee only if the item sells.



EBay Overhauls Seller Fees to Lure Merchants From Amazon

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...om-amazon.html

 

Its not the fees that bother me its that it has turned to a small amount of sellers listing the same item 300 times and your one used parts get lost in the mix. A whole lot less people look for stuff there because of this. A little as 3 years ago I would get at least some bids for 75% of listings and I sold a lot of used car parts that way. The last time I but a bunch of stuff up about a year ago I sold 4 items out of about 50 listed. This is the same stuff and in some cases starting out at even lower prices.

 

When I list I don't get charged an insertion fee but do pay a pretty steep fee to have a reserve price. To avoid that I start the auction @ the lowest price I would be happy with & let it go from there.

 

I kind of understand this from ebay's point of view. Reserve-price auctions are less likely to conclude in a successful sale, which means that, if no fee is charged by ebay, they will have hosted the auction, maybe several times over and over if the reserve is never met, without collecting a cent in fees. It seems that they should be compensated in some way for providing a website and a forum for the item to be shown for sale, even if no sale actually takes place.

In no-reserve auctions, of course, as soon as any bid is received, the item will sell, and ebay will collect its fee. Of course, some auctions, reserve or no-reserve, end without getting a single bid, and no fee would be collected by ebay if it was a no-reserve auction. But I'm guessing that's a risk they're willing to take given the higher overall success rate of no-reserve auctions.

Your strategy is the one to use, though. My wife likes to shop on ebay, and she doesn't like reserve auctions where the reserve has not been met. She always says, "just tell me what you want and I'll decide if I want to bid." Listing your item in a no-reserve auction at the minimum you will accept for it is the way to go.

 

Richard, I agree 100%. If I am really looking for something, I always use the advanced feature and eliminate covers, carpet, kits and wheels. Seeing the same item listed 100 times or more is something ebay should put a stop to.

 

What are the fee rates ?

 

I'd say as a rule of thumb for cheap items (below $500?) fees add up to about 10%.

 

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html#if_auction

 

With me, it's a love hate relationship, but probably not the fault of ebay. I am tired of pages and pages or purple valve stem caps and colored dice door locks. Ebay has allowed a lot of NOS to be available, but it seems that now, it's all been listed and sold. I benefited as both a buyer and seller, but those days are pretty much gone.

I had great success listing things at a low starting price, that attracted a lot of action, and I was amazed at just how much I sold and at the prices I got for some items I had considered just junking. I had a flea space at Daytona Speedway and Zephyrhills one year and sold a lot, but I could have gotten A LOT more if I had listed on ebay

 

The fee's could be better ...

But when you consider how big of an audience you can draw ... doesn't seem so bad.

However ... there are many other things that have become quite annoying as eBay has grown over the years.

The DUPLICATE auctions where the same thing is listed umpteen times ... which just clutters things up.

The GENERIC ONE SIZE FITS ALL type item auctions that are in no way shape or form SPECIFICALLY OR EXCLUSIVELY related to what you're looking for.
(these are often posted in umpteen duplicates as well)

Example(s) -

Using Olds 442 to sell :

Fuzzy dice - pine tree air fresheners - shop towels - light bulbs etc etc etc + .

Sellers should not be permitted list generic crap & use specific make & model keywords in trying to do so.

As far as I know ... this was at one time a big NO NO.

Obviously ... this is something that doesn't really get enforced these days like it should be.

The whole reserve/reserve & starting bid thing & as to which is best :

It's never that simple.

Yes you can take a no-nonsense approach & price your item from the get-go ... for the absolute bottom-line dollar you are willing to take for it ... but a lot of "sheeple" don't like to do business that way on eBay ... they want the thrill of bidding & COMPETING with others.

One can start an auction off at $100 no reserve for something is actually worth an honest $200 & often times ... NO sale.

