Oh Where, Oh Where Has My eBay Auction Gone?

Logging in to eBay today I noticed the view count on my vintage Leica IIIc to be well below average, with only 3 days left on the 7 day auction. It was a little surprising but I figured there could be plenty of reasons for why the numbers were down; for example a flood of vintage Leica postings. So, I typed in Leica IIIc, actually I copied and pasted “Leica IIIc” from my auction heading, into the search box with the “All Categories” selected and pressed search to check out my competition.

The search turned up only one page worth of results and as I was going through the list I couldn’t see a reason for why my auction views would be so low. There weren’t more than the usual amount of cameras listed and my pricing seemed to be well in line with the rest of them. Then I realized my auction for my Leica IIIc didn't show up among the search results.

I went up and down the list a few times and even hit the search button again but my auction wasn’t anywhere to be found. After playing around with the search options a little more, however, my auction finally appeared within search results. What I needed to do in order to see my listing was sort the results by “Pricing + Shipping: highest first”. I noticed I foolishly had my search results sorted by “Pricing + Shipping: lowest first”. As a thrifty minded individual I generally choose the "lowest first" option so I can see all the bargain prices first; I’m assuming that for most bargain shoppers this is also their preferable sorting option as well.

I don’t understand though, why my auction would show up in one sorting option but not the other? The auction was listed as one of my 50 “free” postings for the month, so could that be the reason? Or maybe it’s a bug? When searching for “Leica IIIc” by “Pricing + Shipping: highest first” there are 3 pages of results. When searching for “Leica IIIc” by “Pricing + Shipping: lowest first” there is only 1 page of results. So, I’m guessing I’m not the only one with this problem.

Whatever the case may be, I certainly hope I don’t have to start paying a fee now just to ensure my auction shows up properly among the search results.

The Price Of Doing Buisness On eBay

I have been told by many people in the past to “put it on eBay” under the notion that you can sell just about anything on eBay. While I believe it to be true to a degree, I’m starting to reconsider that piece of advice. 

Is It Really Worth It

Though I know for a fact that I am not actually “making” money off eBay as of now, because everything I have sold thus far has went for less than what I had original spent to acquire it; being the geek I am, I still want to know approximately how much am I getting for my efforts by selling on Bay. 

As you can tell the majority of my items for sell are action figures and, as a matter of fact, action figures are the only items have been able to sell. Now though the most recent figure I have been able to sell went for $4.99, it would be unrealistic for me to think that I can sell all my Marvel ToyBiz figures for the same price. Some of the more popular characters might go for $4.99, but I’m guessing if I really want to move these figures I’m going to have to drop the price below $3.00 apiece; this is partly due to the way eBay is setup. Being a little optimistic and for the sake of this argument, however,  I’m going to calculate how much I would be getting back for a Marvel ToyBiz figure that sold at $3.49; the price which I have listed the majority of them for the last time they were on eBay.

Let’s Calculate Those Fees

EBay charges a fee of 9% based on the closing total of your auction for toys. Now, this “total” is exactly that. It not only includes the final bid price of your auction but also the cost of you shipping the item.  So for my $3.49 figure which I charge $7 for sending it through priority mail, eBay charges me $0.94.

$3.49 + $7.00 = $10.49 total
3% of $10.49 = $0.94 eBay’s first fee

Yes, $0.94 is only the first fee. If you are selling on eBay, you are more than likely accepting your payments through an eBay owned company known as PayPal. EBay’s PayPal charges you another fee of 3% based on the “total” you received for your auction, plus $0.30. So, for my example auction that fee comes to $0.61.

3% of $10.49 = $0.31
$0.31 + $0.30 = $0.61 eBay’s second fee

So for my auction of a $3.49 figure my total fee is…

$0.94 + $0.61 = $1.55

Now, $1.55 for a “total” of $10.49 doesn’t seem that bad. However, let’s remember $7.00 of that “total” actually goes to shipping. In fact at $7.00, the actual shipping cost is eating in to my sale even if eBay didn’t charge sellers a fee for shipping. Walking in to the post office to send a package through priority mail with a delivery confirmation slip is going to cost me $7.05. Some of you might say you can save yourself a few cents if you pay for your shipping online, but if we are really going to be nit-picky the cost of packaging materials and the price of gas when you drop of the package at your nearest post office will basically make any of those “savings” disappear. In order to make things a little simpler, however, I’m just going to ignore those extra costs and say $7.00 covers it. So, that’s an eBay fee of $1.55 for a $3.49 sale.

