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What Does It Really Cost To Sell on eBay?

Posted by hughlh

I have always maintained that selling on eBay is a great proposition assuming two things:

1. An above average sell through and
2. The item you sell is of high enough value.

Sell through rate is basically the percent of items you put up for auction that end with someone buying them (Say you put 5 auctions up, 4 of them end with someone buying the item, You have an 80% sell through rate).

The item we sell should have an average closing price above $15.00, $20.00 is better.

Thanks to this little tool here, you can see exactly what it costs to sell an item on eBay.

For example, all day long you see people put auctions up for $9.95, the end at $9.95 and then the buyer pays with PayPal. The tool tells us that the cost of that transaction is $1.62, or more than 15%.

Thought it was a pretty cool little tool.

4 Responses to “What Does It Really Cost To Sell on eBay?”

1. R.E. Bartlett Says:
   July 8th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

   Cool tool! It doesn’t provide for calculation of optional fees, but it’s great for a quick check.

   If your readers want something more permanent - I’ve set up a free “ebay fee tracker” in Excel that automatically generates ebay fees, paypal fees, and various ratios (profit margin, cost margin) with minimal data entry. Now on version 5: http://www.coelacanthbks.com/template.html

2. admin Says:
   July 11th, 2007 at 11:21 am

   Very nice indeed. I will see to it that it gets on the list of links.

3. How Much Does PayPal Cost? | book-links.info Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 3:56 pm

   […] while back I wrote about a very simple tool that would allow you to determine the cost of doing business on eBay. I thought at the time (and […]

4. How Much Does PayPal Cost? Says:
   March 9th, 2008 at 7:12 am

   […] while back I wrote about a very simple tool that would allow you to determine the cost of doing business on eBay. I thought at the time (and […]

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