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How can you compete with other eBay sellers?


dudeguy

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I have a growing stack of duplicates that I want to sell and I want to at least break even if not, profit, but browsing eBay listings, I am wondering how it is even possible. Take for example, Combat Basketball for SNES. Here's the cheapest one I'm seeing at the moment:

 

The shipping cost alone with take away most your profit! I looked up the price to ship a cartridge and it seems to be around $4.80. Then you add the 30 cent fee and the 12.9% fee that eBay/PayPal take as well as your shipping container cost and are you even making money at that point?? I saw one sell for $4.91 with free shipping. Wouldnt you be LOSING money at that low of price?

 

 

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USPS charges basically $5 for a padded envelope so if they buy direct postage, no. 

 

Services like eBay, or PayPal shipping, and even pirateship, give a business discount so it brings it down a bit but the shipping cost is still around $3.85 from pirate ship. I assume the others are close. The rate wouldn't change if you had another cart in there. The weight would still be under the limit. So bundles aren't a bad idea. 

 

Problem is most sellers are dishonest with their shipping weight info. Under or over. Some will say shipping weight is a .01 ounces. Others will say it's 50 pounds (and keep the difference when it's under). I just saw someone trying to sell a couple of GameCubes on eBay saying it would cost an absurd $35+ for shipping. 2 GameCube consoles would clearly fit in a medium flat rate. It goes both ways. The only way to make money on smaller items on eBay seems to be dishonesty. 

 

I would agree that a bundle might help you out if you're looking to sell on there. If not, post em here for a buck or 2 and the buyer pays shipping. Usually helps if they buy multiple items. 

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11 hours ago, dudeguy said:

I have a growing stack of duplicates that I want to sell and I want to at least break even if not, profit, but browsing eBay listings, I am wondering how it is even possible. Take for example, Combat Basketball for SNES. Here's the cheapest one I'm seeing at the moment:

 

The shipping cost alone with take away most your profit! I looked up the price to ship a cartridge and it seems to be around $4.80. Then you add the 30 cent fee and the 12.9% fee that eBay/PayPal take as well as your shipping container cost and are you even making money at that point?? I saw one sell for $4.91 with free shipping. Wouldnt you be LOSING money at that low of price?

 

Having sold for a long time on there, and stopped before the skeevy tax changes this year I get it.  As you were told, the ebay partners or pirateship can get like a up to 5oz bubble bag and game to around $4 maybe less depending on distance for zone shipping.

 

But as you pointed out, you're right, there's a price vs what you keep issue, but you missed half the point unfortunately.  Let's say you sold (for sake of argument) Bill there for $10 SHIPPED.  Ebay would take 15% of that roughly down to 8.50 and you'd eat another 4 to ship it, now you're at 4.50 from 10.

 

Here's the slap in the face though, did you make $600 the entire year, self employment you lose another 15-20% to the US gov't off the original full total because ebay is a dick so they'll tell them you earned $10.  So from that 4.50 remove another 1.50-2 leaving you with $2-3 on your $10 shipped item.

 

The thing is, you said in reality though Bill is worth like $4 and costs like $4 to ship it... that's a loss, not even breaking even, you're screwed.  And that's not even covering your packing materials costs (printing, ink, paper, tape,  package itself), and of course time and effort along with gas to the post office.

 

The skinny of it, in the US, if you're clearing $600/yr in sales on ebay you better never sell a damn thing under $10 or you're paying to get rid of it.

 

These big companies dumping junk can afford it, they get special ebay store rates, and they have so much overhead even as a private business the $20 and the $200+ games will offset the crumbs so they make decent money.  They already were eating the now $600/yr rate being a business, so they're clear on that.  Basically they have the advantage as they have the lower ebay store rate, get bulk shipping reduced rates further, and don't have the added personal tax abuse started this year.

 

Best suggestion, sell locally on facebook for cash only, or if someone is that annoying, friends and family paypal as it's not reported.  And if you have spare systems to dump, bundle the filler games like that so you don't lose.

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dont sell them on ebay...

I don't even collect and have ended up with a loose crap example of combat basketball, and what's the latest ... fumbles around heh ... super play action football. Cant give this shit to a thrift store!

 

Make a stack of shovelware sell it as a lot for cheap here or somewhere similar knowing that those people are savvy with reality outside ebay, and just get rid of them. or just give them away for free + postage 

Quote

Wouldnt you be LOSING money at that low of price?

