How does anyone make money on eBay?

I used to get pissed when I saw auctions with high S&H rates, but now I understand why eBay and Paypal squeeze the seller out of any profits they can make.

I sold a Mac Mini recently for $545 (yeah, I felt I could do better, but Apple's new Intel Mac Mini probably screwed up my final price). eBay ended up taking $17 for the sale, and Paypal took $23. I only charged $25 for shipping, so all of these fees are cutting into my profit.

Now, before anyone starts flaming me about losing a little bit off the top of $500 for a Mac Mini I didn't pay for, I didn't start this thread to bitch about only my situation; I can't understand how any sellers can make money.

If I knew that I was paying for fees out of my pocket, I'd be going nuts. I can't imagine eBay is very profitable for sellers anymore. I remember the days when the most I ever paid for a completed auction was $3.

The subsequent question is how come no one else has started an auction site with lower fees? The first response to this question is that no one has as big a brand name or as high a visibility as eBay, but that can change as the market changes. People just need to move on to where the better deals are.

Maybe it's time to move to Yahoo! auctions... I think they don't have any selling fees at all...

I really don't like selling on ebay either because of just that. Paypal and eBay are both owned by the same people so they are just double screwing you. Yeah, it does get ridiculus.

Well stormpay had/has their auction site, I don't think the fees are as high as eBay. I have also heard about some with a flat rate listing cost, but I forget what they are.....

Really there's nothing you could do. You could never upgrade your paypal account so you wouldn't get fees taken out, and you could put in your listing buyer must pay 3% to cover fees, I've seen a few people do this...

PayPal is crazy. They take out 35 cents on every payment no matter the amount. A friend cent me 40 cents and I got 5 cents net...wtf is that?

I'm selling condoms on eBay for 12 cents a condom, and if you look at fees and such, I'd have to sell like 25 condoms extra to cover fees on my lots of 500. It sucks shrug

On the subject, does anyone know if you can have multiple PayPal accounts? When I open my eBay store, I want all payments to go to a paypal account that's not hooked up to my bank, not upgraded, and no debit or virtual card hooked up to it. I'm going to get checks sent to me, and that's all.

Push the fee's on the buyer by increasing s&h or add it in the required insurance =]

[quoteed71bbf499="PayPal TOS"][bed71bbf499]Eligibility. [/bed71bbf499]In order to use the Service, you must register for a Personal, Premier, or Business account. Users may only hold one Personal account and either one Premier or one Business account.[/quoteed71bbf499]

Yeah ebay is bs sometimes got a store for 16 a month. .03 cents a store listing with an 8% sell fee...

Not bad you should try it.

Yea it sucks, but cheaper then leasing a store front for a year, furnishing it, etc.

You just have to factor in all those prices before selling.

I just charge $10 handling fee(varies on item value) and start items at $.99 and end low....sticking it to the man,lol

Yeah fees suck but stuff usually sells for good prices on ebay so its worth it

i have 2 paypal accts, 1 personal and 1 premiere. i dunt let the buyer do ebay checkout to pay by paypal; instead i email them with directions for where to send cc payments vs other. some people get it wrong (dunno why), others entirely ignore me and reply saying i thought ur auction said u take paypal (when i really take 2 paypals not none...) and others actually do it right! very few people take the cc payment i find, saves on fees )

yeah, i have two paypal accounts as well.

What do you guys sell?

I used to sell Diablo 2 items on ebay a while back, made a cool $1000 overall. This one armor called "Enigma" fetched me $105. 8)

And it was nice to not have to deal with shipping.

[quote7ca06f688e="Bill"]I used to sell Diablo 2 items on ebay a while back, made a cool $1000 overall. This one armor called "Enigma" fetched me $105. 8)

And it was nice to not have to deal with shipping.[/quote7ca06f688e]


nice

I've never really made too great of a profit on ebay ?

i guess im an idiot and never paid attention. i upgraded my account long ago and got the paypal card and figured that was that.

didn't know about the 2 account thing (

I sold my iBook recently for $833, not as much as I wanted, but was surprised to see Paypal only charge me $5. My shipping quote was an estimate compared to others shipping iBooks but a lot lower, then I come to find out it still was over the real shipping price like $8 bucks. eBay didn't charge me more than like $3.00 or something. That was my first and only time to sell something on eBay and I expected them to charge a lot more and stuff. The only thing I didn't like was the final price that I got. Oh well, pure profit.