most of them charge 35% of your profit, and that's after all of the fees. this is why most of those places don't stay in business long, it's not hard to sell stuff on ebay!
Ebay fees are killing me
- Thread starter bagsforme
- Start date
I use auctiva too, it's not perfect, but it's great for listing templates and hosting pictures!
ITA. I always wonder why people bother to sell things at .99 just couldnt be worthwhile
HI. I've been selling on Ebay (aka: "FeeBay") since 1999, and you are right, the fees do seem high. It makes me wince to think the amount I've spent on them, but then Ebay still is cheaper than consignment.
You can definitely save a lot of money by learning basic HTML coding. I did and created my own very simple auction template and NEVER us Ebay's pic hosting. It's not that difficult and a great time investment to learn very simple HTML code if you plan to sell more than a few times a year. Also, you can Google it and find plenty of free online help (especially university websites) to teach your self the most-basic code. You don't need rich HTML or flash or anything more than the basic code unless you want fancy animation, audio or other features. (And remember, the more "stuff" you add to the auction, the longer it takes to load.)
After that, locate a cheap, no-frills photo hosting service (mine is $10/month for 100MB of storage) and keep your pic sizes at maximum of 800X600. That's pretty large and you might well decide to go smaller. Anything bigger will eat storage space and deter dial-up/slow DSL Ebayers because the pics take too long to load. With the huge megapixel photos many cameras product, you should compress your pics and possibly lower the resolution before using them for autions.
Finally, make sure you double-check your auction befoer you submit it to ensure that you didn't inadvertantly enable pay-for Ebay options that you don't need. Too many times I've unknowingly paid for listing designer (yes, it's only $0.10 but still, it's money!) when I was using Ebay's Turbo Lister program because I forgot to proof-read my options before submitting.
I'm not a computer whiz or programmer, but the time I spent educating myself has more than paid off in lower "FeeBay" fees!
Thanks for letting me talk
You can definitely save a lot of money by learning basic HTML coding. I did and created my own very simple auction template and NEVER us Ebay's pic hosting. It's not that difficult and a great time investment to learn very simple HTML code if you plan to sell more than a few times a year. Also, you can Google it and find plenty of free online help (especially university websites) to teach your self the most-basic code. You don't need rich HTML or flash or anything more than the basic code unless you want fancy animation, audio or other features. (And remember, the more "stuff" you add to the auction, the longer it takes to load.)
After that, locate a cheap, no-frills photo hosting service (mine is $10/month for 100MB of storage) and keep your pic sizes at maximum of 800X600. That's pretty large and you might well decide to go smaller. Anything bigger will eat storage space and deter dial-up/slow DSL Ebayers because the pics take too long to load. With the huge megapixel photos many cameras product, you should compress your pics and possibly lower the resolution before using them for autions.
Finally, make sure you double-check your auction befoer you submit it to ensure that you didn't inadvertantly enable pay-for Ebay options that you don't need. Too many times I've unknowingly paid for listing designer (yes, it's only $0.10 but still, it's money!) when I was using Ebay's Turbo Lister program because I forgot to proof-read my options before submitting.
I'm not a computer whiz or programmer, but the time I spent educating myself has more than paid off in lower "FeeBay" fees!
Thanks for letting me talk