Lets say you buy a shoebox of games for 100$ yard sale, ebay, thrift store whatever, 4 of them in loose crappy condition are worth (to people, not ebay) 20-30 dollars, your either -20 bucks or + 20 bucks and have 10 more games to sell and 5 to "throw away". The one's you keep don't count cause you would have paid for them anyway 

Edited by Osgeld
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9 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Having sold for a long time on there, and stopped before the skeevy tax changes this year I get it.  As you were told, the ebay partners or pirateship can get like a up to 5oz bubble bag and game to around $4 maybe less depending on distance for zone shipping.

 

But as you pointed out, you're right, there's a price vs what you keep issue, but you missed half the point unfortunately.  Let's say you sold (for sake of argument) Bill there for $10 SHIPPED.  Ebay would take 15% of that roughly down to 8.50 and you'd eat another 4 to ship it, now you're at 4.50 from 10.

 

Here's the slap in the face though, did you make $600 the entire year, self employment you lose another 15-20% to the US gov't off the original full total because ebay is a dick so they'll tell them you earned $10.  So from that 4.50 remove another 1.50-2 leaving you with $2-3 on your $10 shipped item.

 

The thing is, you said in reality though Bill is worth like $4 and costs like $4 to ship it... that's a loss, not even breaking even, you're screwed.  And that's not even covering your packing materials costs (printing, ink, paper, tape,  package itself), and of course time and effort along with gas to the post office.

 

The skinny of it, in the US, if you're clearing $600/yr in sales on ebay you better never sell a damn thing under $10 or you're paying to get rid of it.

 

These big companies dumping junk can afford it, they get special ebay store rates, and they have so much overhead even as a private business the $20 and the $200+ games will offset the crumbs so they make decent money.  They already were eating the now $600/yr rate being a business, so they're clear on that.  Basically they have the advantage as they have the lower ebay store rate, get bulk shipping reduced rates further, and don't have the added personal tax abuse started this year.

 

Best suggestion, sell locally on facebook for cash only, or if someone is that annoying, friends and family paypal as it's not reported.  And if you have spare systems to dump, bundle the filler games like that so you don't lose.

Is that $600 added onto your total gross income for the year from your day job? So if you normally earn $70,000 a year gross and are normally taxed on $70k, next year you sell exactly $600 worth of games on eBay, you would be taxed on $70,600?

Edited by dudeguy
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53 minutes ago, dudeguy said:

Is that $600 added onto your total gross income for the year from your day job? So if you normally earn $70,000 a year gross and are normally taxed on $70k, next year you sell exactly $600 worth of games on eBay, you would be taxed on $70,600?

Yes, it would be added to your regular day job income so you would be taxed at your marginal tax rate. The kicker is all the extra paperwork in your taxes if you want to offset how much of that $600 is really income. You're either a "business" in which case you fill out Schedule C - Profit or Loss from Business. Of the profit you show you would be responsible for federal and state income tax at your marginal rate. You would also be responsible for Self-employment tax (FICA) at 15.3%.

 

If you're not a "business" you may be able to fill out Schedule D - Capital Gains which is a lot easier than Schedule C, but you'll lose ability for certain deductions like home office, mileage, etc.

 

Still very complicated either way. And in the latest congress proposal to "reduce" inflation, they are trying to put in 80 Billion for more IRS agents...

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2 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Is that $600 added onto your total gross income for the year from your day job? So if you normally earn $70,000 a year gross and are normally taxed on $70k, next year you sell exactly $600 worth of games on eBay, you would be taxed on $70,600?

Actually  its more than that because of self employment tax (the tax that your employer normally pays for you on top of federal and state).

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I know I very very over simplified what I wrote there equally to make it easy, but also a shock and scare tactic too.  The ultimate point was, if you choose to sell on ebay anymore, I would have said $10 minimum to really be able to maybe be worth it, but mickster probably is more correct around the $15 mark.

 

Figuring what people make in general outside of the richer parts of the country, and KY isn't richer, go check the median income, $10 made sense with what I wrote out.

 

Basically with the intake we have here, because the government doesn't care about your personal finances outside of what they can tax, not your debts etc it kind of is what it is when you have that self employment tax if you were working for a 'real job' your employer pays, you do.  I found that a guesstimation range of 15-20% made sense for more people than not.

