My eBay store is killing me

This is crap...

I opened a store on a free trial basis and the final value fees for store inventory killed me!

A final value fee for an item selling for only $32.95 AU is $3.30! That is the final value fee alone not including their fee for having payment go through PayPal. Let's break this down...


AUCTION LISTING
I put one of these items as an auction with a bidding price and a buy it now price. Someone used buy it now and the item sold for $36.95 and here are the fees for it...

Insertion Fee: $0.75
Buy It Now: $0.10
Final Value Fee: $1.94

Total Auction Fees: $2.79 for an item that sold at $36.95



STORE INVENTORY LISTING
I put one of these items as store inventory for $32.95 each and here are the fees for it...

Insertion Fee: $0.21
Final Value Fee: $3.30

Total Store Inventory Fees: $3.51 for an item that sold at $32.95



Can someone please tell me if there is actually any reason to have an eBay store for reducing fees? Not only are my fees higher now, if I were to continue running the store after the first free month, I'd also be paying an extra $14.95 at least to keep it open.

if you list an item that is $150 and it takes a month to sell, you will pay almost $12 in listing fees alone with maybe no one still buying it. In an Ebay store it would only be 10 cents to list it for the same period of time.

Ok, so it's only worth it if you're selling merchandise that's not popular?

99% of my stuff sells the first time it's listed.

If it sells fast then you should have it listed as an auction. If you have lets say 20,000 items and dont wish to have them all running on auction at the same time then a store will benifit you better.

Or lets say you sell tons of stuff. You should always price your store items with higher prices then you would expect to get for it if it was on auction the longer duration and lower listing fee will take away the worry of listing an item multiple times and not selling it.

Okay, well I closed my store down. I only had up to 6 multiple items of any one listing. My stuff usually sells like hot cakes and I don't have outrageous quantities so I don't need it...

Except for the fact that I just got 20 copies of the same DVD today.

Hi, I fell to the same problems as you.

the way I delt with it was selling things on the postage.

For example.

Starting price $0.01
Postage $34.99

then you do not get charge anything on the final sale price just your insersion fee.

I have had good experiences with this method.

Hope this helps

Hi, I fell to the same problems as you.

the way I delt with it was selling things on the postage.

For example.

Starting price $0.01
Postage $34.99

then you do not get charge anything on the final sale price just your insersion fee.

I have had good experiences with this method.

Hope this helps

You have to be very carefull with this method if someone turns you in for trying to avoid paying ebay thru charging the real price of the item thru the s/h - somebody turned me in and i got a warning .

Yeah, ebay doesn't let you do that. If you keep doing it after a warning, I'm pretty sure they'd suspend your account.

Anywho, I'm a seller who's known for having some of the cheapest shipping methods.

I sell dvds and finally just went to free shipping from time to time to encourage people to buy more dvds .

I usually add no shipping charges to additional items bought. Now, just as a safety issue, I am going to just start using express post because it has tracking on it. I have to work out on how I can use it without costing an arm and a leg for the buyer.

Yes charging item value price on shipping will get you into trouble. Some people havent been so lucky, some dont recieve warnings they just get thier account suspended for vioation of TOS.