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Location: where people are either too stupid to leave or too stuck to move
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Not anymore I think. eBay has been taken over by the Chinese who offer the lowest prices with free shipping , and they are taking over etsy too (read their forums)
Location: where people are either too stupid to leave or too stuck to move
3,982 posts, read 6,691,941 times
Reputation: 3689
Quote:
Originally Posted by doodlemagic
i do between 200k and 250k a month in sales. i have an incredible niche though, not many niches like that where its high priced products with repeat buyers. even with my recent success however there's problems. paypal recently put a reserve on my account so 25% of my sales are held, my profits are only about 10% so essentially im losing 15% on everything i sell. i dont have a ton of cash so at some point im gonna wind up with possibly upwards of 200k in holds and no money to buy product. i recently foudn a new supplier with cheaper prices and raised my ebay prices without taking too bad a hit in sales so looks like ill make it. the trouble with ebay is your business is in someone else's hands. with your own website its on you but with ebay your at the mercy of their policy changes and things like that. the goal of an ebay business should be to drive customers to your personal website where you dont pay ebay fees while still staying profitable on ebay
For those of you who sell online, including the OP, do you resell or do you produce your own craft?
I produce crafts, and i'm wondering would it be better to mass produce just a few items, or just have fun with it and produce one of a kind items only.
I'm impressed that people are making as much as they are by selling online.
I think the ebay listing fee and final evaluation fee and picture hosting fee are reasonable. But paypal charge way too much commission.
Plus, I feel some buyers really abuse the feedback system, I have been harassed three times by nasty buyers. NO, customers are not always right, we all know this.
They always send email like this, "Bag is wrong size, I need to return it. If you don't accept my return, I'd leave negative feedback."
Fortunately, I don't get buyers like that all the time. Once or twice is bad enough.
I believe that's against the rules. Not that it matters but if you think you will get bad feedback, I'd
lead them into leaving feedback which likely qualifies for removal.
I think amazon charges a fee per month for the individual sellers, like 39.00. I checked in to them, but I don't think they allow crafted items, only commercial.
That fee allows you to create your own listings. And it means they don't charge for something, offhand i've forgotten
When I first joined, I sold alot so that $39.99 saved me money.
I'm a buyer, not a seller and I know one reason things have gone downhill.
I quit buying on eBay several years ago because it got to be too much of a hassle. Every fifth item or so either wasn't shipped, or was packed poorly and broke, or the wrong item showed up, or the item that did show up wasn't as described.
Prior to that I spent a ton of money on eBay. I helped a friend furnish her B&B which was thousands of dollars in vintage an antique items, bought gifts, etc.
Recently, went on eBay to find some dessert plates in our dish pattern so we'd have a complete set on Thanksgiving. Won a listing for five plates only to have the seller email me that she had inadvertently sold the plates but had not taken the listing down.
I won vintage napkins that were listed as being in "very good condition," few stains, no holes. Guess what? Several have holes.
I won another set of napkins that turned out to be a light shade of green. The photo looked white and there was no mention of the pale green color in the listing.
Another item has not yet arrived. Maybe today.
A fifth item did arrive and was as described.
So my average of one in five purchases being a problem, has now switched to four out of five.
I don't have dessert plates for Thanksgiving. Spent forty bucks on napkins and still don't have enough nice white ones for every guest.
Not only has the percentage of problems gone up, none of the items were a bargain. When I was furnishing the B&B with dishes, silver champagne buckets and so forth, part of the thrill was that at every so often, I would get a bargain.
No bargains with my recent purchases.
I don't want the hassle of returning, so I'll drop the napkins off at the Salvation Army and move on.
But I'm not checking eBay this morning to purchase napkins. Back to Amazon.
My info is a bit outdated, but I was a fulltime Ebay seller about 8-9 years ago. Back then making money was easy. I would go hit yard sales and grab super cheap stuff and resell it on Ebay for big profits. I was especially fond of buying and reselling video games. I was able to often pick up games at yard sales for like 50 cents, a dollar, and would resell them on Ebay for like $10-15 easy.
Anyway, I only sell a few things here and there now, but Ebay is lame anymore. It's oversaturated, seller fees are THROUGH THE ROOF, and fraud and buyer scams run rampant. Ebay will always side with the buyer too, so aside from taking legal action on your end with an attorney, you're going to probably lose money to scammers. Seriously though, the terrible scams and buyers and are what made me leave. People never paying, people getting an item and saying it was wrong or something, it wasn't worth it anymore.
I too sold years ago and made some money, but like you said, which I highlighted in bold.
Recently, I was thinking of selling just a few unwanted-unused items just laying around, and after jumping through a few hoops, ebay want's a seller to agree to their terms of giving money back to the buyer who doesn't have to return anything, that stopped me in my tracks, nope, I won't do it. I was the victim of feedback extortion a few years ago too, I refunded the buyer's purchase price, and he still left negative. I could have appealed, if I wanted to call ebay and waste time on the phone with them.
In short, ebay used to be good, but they suck now.
Over the years I have bought and sold a ton of stuff on Ebay but won't sell anything on there again. They have simply gotten so greedy that they end up making more profit than me. By the time you add up the listing fees, final value fees, Paypal fees, and (one that I NEVER understood ) shipping fees, their bite of the apple is HUGE. How they can charge you a fee on something they have no involvement in whatsoever, shipping, is beyond me.
My Son just listed some things there and they closed at $ 300. The chunk Ebay took was $ 80 when it was all said and done, and then he had to pay the shipping costs to UPS out of that. There is also the fact that Ebay gives no protection or rights to the seller, but they protect the hell out of the buyers.
Nope, I am done with them and only buy on there now, if even that.
Over the years I have bought and sold a ton of stuff on Ebay but won't sell anything on there again. They have simply gotten so greedy that they end up making more profit than me. By the time you add up the listing fees, final value fees, Paypal fees, and (one that I NEVER understood ) shipping fees, their bite of the apple is HUGE. How they can charge you a fee on something they have no involvement in whatsoever, shipping, is beyond me.
My Son just listed some things there and they closed at $ 300. The chunk Ebay took was $ 80 when it was all said and done, and then he had to pay the shipping costs to UPS out of that. There is also the fact that Ebay gives no protection or rights to the seller, but they protect the hell out of the buyers.
Nope, I am done with them and only buy on there now, if even that.
Don
I find it amazing the fees added up to that much I don't see how anyone is making a profit at all with the margin of profit being so low as it is due to all the competition. I would love to see someone with the motivation and capital to come up with a big competitor service to ebay and make them take a huge hit. Like I said anymore it's just good for selling some old stuff you have laying around the house that's about it. Or if you're a professional basket weaver or something where you create your own goods. It's clear they've gotten way out of hand and are flat out hosing the masses. I'm sure the Chinese are screwing it all up too it's easy to sell cheap when you have people making stuffed animals at $1.40 an hour.
Last edited by wanderlust76; 11-20-2013 at 06:19 AM..
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