Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Be an EBay Seller
Things to Consider Before Selling on Ebay
Number 10 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Fees
EBay sellers' fees get higher every year. To make things worse, most of the fees are charged before anything is even sold. Therefore, if you list that $1000.00 dress for $100.00, you will be charged at least $5.00 to list it. For an item that valuable, you will not want to take the chance of listing it too low. If you do list it low and add a reserve price, to ensure a minimum sale, you will be charged extra for that.
Number 9 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Time
Finding, buying and listing items on EBay can be terribly time consuming. Often the profit made the item equates to slave labor if you calculate the time spent vs. the money made. Do the math.
Number 8 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Over saturation
Many former EBay sellers will tell you that there was just too much competition for the items they sell on EBay. Even when you do find an original item on EBay that sells very well, it will just be a matter of time before others jump on your bandwagon. For me, last year I was making a great deal of money selling plus sized women's clothing, but before I knew it there were other people offer similar clothes for a lot less. If they have more money to invest and better resources for getting the items, they can quickly put you out of business.
Number 7 reason to not be an EBay Seller: EBay Surprises
Out of no-where, you may find that you successful EBay business has come to a grinding halt. This is because EBay may decide to change the way items are searched for, or give more support to another category, making yours harder to find. The artist category has suffered the most in the past years from such surprises.
Number 6 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Shipping
Shipping EBay items can be easy at times, but they can also be a pain. As postage, prices get higher and higher, the shipping rates can turn off prospective customers. To keep shipping prices reasonable, many sellers have stopped charged handling fees, and so end up eating the costs of shipping materials and time spent packing, and dropping off boxes. You must consider shipping costs and time spent when setting your prices. In additions if you ship out of the country, you HAVE to go to the post office and fill out customs forms. This will cost you more time, hence, more money.
Number 5 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Writing descriptions
EBay sellers these days are sophisticated. They expect full and detailed, and even entertaining descriptions. Things like poor spelling and bad grammar may make him or her move on to another person's item. For some people, especially new seller learning to write a correct description takes time and possibly even money. Whatever you do, do not copy someone else's description word for word. They can find out and will cause problems for you.
Number 4 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Being paid
Once you find or buy the item, list it, and sell it, you will still need to get your final payment. If you use pay pal to receive payments (the quickest and most efficient way), they will take another bite out of your profit. If you accept checks, they could bounce, causing you excess fees, and stress. If you demand money orders, you may end up waiting a long time for the money to arrive; this can make keeping your items to be shipped out organized and your process inefficient.
Number 3 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Returns
An average of five percent of EBay customers return the merchandise. It may not be what they expected. It may not fit. They may be fickle. They may even be trying to defraud you. Failure to accept a return can cause a negative hit on your feedback and even jeopardize your future sales.
Number 2 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Crazy People
It is difficult to control who bids on your items without seriously limiting potential sales. Every now and then, you will get a crazy, unreasonable bidder who will go out of their way to make your life a living hell.
...And the Number 1 reason to not be an EBay Seller: Scammers
There are people who purposely target EBay Sellers to defraud them. You must wary and aware of whom you are dealing with. This however takes time and experience to learn the difference between legitimate offers and fraudulent offers.
Published by A. Hermitt
Andrea Hermitt is an artist by nature and an educator by necessity. As a homeschooling mom of 10 years, she stays current in all things educational, and cutting edge to help her homeschool her children, and... View profile
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17 Comments
Post a CommentI've stopped selling on eBay with all there fee increases - its absolutely ridiculous!
A few years ago it used to be a great way to sell a few items and make a few bucks without having a garage sale - now its a nightmare.
My Company who is charging paypal for Adminstrtive dispute fees has now opened its own Auction Site.
It has no activity yet as it is brand new and has been in existance for 24 hours.
I think all of you will enjoy the terms and if any suggestions pop up let me know.
I will improve it greatly if i get a lot of interest and activity.
So if you want we can make our own version of Online Auctions which will greatly improve matters for us and with plenty of word and support we can be very successful.
I have devised a system which will enable you to save loads of money as sellers and pass these along to buyers...so please join us.
It is a subdomain of our main site which is currently being constructed.
The auction site is now operational.
the address is...
http://blackdragonauctions.griffinfilm.com
I will spice it up and improve the appearance and terms etc. through your input if interest is gained...thank you.
Please join us we would love to have you and it never hurts to have oth
Why eBay Is Wrong about Store vs. Core....