Now you take that very same thing & list it w/a starting bid of only $1 with no reserve & then all the very same people that scoffed at it before & passed it by when it was listed at $100 can't unzip their pants fast enough & whip out their wallets with one hand - while holding a ruler in their other one ... competing with one another in a bidding war/who's got the bigger one till the auction ends up closing at $174.28.

I've seen it with my own (2) eyes in the past. Before eBay scrambled bidders ID's ... it was very easy to watch these kinds of take place. Sort of the same nonsense that goes on with Barrett Jackson & such ... it becomes more about being able to say you WON vs the actual value on what you're buying.

Course' the other side of the coin & danger with sheeple is ...

Sometimes the above just doesn't work.

Could be a less than desirable item - too many others like it on there at the time - full moon - bad economy - lack of physical intimacy in their lives - it's raining - had a bad childhood - dog ate my PC - etc etc etc ... as predictable as sheeple can be - sometimes they're not

That leaves you trying to come up w/the safest compromise with the best shot at selling your item ... like starting your item off fairly cheap but making sure your throw a RESERVE on it so you don't end up giving it away.

Of course' with compromises ..... comes compromises.

You have to pay more to list with a reserve ... & a lot of the sheeple don't get the same rush because they aren't really winning until it says reserve met ... so they might not want to play.

IMHO ...

The compromise of the low starting bid w/a reserve is usually the safest ... unless you know 110% that your item will bring BIG BUCK$.

But ... it's not always the best strategy for getting the most sheeple to jump in & bid.

Cough cough .....

Ahem I meant bidders - bidders not sheeple.



Bottom line ...

Different items - different approaches I guess ...

Adjust your plan of attack as needed.

 

They've squeezed just about every penny possible out of the sellers. Once I figured out what the percentage of fees were on a $10 item were and they were very high. Everyone uses Ebay as a reference when they sell their items anyway, so I'll sell on Craigslist for 25% less. Their greed has cost them $100's of my dollars and thats a fact!

 

Although I don't like the ebay (and especially the paypal fees that also tag along) it is the most secure way to sell / buy stuff from a large market of people. No one is being forced to use the server.

As MN71W30 said, if you don't like it... try selling it on CL.

 

It is pretty amazing to do an Ebay search and see how many parts "fit" a 63 Oldsmobile that were never made by Oldsmobile, or General Motors, or even a regular aftermarket supplier. That said, there is still no other sales network that presents as much availability and choice of just about anything you can think of, on a pretty much constant basis. When I retired a year ago I started a home Ebay business which has been successful so far. I don't make a lot of money but my wife and I enjoy it. Ebay is definitely on the side of the buyer but offers a lot to the sellers if you are willing to follow the rules. The fees are the cost of doing business which a commercial seller will have to pay in some way at any venue. Unfortunately the days of the unregulated small private party sales that Ebay was founded on are pretty much gone in favor of commercial sellers.

 

I am much annoyed by the loss of asterisk for wild card use in searches

Now, if you want to find an Oldsmobile carb, you MUST enter each and every full number, and pray that the seller got all the digits exactly right [I got a killer deal on a 7029253 a while back because it was mis-listed!].

used to be able to search "702825*"
Now you gotta use some of your only 100 characters like:
"7028250,7028251,7028252,7028253,7028254,70282 55"
and that only covers the 1968 models....

*sigh*

 

Agreed on the increasing number of non relevant items that show up when doing a search. One trick I learned is that you can eliminate categories of items that you 'don't want' to come up when you search. It's done by using a (-) minus sign and (the things you don't want to come up) in parenthesis after your search terms. For example, if I want to search for a Timing Light I might get listings for Timing Lights plus clocks, light bulbs, vacation spots, etc. So, to weed those things out, I would search for Timing Light -(light bulbs, clocks, vacation, etc., etc.) There is a limit to the amount of things you can exclude, but it is pretty large.
Hope thiat helps!

 

"-fits" helps to eliminate a lot of useless hits (esp. since much of it doesn't)