Geez... a little help?

[vianegativa]

Ok, so I've finally geared up to sell my swag on eBay, however I'm a little afraid that my shipping costs will be way off & I'll end up paying more for shipping than I intended and thereby lose out on my e-Garage Sale.

Any folks out there experienced eBay sellers with some advice on shipping costs? The USPS website is ok, but unless I measure out every item, I'll be guessing and I have no desire to overcharge folks. I'm shipping mostly books & toys...

Any advice?

Comments

Shipping

[pink-halen.livejournal.com]

Buyer pays shipping. Put that on each item. If they want it they have to ship it. Photograph the items then pack them up ready to go and precalculate the shipping costs before you put them up for auction.

There are several good books on selling via Ebay. Check your public library and see if any are available. You can read them deeply but just a quick scan of the material can give you some great hints.

The last thing you want to do is lose money. Consider flat rate postal boxes. These ship whatever you can stuff in them for one price. Books can be shipped in padded envelopes.

[grunter.livejournal.com]

Do a search of the items that you intend to sell and follow their shipping terms fairly closely. For books and toys, the shipping should be pretty standard. But make it very plain that you will not budge from your shipping terms. Current eBay finds a lot of nickel-&-dimer "PITA" buyers whining about the shipping charges, emailing you with sob stories of how the shipping prices are "hurting" them, but they NEED that $10 tchotchke in mint condition, like yesterday, for their "junior's" birthday. Sadly, they have a significant amount of power these days with the wildly unbalanced feedback system. But don't give in. What you lose on one item, you will inevitably make back on another. The higher the volume of the items that you sell, the closer you'll get to "actual" shipping charges.

But good luck with the actual sales. The auction format is virtually dead on eBay. We haven't routinely sold on the website since October of last year. EBay's three "cuts" of profits - insertion fee, final value fee and now mandatory PayPal fees - makes it very hard to make any money any more. You've got to be selling items that are worth more than $10-$15 to make it worthwhile.

And don't be fooled by what collectibles used to go for. EBay is now essentially the bargain bin at the dollar store. It's extremely rare for bidding wars to erupt or for items to soar past their retail cost. More likely, you'll wind up paying others to take things off your hands. EBay's in sad, sad shape these days.

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

That's disheartening. I have several items that should sell over $15.00 but the bulk of what I'm trying to offload is game books, which will range between $5.00 and $20.00.

I know eBay triple dips on the insertion fees, Paypal fees & cut of auction, and I also know their auctions have really withered because of it. Are there any other sites you sell on or can recommend?

[grunter.livejournal.com]

That's actually a huge problem. Even after all the shit that's gone down with eBay over the last couple of years, no one has really taken the bull by the horns and offered a true alternative. Oh, you will hear the hardliner, anti-eBay folks go on and on about their successes at other sites, but if you actually surf through those websites, you won't find much evidence of that "success."

I dabbled a little with bonanzle.com and ecrater.com. But honestly, there's not much traffic there or really at any of the alterna-eBay sites.

[satanslisunbeam.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about toys, but I've sold books, video games and cds on Amazon Marketplace and had way better luck than with ebay. They don't charge to list it. They just take a cut of the shipping charge and it's usually pretty fair.

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

but can you do an auction on Amazon Marketplace?

[satanslisunbeam.livejournal.com]

No, it's set price. In the 4 months that I have been selling, I've sold 15 things on Amazon and 2 on ebay. One of those 2 experiences on ebay was a complete nightmare.

[nullslashvoid.livejournal.com]

Just a few things:
- Buyer always pays shipping.
- Order some free ebay USPS priority boxes.
- Invest in a small kitchen scale so you know the exact package weight.
- Print USPS postage online and get free delivery confirmation (with Priority) and a small discount vs printing at the post office kiosk. You can even arrange for package pickup for free to save on gas.

addendum

[nullslashvoid.livejournal.com]

Also, you may want to consider selling a bunch of the less valuable (~$5) books in a set.

[dizzi-d.livejournal.com]

Don't screw yourself on estimated shippping. While you can specify that the buyer pays all shipping costs, consider measuring out every item. My mom's an avid ebayer and the biggest source of complaints and outright buyer refusals was when "buyer pays shipping" was not as-expected. Most people have it in their head that shipping costs are trivial or free, so it's safer just to set realistic expectations.

Ideally you want to put up exactly what they're getting for exactly what they're paying.
She ultimately stopped listing anything on ebay that wasn't worth at least $50 because she discovered that based on the time, packaging costs, and labor involved, she was losing money below that point.

[didiseven.livejournal.com]

I believe there is a way to put the size and weight of the packages into a calculator on ebay and they will tell you exactly how much they will cost to ship via UPS. Then you can print the label for that exact cost and take it to any UPS to drop off. My problem in the past is that I couldn't accurately measure the weight. I've ended up screwing myself on postage when a package I wanted to send by UPS cost about $15 more to send than I thought. In that respect, USPS seems much more predictable for charges. Also, if it's a common enough item, you might wanna try craigslist.

Craigslist.

[frick.livejournal.com]

Craigslist has been a godsend to me; fast, FREE, local, FREE, easy to post on, FREE.

lol......I have a 270 rating (all good ) on ebay, I've learned to tell potential buyers that they are responsible for shipping charges which will be calculated after the box is packed and they provide the address to ship to.