 

So with ebay kicking out paypal, and them kind of raising their rates despite their so called fuzzy math I figure they take 15%, but because they're sponging off taxes they collect for state and the postage which you don't even profit from as it's well...POSTAGE, and you usually have to buy some supplies and use gas to get to the post office I call it 20% which could maybe be low at that.

 

So if you sold a $100 item (assuming $10 to ship it) you start already immediately losing $15-20 from ebay, minus the shipping, now it's $70.  BUT, they report $100 to the fed, so they'll take another $15-20.  $100-10(shipping)-15(ebay)-15(fed) you're at $60, and had we assumed 20% on both, now you're at $50 out of $100 you so called profit from.

 

Break that back down to a $10 item, you're not even clearing $5.  And because of that, you can't compete with people who have ebay stores, business tax ids, and already have accounted for years paying the self employment rate people previously could just casually avoid not going over $20K a year (+200 items) to get hit with it too.  At $600 anyone will get hit with it basically.  That's why ebay was getting all up in arms over it and trying to lobby for change.

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3 hours ago, taxman said:

Yes, it would be added to your regular day job income so you would be taxed at your marginal tax rate. The kicker is all the extra paperwork in your taxes if you want to offset how much of that $600 is really income. You're either a "business" in which case you fill out Schedule C - Profit or Loss from Business. Of the profit you show you would be responsible for federal and state income tax at your marginal rate. You would also be responsible for Self-employment tax (FICA) at 15.3%.

 

If you're not a "business" you may be able to fill out Schedule D - Capital Gains which is a lot easier than Schedule C, but you'll lose ability for certain deductions like home office, mileage, etc.

 

Still very complicated either way. And in the latest congress proposal to "reduce" inflation, they are trying to put in 80 Billion for more IRS agents...



 87K new IRS agents



https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/inflation-reduction-act-irs-agents/

Edited by roadrunner
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4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I know I very very over simplified what I wrote there equally to make it easy, but also a shock and scare tactic too.  The ultimate point was, if you choose to sell on ebay anymore, I would have said $10 minimum to really be able to maybe be worth it, but mickster probably is more correct around the $15 mark.

 

Figuring what people make in general outside of the richer parts of the country, and KY isn't richer, go check the median income, $10 made sense with what I wrote out.

 

Basically with the intake we have here, because the government doesn't care about your personal finances outside of what they can tax, not your debts etc it kind of is what it is when you have that self employment tax if you were working for a 'real job' your employer pays, you do.  I found that a guesstimation range of 15-20% made sense for more people than not.

 

So with ebay kicking out paypal, and them kind of raising their rates despite their so called fuzzy math I figure they take 15%, but because they're sponging off taxes they collect for state and the postage which you don't even profit from as it's well...POSTAGE, and you usually have to buy some supplies and use gas to get to the post office I call it 20% which could maybe be low at that.

 

So if you sold a $100 item (assuming $10 to ship it) you start already immediately losing $15-20 from ebay, minus the shipping, now it's $70.  BUT, they report $100 to the fed, so they'll take another $15-20.  $100-10(shipping)-15(ebay)-15(fed) you're at $60, and had we assumed 20% on both, now you're at $50 out of $100 you so called profit from.

 

Break that back down to a $10 item, you're not even clearing $5.  And because of that, you can't compete with people who have ebay stores, business tax ids, and already have accounted for years paying the self employment rate people previously could just casually avoid not going over $20K a year (+200 items) to get hit with it too.  At $600 anyone will get hit with it basically.  That's why ebay was getting all up in arms over it and trying to lobby for change.

Does eBay charge a final value fee on shipping costs because they know that if they didnt, everyone would just charge $0.01 for the item and then $100 for shipping a copy of Robotrek (which costs about $5 to ship) and theyre concerned that they would no longer be able to make any money off of sellers?

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41 minutes ago, dudeguy said:

Does eBay charge a final value fee on shipping costs because they know that if they didnt, everyone would just charge $0.01 for the item and then $100 for shipping a copy of Robotrek (which costs about $5 to ship) and theyre concerned that they would no longer be able to make any money off of sellers?

Instead of cracking down on people doing that, that was their reason for the change, yes. 