Putting the price of the fee into another perspective, $1.55 of $3.49 is 44%. When considering only the fees that eBay charges me for a “successful” auction of $3.49, I would receive a grand total of $1.94.

What Can I Do To Make It Worthwhile

Now to be fair, I guess there are a few options available to me to offset these fees.

Raise Prices

One thing I can do is raise prices, after all as I stated earlier the latest action figure I did manage to sell closed out at $4.99. However, that was for a popular character in which the lowest price from a “top-rated seller” came in at more than 4 times as much, and my auction didn’t even warrant enough attention to so much as draw in another bid.

As a new eBay seller without much feedback, if I raise my prices anywhere near the ball park to that of one of these “top-rated sellers” I pretty much guarantee that all the figures I own will stay firmly in my possession. Buyers don’t really like taking chances on new sellers who haven’t already received hundreds of positive feedback unless the price for the item is really good and really low.

Of course there are ways you can fix that feedback problem by selling hundreds of single paperclips; which is a practice I have seen some gold-star sellers do in one form or the other, but it is cheating the system and supposedly “against the rules”.

Change Shipping Options

Another thing I could do is change my shipping options. That will reduce the fees a little since eBay charges you for the cost of shipping.  The problem I have with that, however, is getting boxes. Unless you buy in mass bulk boxes are pretty expensive. If I add the cost of a box and the price for shipping it as a first-class parcel it would come pretty close to what USPS charges for their priority mail service anyway.  For only a dollar more I think a buyer would rather go with the seller that gets them their item quicker.

To top things off, I have seen plenty of “top-rated sellers” who charge more for the economical shipping option than I do for shipping the same item through priority mail. Even with their exuberant shipping prices I can only assume that they still manage to sell plenty of their items in order to achieve their rating, while I would consider myself to be lucky to have even sold one item during the entire month.

Show your commitment and purchase an eBay store subscription

Buying a subscription fee for an eBay store reduces eBay’s fees…slightly. A fee rate drop of 1.5% does not sound very appealing to mean when I don’t put up hundreds of items a week for sale. This option might be good maybe if I decided to make the eBay store my life. Then again I somewhat get the notion that it would still be difficult for many of the mom-and-pop e-retailers to make a decent living if they chose to go with eBay as their only outlet option.

In Conclusion

Though my calculations did show that I would get some money in return for selling my toys on eBay, the whopping return of $1.94 for a $3.49 auction sort of makes me feel like I might be wasting my time taking photos of these items, writing up descriptions, and posting them online; especially when I believe that I’m going to have to lower my prices further in order to move them. Add to that fact as I lower my prices I also raise the percentage eBay takes as their cut for each sale, and I start to feel a little more disillusioned with selling on eBay. If I sell an item for $4.99 with my current shipping options eBay’s cut would be 35%. At $3.49 an item it becomes 44%. At $2.99 I have to shell out more than 50% of that price to eBay.

Now, I’m not trying to get rich here; but seriously I would rather just put up a garage sale sign, place them in a box, and sell them for $2 dollars a piece on my lawn. For my time and effort in doing so, I feel I would be getting way more back than what I could be getting from eBay. I’ll even be saving on the cost of gas it would take me to drive back and forth to the post office when shipping an item. Selling on eBay is definitely not all that it’s made out to be.  As a new or casual seller the odds are stacked up against you to make a successful sale with the hopes of getting a decent return for your item. 

Yes, there are a lot of successful so called eBay power-sellers out there. However, you don't simply become a power-seller without putting in a lot of time and also a lot of your own money first; especially, when trying to building up your reputation o be a “top-seller rating” in the beginning. To be honest, it’s like that for any successful business and you can’t really blame anyone for that.

In an effort to increase their own revenues EBay, as many of their forum members can attest to, has been making changes to their policies to encourage (or force depending on how you want to look at it) more of their sellers into becoming power-sellers. Unfortunately, a lot of the small time sellers who have been on eBay for a long time and who have helped the company in becoming as big as it is today, don't have the means to step up their business in this new environment and as a result have been feeling the squeeze. So, what do you do when you only have the means to pitch a tent in the parking lot of an outlet mall, while bounded by policies which reduce your profits to practically nil as you try to maintain some form of competition with your competitors?

