How to reduce your eBay fees as much as you can

Saving Some Money - It Just Make Cents.

I can tell you cutting costs is a very hard job. I'm often looking for nickels and dimes. But I do know those nickels and dimes add up to real dollars, which has a big effect on my bottom line. As an eBay seller I natuarlly have to pay fees. I know some sellers (including me) complain about it more than others. But the fees are still a fact of life on eBay. That said, there are ways I have utilized that can minimize the fees you pay. Any savings you realize are pure profit for ebay sellers. I'm about to give you tips on how to cut the money you pay to eBay and PayPal. Here are a few tricks to consider:

Things You'll Need

• paper and pen to write this down
• copy machine to copy this article
• be a seller on eBay

Instructions

1. 

   INCREASE YOUR VOLUME TO REDUCE YOUR PAYPAL RATE: As I have found out the hard way PayPal has a sliding merchant rate schedule, based on your average monthly sales volume. If my monthly sales are $3,000 or below, I pay a 2.9% rate. But when my sales inch above $3,001, my rate drops to 2.5% and could go as low as 1.9%. When my monthly sales are approaching the $3,000 level, it's well worth my time doing a little added promotion or pushing some more add-on sales; that 0.4% rate cut translates into a $120 savings at the $3,000 sales level.

   *SHIFT LISTINGS TO YOUR EBAY STORE: All I can tell you is that you need to know that it costs less to list an item in your Store than id does to list that same item for auction, and I mean considerably less. Although I can never do away completely with auction listings, I can run a more cost-efficient business by shifting more of my products into eBay Store listings.

   * PRICE UNDER THE BREAKS: I realize significant cost savings by setting my starting prices just under eBays fee breaks: $1.00, $10.00, $25.00, $50.00, $200.00, and $500.00. Instead of listing an item for $10.00, list it for $9.99 and save .20 cents in listing fees.

2. 

   *TAKE ADVANTAGE OF RELISTING CREDITS: When one of my items doesn't sell, I can relist it for free if I use eBay's Relist Your Item feature. When click the Relist your Item link, eBay automatically relists my item and sets me up for a credit of the second insertion fee if the item sells. If I don't use the Relist Your Item feature but instead create a new listing, I'm out two insertion fees instead of one. (I'm also out that second insertion fee if the item doesn't sell the second time, either).

   *RECLAIM FEES FOR NONPAYING BIDDERS: So far, so good as all of my customers have paid for items in my store, so I've never had to really use this trick yet. If the buyer doesn't pay, I can file for a refund of eBay's final value fee for that item. I did use this advice at www.half.com when I ordered a CD, paid for it and it never came to me. After doing this Half.com refunded my money and dealt with the buyer in their own way. Great, as long as I got my money back!! Just use eBay's Unpaid Item Process (pages.ebay.com/help/tp/unpaid-item-process.html) to file a claim. There's not reason why you or me should have to pay fees for sales where the buyer backs out.

   *USE LISTING ENHANCEMENTS JUDICIOUSLY: I've discovered myself that it's very easy to spend a small fortune on listing enhancements - gallery photo, bold title, highlighted title, and the like. Most of these enhancements don't do a thing for your sales; one of the easiest ways to cut my eBay fees is to cut my use of the worthless enhancements.

3. 

   USE NON-EBAY PHOTO HOSTING: eBay charges me for every photo I use in my listings past the first free photo. There are better deals around. Shop around for a photo hosting service that offers lower hosting rates than me and you get with eBay. The savings could be considerable.

   * MAKE SECOND CHANCE OFFERS: eBay's Second Chance offer feature is a great way to make additional sales without additional costs. If I have multiple quantities of an item for sale, and had more than one bidder on the first item, then I can use Second Chance offer to sell those additional quantities to losing bidders. when I sell via Second Chance Offer, I don't have to pay an additional listing fee. (I'll still pay the final value fee, of course) That's a sale without me having a listing fee, which is more profitable for me.

   * USE DUTCH AUTIONS: Similarly, if I have multiple quantities of an item I can sell them in a Dutch auction, paying a single listing fee for multiple items. A Dutch auction is simply an auction for multiple quantities; the listing fee for a single Dutch auction is considerable less than the fees for multiple single auctions.

Tips & Warnings

• Increase your volume to reduce your PayPal rates

• Shift listings to your eBay Store

• Price under the breaks

• Take advantage of relisting credits

• Reclaim fees for non paying bidders

• Use listing enhancements judiciously

• Use non-eBay photo hosting

• Make Second Chance Offers

• Use Dutch Auctions

• It's your money so protect it and don't pay useless eBay and PayPal fees if you do not have too. All these fees can get out of hand if you do not pay attention when listing an item on eBay.