Hi Colin24,
Richelle asked me to respond to your post and address some of your questions and concerns.
First, as Richelle said, it sounds like you may be unclear about how much eBay fees are, because listing 263 auctions with Buy It Now options can add up to quite a bit, especially if your starting price is higher than 99p. The higher your starting price, the higher your insertion fee is to list the item.
And since you mentioned that you set your starting price at an amount that covered the cost of the product and shipping, clearly, your starting prices must have been higher than 99p.
In addition, your items are unlikely to sell if your starting price is so high that it already covers the cost of the product AND shipping. First, you don't need to incorporate the shipping cost into your starting price, since you can put in a shipping cost separately. Secondly, very few eBay sellers set such a high starting price that it covers the cost of the product --that's just not going to work in most cases, unfortunately.
That's one of the risks you take when you list items on auction. You have to set your starting price as low as possible, or at least as low as other listings for that product, and for most products, the vast majority of listings will have a very low starting price.
That brings me to your question about how you can have a viable listing when you start it at 0.05 with no reserve, which is what you should do if other sellers are starting their listings for the same products that low.
The key to doing this successfully is knowing your product and its market, or in other words, conducting thorough and accurate market research. As long as the market research indicates that a particular product has sold for a certain average selling price lately on eBay, you can be fairly safe that your auction will reach up pretty close to the same price, provided you're doing everything else you should be doing to create a good listing, list it in the right format and category (according to what the market research says), with reasonable shipping, and your seller performance is high (i.e. high positive feedback percentage and Detailed Seller Ratings, no or few buyer disputes, etc.)
eBay firmly believes in the premise that you should set as low a starting price as possible and let the market determine the value of the item, and this works very well in most cases. But if you just don't feel comfortable doing this, then maybe you shouldn't list your items as auctions, but as strictly fixed price/Buy It now items, with no bidding. And actually, the market research will also indicate the most successful listing format for a particular product as well (auction or fixed price).
As a general rule, items that are rare and/or in high demand usually do better in auction format, and commodity items do better in fixed-price format.
As far as your fees are concerned, another thing I wanted to point out is that only your first 100 auctions every month are free with a starting price of 0.01 to 0.99 -- every auction beyond 100 in one month will cost you the insertion fee for the auction, which means that even if all of your auctions have a starting price of 0.99 or less, 163 of the 263 listings you posted would still have charged you insertion fees.
As far as your shop is concerned, if you're very new to selling on eBay, I strongly recommend that you close your shop and don't worry about having a shop yet. Opening an eBay shop when you're a brand new eBay seller is like trying to run before you know how to walk. All it will do is overwhelm you at this point, so I suggest closing your shop and not reopening it until you've been selling on eBay at least 6 months and you're generating at least a few hundred pounds a month in sales.
There are many other auction sites you can utilize besides eBay (i.e. Bonanzle, Addoway, etc.), but none of them have nearly as much buyer traffic as eBay does, so you need to consider that factor carefully.
Lastly, as far as listing on multiple international sites in Turbo Lister, as Richelle said, YES, you are charged a separate insertion fee for each eBay site on which you're listing your items, which is clearly another reason why your initial fees were so high. But please understand that it's NOT NECESSARY to list your items on all of these different sites in order to market your products successfully to people in all of these countries.
All you have to do is list your items on ebay.co.uk and select that you also ship to Ireland, Canada, and the U.S., and your listings will appear on all of those eBay sites as well.
I hope this helps!