Personally, I will still continue to try and sell my collection on eBay, but I have serious reservations against putting up anything for less than $5 as I feel it will simply not be worth my time and effort. I’m just going to hope that my decision to do so doesn’t drop my chances of making any future sell on eBay lower than what my chances are of hooking up with Kate Upton.

An eBay Star

I’ve noticed that, though some of my items get quite a few looks and may generate a couple of watchers, the items still don’t sell. I have been wondering why. Are people just messing with me? Or are people scared to make that commitment because I’m new to eBay? I’ll admit that if I were to buy something eBay I would probably be hesitant to bid on an item from someone without much feedback. People tend to subconsciously view a seller’s feedback as indication of how trust worthy they are. That is something I can understand even if it is a little frustrating for us newcomers. After all, if we are going to get feedback someone has to first take a chance on buying something from us right?

After surfing for a little while through some eBay auctions my perception of those with thousands of feedback responses began to change, however. Now I started to question if it would really be wise to put more faith into that seller with over a 1,000 feedbacks versus that new guy?  I noticed that several eBay “star” sellers post items with a bid price of 1 cent and offer free shipping if the buyer comes to pick it up.  While some of the auctions look legit others make you wonder “who really wants to buy a single paper clip for 1 cent?” It’s my guess that most of the time these items up for auction don’t even exchange hands. After going through hundreds of 1 cent auctions I began questioning if this so called feedback system is of any use at all. 

Sure eBay allows you to view all of a seller’s feedback for the past 12 months and it may help you in somewhat determining how the seller actually operates by allowing you view to whatever negative feedback remarks the seller may have gotten. However, when someone has sold several thousand items I’m going to expect there will be a few negative feedback remarks. That’s just the way it is. People do make accidental mistakes. No one is perfect and some people are just never satisfied. 

What I really want to look for is the percentage of negative feedback remarks versus positive remarks to determine how good of a seller this person is but in there lays the problem. With the thousands of 1 cent auctions for the exchange of positive feedback remarks taking place every day how can you tell for sure how many positive remarks a seller has is really genuine. If a seller had received 1,010 feedback replies, 10 of them being negative reviews due to the item being slightly damaged on arrival and some due to unusually long shipping times but the rest are all outstanding positive reviews from completely satisfied customers that is someone who I might be willing to take a chance on with my money. Now, if I found out that 990 of those so called satisfied customers wrote positive reviews for the purchase of a 1 cent paperclip I wouldn’t even waste my time to ever look at another auction posted by that seller. Because a buyer does not have to mention the item they bought when giving feedback you may be completely clueless as to how the seller actually conducts business until it’s too late. The feedback system was supposed to help sellers and buyers ensure a smooth transaction. Now it’s helping to lead people astray. 

I have to admit, however, there was one 1 cent auction that I came across last night that I actually had admiration for. This seller was selling one used slightly wrinkled USPS receipt. The seller was very up front with his or her intention of selling this item which was to boost selling numbers by 1 in order to meet a quota set by eBay that would remove the 3 week hold on their money. While I can’t be 100% sure what was stated to be the true reason for the sale of this receipt I have no reason to doubt it. 

I can remember myself wondering why I had to wait 3 weeks to receive money for the first 2 items I sold on eBay. I did understand that holding the money can help deter sellers from trying to scam people with bogus auctions. However, after my customers had received their items and had left positive reviews I did not understand why I had to wait another 2 weeks to get my money when it was already sitting in the hands of PayPal. Was eBay trying to tell me if I wanted to receive my money instantly all I had to do was make 23 bogus auctions for a single paperclip? Would that insure them I was not out to scam people? The seller of the USPS receipt stated “this receipt symbolizes what is wrong with [eBay] selling policies” and, though I have only been using eBay for a short while, to some degree I agree.  EBay needs to consider taking a long look at some of their policies.  

You can find the auction for the USPS receipt here.

Mega Boost Limit Increase!

The eBay gods with all their wisdom have increased my selling limits by 999%!! Instead of only being allowed to post 10 items at a time for no more than a total of $500 I can now post 100 items for a total of $5,000!!

I find it a little odd that all I had to do to receive this new limit increase, though, was answer a set of questions that looked very similar to ones I had answered before when I had first requested a limit increase. After all, I was turned down that first time. While, I don't believe I answered the questions any differently this second time around, lo and behold I was granted the Mega Boost Limit Increase!

