Improve your ebay Profit Margin

Viable ecommerce solution

Over the years many ebay sellers have left ebay due to the escalating fee structure which ebay have introduced. Four years ago it was only $10 for a ebay shop and all items in your shop only cost 1 cent to list for 30 days, making a ebay shop a viable ecommerce solution, however times are changing and ebay first changed the cost of the store fees, this was not too bad, then the cost of listing an item escalated, and in unison, ebay reduced the visibility of your shop listings in the search result, meaning the cost of listing was more expensive and you got less results.. Consequently many people deserted the shop format. listing fees kept going up to milk the ebay seller.

Pass in rate

how many people would be selling if they knew the real pass in rate at ebay, at the best 60% of all items pass in, however if you are new to ebay and either have the starting price too low or too high then you are going to find a dramatic change in this pass in rate. Auctiva wrote a little story on the pass in rate and the first time you read this story you think they must have gotten their figure incorrect but you try it out and test the accuracy and in all the figure is significantly higher especially in australia.

Real cost of ebay listing

However you think well I did convert some on my collectibles / treasures from the garage in to cash, but how much did it really cost you.. Candance Daugherty recently issues a press release about the actual cost of listing your items on ebay, leading to the real purpose of the story, which was to promote their new ecommerce solution. However the figure which are in the Press release are genuine and I have experienced similiar turnover rates and profits. The end result of the cost of listing on ebay was that ebay (inc paypal) took 40% of the total monies earned from selling on ebay. Pretty good profit margin given they are only a (tongue in cheek) passive venue. Working out the hourly rate of selling on ebay Candance got only $2.76 per hour for selling on ebay.. This is lower than the minimum wage rate, so why sell on ebay... many folk do not realise this or even rationalise their account and total up the money earned and use separate accounts for each activity.

How to improve your ebay Profit Margin

So is it possible to improve your profit margin on ebay given that you have no control or influence of ebay policy changes. I feel that this is not possible and that as a seller you need to take actions to monetize your items in other way,

start selling on www.auctions8.com where there is a community spirit and selling is very low

use wordpress and a number of plugins to create a ecommerce solution and sell on your own site

pay someone else to develop your own ecommerce website and then start selling. just get someone to do the SEO for you


written by One on One Training

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