Oh my goodness. Forgive me while I vent a little and hopefully save you the aggravation of listing on ebay..
This just reminds me WHY I LOVE ZIBBET.com!!!
So I went over to the dark side to give ebay a try sense it has been a while sense I sold things on there. They have all this stuff saying they have no listings fee's and free picture hosting and etc etc. I know I stopped using ebay before cause the fee structure was high and they seem to get you on everything plus there is NO SELLER PROTECTION. Ebay is all about the buyers these days not the sellers. Well now they are fixing to change that starting this fall as the new notices go. blah blah blah
So I decided oh heck let me list a cpl little things... OMG! Break check. I had a couple things sell but I have to share with you the fees.. Now I did not have to pay a listing fee..but you better believe they have that tied in to their so called "Final Value Fee" and they now charge a Shipping fee! SAY WHAT?! Oh there are other fee's, but I did not use those "tools" in my listing's.
So an item sold for 6.00 my final value fee was .54 cents my shipping was 2.00 and my shipping fee was .18 cents then paypal fee was .53 cents... oh, did I mention ebay only allows paypal now. No more paying via check or money order.. we can't even use that as a option. You gotta pay by paypal..yet another fee they profit from cause I read once..correct me if I am wrong, but they are part of the same company.
So one of my item's sold for 6.00 cost me 1.25 in fee's! Not to mention the so called shipping fee cut into my shipping price! They say they charge a shipping fee to keep shipping rates low. OK. I can see why they do that in away. I have been on ebay where I see something selling for .99 but the shipping was 32.00. I know sellers did that so they did not have to pay that 1. listing fee and 2. final value fee.
Well now those of us that are honest.. I know so rare now a days...you'd think we are a dying breed or something LOL we are forced to list our item's at a higher price if we want to sell on ebay ( the higher you list the higher the fee's) and we gotta list a higher shipping rate too just to try and recoupe some of the fee's we are charged cause NOW even if you charge exactly what shipping will be you are still charge a fee which eats at any profit.
Here are what my other item's sold for just to share. 7.95 with 2.00 shipping. ok here are the fee's. .72 Final Value fee, .18 shipping fee, .59 Paypal fee that is 1.49 in fee's alone! You say..charge more, well if you charge more then that is more fee's. I hate playing the fee game.
I even went a cheap way thinking I will list something at 1.99. HA HA HA it did sell. no problem, and I am happy for the buyer as I will have my starting price on ebay start out at the lowest price I will take on an item so if it sells that is a plus for someone if not then it just goes back into one of my shops etc. . So, it sells at 1.99 with 2.00 shipping then here comes the fee's.. Final value fee .18, shipping fee .18, Paypal fee .42 for a total of .78 cents in fee's! So my total profit on that is 1.21. WOW!
I just don't understand ebay any longer.I do not know how people do it that sell item's on their all the time. Must be some secret I am not getting. I know I will no longer sell on there. I don't like being forced to raise prices cause you have to. I as a seller like to share savings to my customer's when I can. To me, ebay as taken the fun out of being personable caring seller to a Shanghai comparative fee mongrel seller. Some might be ok on rasing their prices due to the fee's, but I just don't think it is fare. I know we all got to make money, and I am a FIRM believer you got to spend money to make money, but really ebay.. you have grown so big you want more when it was the little guys like myself that made you what you are today. Shame really.
Which brings me to other online selling venues..
I LOVE that I found Zibbet.com a year ago. They have a basic shop where you can list 50 items for free with no seller fee's or you can go premium and pay one lump sum of 69.00 and list how ever much you want. Zibbet.com is new and still growing and came in 2nd under Artfire.com for selling online venues. I was extremely lucky to grab a lifetime membership when they offered them last Dec. and jumped aboard. So glad that I did! The community is nice and you can personalized your shop and be yourself. If you sell online do check out zibbet.com. http://www.zibbet.com/sell
I sell on ETSY.com too. They charge a .20 flat listing fee and I think it is something like a 3% sell value fee when your item sells..which is FAR LESS then ebay..but again with the fee's especially when you add in paypal, BUT you have the option to pay by check or money order too. Artfire also has a basic membership with no fee's but they apparently have grown so large they no longer offer basic shops starting in Aug. if you want to join Artfire.com you gotta pay a flat monthly fee (just under 10.00 but I heard that is going up). Of course if any of your buyer's use paypal there is a fee and that I am OK with. I am thankful for paypal allowing the ease of online funding and making it more safe for us all. Now I know there are other selling venues online, I just listed the ones I know of. So, if you would like to list a link to other "buy and sell handmade" sites then happily do so :) as it keeps us all informed!
So, to sell on ebay or not is up to you. I however, will not. What about you?
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