Now, it's not that I'm ungrateful for having my limits increased. I do have a lot of items waiting to be sold, after all. However, things seem a little whimsical.

Another Day Gone, Another eBay Lesson Learned

I understood that out of each successful auction eBay would take a percentage of the final price as their cut. This was a given. However, I guess I did not pay close enough attention to fact that they also charge you a fee based on the cost of you shipping your item to the buyer.  Personally I do not understand the justification for this fee.

Where does eBay come in to the equation when I am shipping an item? When I’m packaging the item eBay is not there handing me a pair of scissors or some tape. When I’m on my way to the post office eBay is not there to offer to drive or even change the channel on my radio. When I’m standing in line at the post office eBay is not there to offer me a refreshing drink or a tasty snack. Ah, but when I’m finally about to pay the cashier and I reach for my wallet eBay is there to help takeout my money. Now I see.

Just when I thought I might be getting a grasp on how much to charge for shipping eBay throws me for another loop.

Me and eBay

So I have sold my second item on eBay. Unlike the first time the cost of shipping was on the mark. The item sold for $8.99, the starting bid price. PayPal took $0.79 for their fees and I am assuming that eBay will take their cut as well. When you add everything up I am probably getting a little over $7 for this sell.

On a positive note this is a lot better than the first time in which my cost for shipping was more than total sum of what I received after the sell. However, I am pretty sure I spent a bit more than $8.99 when I had originally bought the item…

Note to self: making a living as an eBay trader does not look to be in your cards.

The eBay Learning Curve

The whopping 10 auctions I have listed on eBay have finished and I have sold a grand total of… wait for it…dun-da-ta-ta…1!

Yeah, that’s right one.  I sold Gambit for 3.99 which I listed with a cost of shipping and handling for $7.00. According to my Paypal account I will be receiving a total of $10.37. I guess the $0.62 difference is the cut for eBay, which is not bad. 

Now, before the auction of the item actually concluded I tried to figure out how to best package the item for shipping. The guy at the post-office told me if I used a one of the Priority Mail envelopes it would cost around $5. However, I told him I did not want to use an envelope because it did not seem like it would protect the item well enough. Then he pulled out a Priority Mail box and told me shipping that way would cost a little over $6. That seemed to be the better option so I took the box home and waited for the auction to finish. 

Now that the auction had completed, while I was waiting for a conformation of payment I started to stare back and forth at the box I got from the post office and the Gambit figure. I got to thinking it is such a huge box for a small item.  If I was going to ship it in that box I was going to need a lot of packaging material to keep it from moving around. I looked at the other Priority Mail boxes that had ordered from the post office earlier and found one that seemed to be a better a fit. It was still a relatively large box for the Gambit figure but not as large as the other one. I decided to use it and I got the package ready to ship for the next day.

This morning I headed over to the post office to send off my first eBay sell ever. By the way is there never anyone in-line at the post-office? When I finally got to the register and handed the cashier the package I was told that shipping the item would cost me a grand total of $12.10. Now, that price was a bit higher than what I was told earlier. It turns out that the box that I had packaged it in was not a better fit after all. It was a flat rate box.

Well, I guess I could have just decided not to go through with the shipping at that moment. However, there turned out to be bit of a mix up with the Paypal account that had I linked to my eBay account. While the past couple of days I was reading on eBay that the payment was still pending my buyer had already sent his payment through Paypal.  It was also already the weekend and I didn’t want to wait any longer on sending out this item. I decided to go through with it and take the loss in hopes that I will still get a favorable feedback rating so that more buyers would be willing to bid on my auctions.

So as for my first eBay sell ever I ended up in the red at $1.37. I guess I’ll just chalk it up as a learning experience.

The eBay Limit

It seems that I have hit my eBay limit with a grand total of 10 items for sell. When I first read that I could post the first 50 items of the month for free I thought to myself that would probably enough for me to get things rolling… But 10? It looks like I hit a speed bump.

Well, I guess it is a good policy to limit people from trying to just put anything on their site and to prevent some of us that are new to eBay from simply getting carried away.  As most of you can probably tell I’m new to selling online and in fact I rarely ever purchase anything online either. 

I see there is an option to call them and try to persuade them to increase my selling limits but maybe 10 is a good place for a newbie like me to stop. On the other hand, I do have a lot of items for sell and they need to go. I’m going to have to think about this one.

By the way, if you got a good tip on how to increase your eBay sells feel free to leave a comment below.