Edited by Dopy25
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@dudeguy Yup, as dopy there said 6 hours ago.  I went digging and they started doing it around 2008.  Sometime in the mid-2000s it became a problem, it wasn't common for their first decade.  It was started as Auctionweb in 1995 in California and was kind of just meant for locals up north there, then went state when I got on in 1996(Ive got one of the oldest active accounts on there I think in use still at least) and people were honest for years.  Sometime in the mid 2000s about a decade into it people figured out you could charge the minimum 99cents for an item, and they never regulated shipping charges at all so people would put a $50 item up for .99 to bid and $50 shipping.  Ebay would only collect their percent on the .99(or whatever it went to.)

 

Instead of punishing the people and banning accounts, they instead decided to screw everyone entirely as it was easier and charge the final value fee.  The FVF rolls up the % on the item win price, shipping fees, and eventually local taxes too as it's easier for them to just have the computer do one equation, % of total paid, not breaking it up to what you're not keeping.

 

This topic came up on another post here or at another forum I forget, but you can see the line graph by years they've existed on user growth/profit and when they did the FVF thing they lost like 1/2 their business intake and it took a lot of years to finally claw it back.  They're starting to droop again over the $600 reporting scam going on now, which is why they keep hammering congress lobbying to get it fixed and sending out member mails to get people to pester their congress critters.

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38 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

@dudeguy Yup, as dopy there said 6 hours ago.  I went digging and they started doing it around 2008.  Sometime in the mid-2000s it became a problem, it wasn't common for their first decade.  It was started as Auctionweb in 1995 in California and was kind of just meant for locals up north there, then went state when I got on in 1996(Ive got one of the oldest active accounts on there I think in use still at least) and people were honest for years.  Sometime in the mid 2000s about a decade into it people figured out you could charge the minimum 99cents for an item, and they never regulated shipping charges at all so people would put a $50 item up for .99 to bid and $50 shipping.  Ebay would only collect their percent on the .99(or whatever it went to.)

 

Instead of punishing the people and banning accounts, they instead decided to screw everyone entirely as it was easier and charge the final value fee.  The FVF rolls up the % on the item win price, shipping fees, and eventually local taxes too as it's easier for them to just have the computer do one equation, % of total paid, not breaking it up to what you're not keeping.

 

This topic came up on another post here or at another forum I forget, but you can see the line graph by years they've existed on user growth/profit and when they did the FVF thing they lost like 1/2 their business intake and it took a lot of years to finally claw it back.  They're starting to droop again over the $600 reporting scam going on now, which is why they keep hammering congress lobbying to get it fixed and sending out member mails to get people to pester their congress critters.

I cant think of any other auction site to list my games at besides eBay, if i wanted to boycott them. PriceCharting.com is the closest place i can think of. they dont have a final value fee at all, but the PayPal fee is 49 cents plus 3.49% which is higher than eBay's PayPal fee of 30 cents plus 2.9%

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10 hours ago, dudeguy said:

I cant think of any other auction site to list my games at besides eBay, if i wanted to boycott them. PriceCharting.com is the closest place i can think of. they dont have a final value fee at all, but the PayPal fee is 49 cents plus 3.49% which is higher than eBay's PayPal fee of 30 cents plus 2.9%

Well I think your math isn't making sense.  Ebay takes around a 15% cut because they cut out paypal so they can get all the processing perks for themselves so you're not using PP there.  So I guess 30cents +2.9% should be a lot less than nearly 15%.  Trade off is, smaller pool of buyers, up side is, at least being for gaming, so many use it now you'll have many potential views still.  Seems to me you'll keep roughly 10% in your pocket cutting out ebay.

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13 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Well I think your math isn't making sense.  Ebay takes around a 15% cut because they cut out paypal so they can get all the processing perks for themselves so you're not using PP there.  So I guess 30cents +2.9% should be a lot less than nearly 15%.  Trade off is, smaller pool of buyers, up side is, at least being for gaming, so many use it now you'll have many potential views still.  Seems to me you'll keep roughly 10% in your pocket cutting out ebay.

I'll take your word for it that it's 15% now, I thought I read that it was 12.9%. either way, I think 10%+ is a massive chunk to take away. I know Amazon is even higher.

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7 minutes ago, dudeguy said:

I'll take your word for it that it's 15% now, I thought I read that it was 12.9%. either way, I think 10%+ is a massive chunk to take away. I know Amazon is even higher.

