by Bruce Tyson

Created on: February 26, 2010

Selling on eBay is not as easy as most people think it is. You have to price your items right or they won’t sell or you’ll lose money.

Fees

The biggest factor that gets people into trouble on eBay (money wise) is failing to account for the fees. There’s a fee to list an item. There’s a fee to sell an item. Fees vary based on item cost, item type, and listing style (either auction or fixed price). There’s also PayPal fee that is charged to your account when a buyer pays.

Shipping and Handling

Find out what it’s going to cost to ship your item. This means with box, packing material and all. When you set your price and shipping costs for the item on eBay, you must consider mailing costs or you will risk losing money.

Check the competition

Look on eBay to get an idea of the price at which items similar to yours are selling. You may be shocked when you do this, because you’ll find that new and used items like yours or better than yours are selling for far less than what you need to sell yours for. On top of that, they will offer free shipping too! How can this be?

First, volume sellers are charged lower fees on eBay and PayPal, allowing them to sell for less. Secondly, some sellers are trying to build their volume to the point where they can get those better rates; some sellers get their items for sale from better sources. Finally, there are some items for sale at prices so low that there’s no way to imagine how those prices are possible.

The reason you check the competition is for educational purposes only. You can’t always compete with the lowest prices on eBay, but you need to have that information to reference.

Selling format

You need to decide what format you are going to use to sell your item. Hopefully, you’ve taken the time to calculate the fees already, so you know which format might be cheaper.

For example, if you are selling on auction, you might want to price your item low so it will attract bids. You have to be careful though, because if you start your auction at 1¢, you might only get one bid and have to sell your item for 1¢ and still have to pay all your fees and buy packaging and postage.

Fixed priced items are listed at the price you actually want to get from the item. This is safe, but it also rules out the possibility of getting more than you expected.

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