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/10/1155992366.html#1225005230
Good analyzes....
by: bothellj
Sun Aug 20 21:01:21 2006
"Ina, I agree with you 100%! I am an Ebay store owner who will be closing tomorrow when the new fees take effect. Ebay does not seem to understand that the store sellers bring additional extra income for Ebay instead of taking income from the so-called 'core' listings. In fact it is the opposite in my case! I have rarely used Ebay core listings auctions but liked the idea of a fixed price venue. I opened my Ebay store just before they changed the patterns that took Ebay Stores off the internal search features, and I started using auctions (which were ineffective) in hopes of bringing traffic to the store. Since the search change sales have dropped significantly, and to have a huge increase in their fees on top of that just added the last straw to my poor aching back! I decided that Ebay did not want or need my business and that closing was my only viable option. My impression of Ebay, which was not good before, has dro
Great article! Discussion about EBay policies is long overdue.
The main problem with EBay, it's their final value commission fee.
For example if you sell an item for $600, EBay will charge almost 10%, plus you will have to pay 3% PayPal's money transfer fees, so this 13% will translate into $78 profit for Ebay. If you bought item for $500 and sold on EBay for $600, the profit = $100. Simply speaking EBay is shamelessly hiding the real cost for sellers, the above example clearly demonstrate that EBay will take 78% of the profit made and the seller will be left with 22%.
This excessive seller's taxation is not justifiable in any way, and does not promote healthy/honest marketplace. After reading this article and years of EBay experience, I just wish someone would create more web based market alternatives for sellers/buyers. EBay does not have any respect or loyalty for sellers/buyers, it's simply digits and numbers for them.
I'm positively sure, as soon as reputable alternative I
I must be an oddball. I'm a SAHM with an Ebay store working very part time. My profit is around $500/month and I work 3-4 days a week for just 1-2 hours each time. I sell mostly used books. I buy them cheap at library sales or garage sales and turn around and make $2-$10 on each one. If anything, the listing fees have dropped dramatically. It costs me just 5 cents for a listing and that's if I use the 2nd line for the item description. The normal store listings are just 3 cents an item (unless you waste money on all the extra stuff).
I also don't understand the shipping costs comments... I've never paid for shipping on anything I've sold. The buyer pays shipping. And no, I've never inflated shipping price... just rounded up to next even number like 1.55 instead of 1.53 to make it easier.
I have been selling online casually since the late 90's. And the article/blog by A.Hermitt is right on the money. She was with the program only ebay forced her to quit the program. eBay made a big mistake,and I know that is why Whitman left,no doubt about it, she could foresee the downfall of ebay coming soon. She new that soon the gift horse will be closing their doors and grass will start growing between the cracks only a matter of time. For ebay sellers selling on a regular basis start looking to learn another trade,because it is going to get worse,you can take that to the bank. Too bad ebay was a nice place.
Buyers habit's have changed dramatically and that is because of the economy no doubt about it. So good luck because now when I clean out my closet I look elsewhere to sell my items.
well i can see both sides of the story but research is the key to making any profits on ebay.as far as ebays seller fees go they are only raising their prices because they know it will equal more money for them regardless of a few ebay sellers dropping out.darwinism
in action=ebay.
i do wish however their fees were lower but it does cut out a little of the competition.triumph in adversity!
No kidding! My husband and I recently tried to sell some items on ebay, just to get rid of them. Thinking, if we made a small profit, great. But, at least we could break even! Ugh, NOT! We made $47.12 on our sales and shipping charges and got charged $72.00 from ebay and paypal!!! How does this happen??? I have written ebay customer service four times, and they have never really responded. They just keep sending us invoices as a response. I charge that they overcharged us on two items (billing us for 8 listings instead of 4) and they won't respond! They just tell us to pay our invoice! NEVER AGAIN! SELLER BEWARE OF EBAY!!
I agree with everything you've said. Although I've always wanted to sell on ebay because I hear so many great things about it, I did try and sell a few books and such and nothing bad happened but I noticed that shipping costs and packaging and time was not worth the 5$ profit I ended up making. If I set my prices to high it wouldn't sell and like you said by the time you get the ebay fee, paypal fee and shipping out of the way you are left with nothing.
I think you are right, ebay is a good place in my opinion to buy and I have with no problems but selling i'm leary about doing. I guess unless you have a BIG buisness on there and make tons of sales then small profits like 5$ adds up. But for me a student I don't have tons of time to invest on a site that is more problems than it's worth. Although there is a part of me that would love to have my own online buisness and so many people say ebay is the way to go I'm just not sure.
Great article though! I really liked the way it was laye