It is 12.9% for most categories, including video games.  This includes the payment processing fee that used to be charged separately by the payment processor.  It basically works out to about the same as eBay's previous 10% final value fee for video games, plus what PayPal typically charges (2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction).  eBay's fees are detailed here:

 

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/frais-pour-les-vendeurs-particuliers?id=4822

 

 ..Al

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I seem to recall ebay fees used to be somewhere between 1-5% at the beginning, which was quite reasonable. But, as every other disruptor company, they followed a simple model of starting with free/low charges, attaining a huge userbase and/or becoming a near-monopoly, and then gradually increasing the fees. And so here we are.

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1 hour ago, dudeguy said:

I'll take your word for it that it's 15% now, I thought I read that it was 12.9%. either way, I think 10%+ is a massive chunk to take away. I know Amazon is even higher.

It's a bit of math gymnastics from when I was selling a lot of first class mail stuff last year.  Yes technically it's 12.9%, but being the greedy assholes they are charging that 12.9% ALSO on your shipping that's collected, you're basically losing money on each package you ship because you're having to pay for some of the shipping out of pocket due to the final value fee on ebay.  It wasn't huge, unless you're selling a bunch of little $5-10 5oz or less packages, then it's more like 20-25% because it still costs like $4 to ship and they'll take that 13~% of that $4.

 

I just find it easier to say 15%.  Basically it's weird math trying to figure it out when it's not some flat rate shipping as those priority mail boxes do.  If you have a light cheap item you lose a lot more money(pennies, dollar...) having to collect $9 on a $5 item, then have $4 in shipping on it, but with the FVF  off $9, it creeps far lower than say a $20 item that's a 6oz package.  But it swings back too, if you mail off a box that's a fow pounds and costs like $20 to ship and you sold it for $50, you lose a bunch of money due to them keeping some of your shipping money as fees.  It's kind of like a reverse bell curve where the cheaper/lighter is bad, middle of the road is better, then higher price and heavy package you get nailed worse too.

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I do agree it's complete crap that they charge their final value fee on the total including shipping and tax.  Especially tax, which is supremely annoying.  The reason they include the shipping in that calculation is thanks to sellers who tried to game the system by selling something at a low price and then greatly inflating the shipping price.  Didn't take eBay long to take notice of this obvious fee avoidance, so now we all get to pay more as a result (although I doubt eBay really minds, as it's more money in their pockets!!)

 

 ..Al

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Agreed.  I was editing my post to make a very basic example.

 

Basically a $50 item with $20 shipping on it, if you do the math with the DVF they do, you have value A.  If they only did it on the actual $50 (not $70) that would be value B.  If you take A out of B for a difference, you're losing an added $2.60 in fees that makes YOU pay that much more for shipping because they stole it.

 

The same works as badly with light charge items 1st class mail/zone shipping under 1lb.  Up to 5oz, it's a flat rate give or take a few cents $4.  If you have a $5 item and have a $4 shipping on it, they FVF you at $9 not $5.

At $9 shipped you're at -1.17 because you'll pay that added amount out of your profit on the $5 item than if they just did the 13% on the $5 then it is .65 cents.  That's an added .52 cents you lose on your $5 item paying to ship it.  That's an outrageously huge % of what they keep due to USPS minimums.

 

It may seem whiny about 52 cents on ONE package, but what if you're offloading a Gameboy collection and had 100 games, each sold to 1 person, first class mail mail  now is .52x100 or $52 more in shipping charges you pay because of fee theft.  When I was selling on ebay a year ago a big pile of went out was in the 4-6oz range in bubble bags so I easily lost hundreds in extra because they mooched my shipping money.

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On 8/6/2022 at 10:00 PM, Tanooki said:

Here's the slap in the face though, did you make $600 the entire year, self employment you lose another 15-20% to the US gov't off the original full total because ebay is a dick so they'll tell them you earned $10.  So from that 4.50 remove another 1.50-2 leaving you with $2-3 on your $10 shipped item.

You have to file a long-form return and list the shipping costs and eBay fees as expenses.  The same as you would if you purchased inventory and then sell it.  For example, I sell a UPS for $69 which counts toward my income, then list the $45 purchase cost as an expense.  Essentially, this new rule reclassifies you as a business if you sell more than $600 worth of stuff in a year, which is absolute nonsense: if I sell my Amiga 4000D with a Picasso IV, Deneb USB2 controller, and CyberStorm MKIII, I could likely get a final value of $1,200 for what is obviously not a business sale.

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