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should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

  • avatar

    by: brazilianlink
    SaleHoo Junior Member
    12 posts

    should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 12:10 am.

    Hello everybody!

    I was wondering if it worth offering free post on eBay listings.
    For example, if I sell an item for $40 with free postage, the eBay final sale fee will be calculated based on the $40 amount, right? On the other hand, if I sell this item for $30 + $10(shipping fee), the total amount for the buyer remains $40, but in this case, the eBay final sale fee will be calculated on the $30 item's price, right? Therefore you end up paying less eBay sale fees, if you charge postal fees in your listed products. Is it right? However, by the fact, you offer free postage, you probably get your listings better ranked on eBay. Does it worth?

    Regards,

    brazilianlink
  • avatar

    by: T0pSales
    SaleHoo Master Member
    325 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 12:16 am.

    thats what I have been wondering..
  • avatar

    by: Kreative Labs
    SaleHoo Junior Member
    43 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 1:21 am.

    I believe what your saying is correct.
    Not to sure thow, you might want to look into a little more.

    Edit an item and try the Different Prices.
    And see what fees are taking away Before you submit your item.

    Kreaive Labs (Wholesale Printing/Advertising Signs)
    link hidden

  • avatar

    by: grace-salehoo
    SaleHoo Master Member
    334 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 6:31 am.

    We've had another discussion about this recently (although I can't find the post right now!), but the upshot is that this is something you should really test for yourself. What works best can vary quite a lot from item-to-item, category-to-category.

    On eBay Australia, I've found that selling for a lower price and charging a shipping cost that more than covers my shipping expenses works really well as a selling strategy still.

    In fact, buyers seem to pay more attention to the item price than the shipping price. As long as it's not more than $1 or so over what other sellers are charging, and the item arrives quickly (personally I feel speedy shipping is more important than cheap shipping), they seem to be very happy!

    Just my two cents ;)

    Grace

  • avatar

    by: fudjj
    SaleHoo Staff
    2971 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 9:24 am.

    Yeah, I agree with Grace.

    It is something that you should really test out on your own market, but I charge a standard shipping fee on video games of 6.99. That price actually not only covers the shipping price, but it covers the item listing fee, final sale fee (in about 80% of cases), as well as PayPal fees.

    In most cases it even leaves a dollar or two, which then goes to offset the monthly store fee. Of course the aim of this strategy is to have a cost neutral ebay store front to do business on, and I'm pretty confident that after our testing that we've got the formula worked out pretty well!

    Now I do use free postage as a marketing strategy to compete with some sellers at times, and that also works, but I only ever use it on games whit a heavy margin to begin with!

    That shipping price came about after about a solid month worth of testing, seeing what consumers would accept as a reasonable price. We average just over 4.7 at the moment on shipping price, and a big part of that average is speedy delivery.

    As Grace said, if they get it quick they are less likely to mark you down. The games account is still only very new and not yet up to speed, but out of 202 feedbacks, we have had one neutral based on our shipping price.

    Test your market, in fact I always suggest off-branding an account just for this purpose. Set up a second account, keep it identical to the original, then play around with some shipping options and prices, see which account is doing better business.

    I would suggest testing the market for around 6 weeks, unless you are getting really solid data back over the first 4 weeks, then you can trim up the account to match your test results and that should have it pretty much optimised!

    : )

    Marc Ransom

    Community Manager
    SaleHoo.com

    About the Community Manager

  • avatar

    by: T0pSales
    SaleHoo Master Member
    325 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 7:29 pm.

    I were checking out a wholesaler once and selected a game to buy, $15.00, shipping to me, $80.00, never got it.
  • avatar

    by: fudjj
    SaleHoo Staff
    2971 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 10 Apr 10 9:09 pm.

    80 bucks lol.

    That type of sting used to be everywhere on ebay years ago, but now you can actually be reported for charging extreme shipping prices like that.

    It really does take some testing to optimise a shipping price, and it will depend on the market and products you deal in, but given a little time you should be able to find a shipping price that will leave you with some meat in it and still get a decent DSR rating.

    The quicker you ship, the happier your customers will always be, speedy shipping is definitely a big part of any shipping charge, small of large!

    Marc Ransom

    Community Manager
    SaleHoo.com

    About the Community Manager

  • avatar

    by: T0pSales
    SaleHoo Master Member
    325 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 11 Apr 10 9:42 am.

    that wasn't ebay but a wholesaler.
  • avatar

    by: grace-salehoo
    SaleHoo Master Member
    334 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 11 Apr 10 10:47 pm.

    I were checking out a wholesaler once and selected a game to buy, $15.00, shipping to me, $80.00, never got it.
    If this was a SaleHoo wholesaler, please send us an email with the details to link hidden so we can help you resolve the issue :)

    Grace

  • avatar

    by: planes
    Forum Moderator
    843 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 12 Apr 10 4:57 am.

    One could sell for 29.95 with 9.95 shipping. This equals 39.90.

    Sometimes the .95 seems less than it really is.

    Gas stations do this all the time. They post 2.71 per gallon. But if you look closely its 2.71 and 9/10ths of a penny. SO in essence, one is actually paying
    2.72 per gallon minus a 10th of a penny.

    One saves 1.20 in eBay fees and charges less for the item.
  • avatar

    by: brazilianlink
    SaleHoo Junior Member
    12 posts

    Re: should I offer free post or not on my eBay listings?

    Posted 13 Apr 10 5:27 am.

    Thanks everybody for the replies!

    I just wanna make sure how eBay final sale fee was calculated. I wasn't sure if the shipping fee was included or not. Now I know. Also, it was great to hear some experiences about offering free shipping or not. I particularly don't offer free shipping in my items. I try to charge reasonable postal fees and I try to post orders as quick as possible.

    Cheers,

    brazilianlink