Thursday, May 04, 2006

If you've never sold anything on eBay before, you probably weren't aware of how much can get lost in fees. Worst case so far happened today. Someone bought a card from me for $0.50 (Mishra's Factory from Fourth Edition). It cost me $0.03 to list the card in the store (actually, since I listed the item with quantity 2, I guess you could say it cost $0.015 per card). I was charged a Final Value Fee of $0.04 for the card. Then PayPal charged me $0.39 to accept the payment for the card. So grand total I lost $0.445 in fees on a $0.50 item - a net gain of only $0.055!!!!! And since the card cost me $0.05 originally....

I fear what will happen when someone buys a single $0.10 item from me. I will be paying to send the card to someone! You start to see why many sellers build in outrageous "handling" fees on their items. If this becomes a problem I may have to do the same myself!

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