eBay fee savings: 20 Top tips

May 26, 2008

This post was written in May 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

We’ve looked at how to see how much money you’re spending, and how to budget for listing enhancements. Today we have 20 top tips for fee savings using the eBay Fee Schedule to your advantage:

Save where you can

1) When listing set your start price a penny less to fall into a lower fee bracket.
e.g. List an item for £15.00 and the insertion fee is £0.50, list the same item for £14.99 for a £0.25 insertion fee - 50% saving!

2) Use Multiple item listings where it can save money
e.g. If you list an item for £7.00 Buy It Now (BIN) you could list two on the same listing and still pay the same £0.25 insertion fee.

3) Open an eBay shop, the £6 the shop costs are easily recouped with Shop Inventory Format (SIF) listings, cross promotions and email marketing.

4) Make full use of SIF listings with listing fees from just £0.03

Strategies for savings

5) Sell more expensive items to get lower Final Value Fees (FVF)
e.g. Sell 10 items at £10.00 and you’ll pay 7.5% FVF or £7.50.
Sell 1 item at £100 and you’ll pay 7.5% of £29.99 plus 4.5% of £70.01 or just £5.40.
The FVFs drop for items over £30.00 and again for items over £600.00

6) BIN can be cheaper than SIF if you sell multiples.
e.g. If you sell £10 items and sell 12 or more on a multiple item listings:
A SIF with £0.09 insertion fee and 10% FVF will cost £11.01 total
A BIN with £1.90 insertion fees but lower FVF will cost £10.90 total.
For £10 items selling less than 12 from the listing makes SIF cheapest, but if you think you’ll sell 12 or more then BIN will save you money, plus you get higher exposure in search helping you sell even more.

7) List in the cheapest catagory, Technology and Media categories have lower fees.
e.g. A multifunction Printer/Fax/Scanner can be sold for lower FVF in Computing>Printers than under Business, Office & Industrial>…>Fax Machines.

8) When selling a car the maximum insertion fee is £8.00 and the maximum FVF is £35.00.

9) Use email marketing to bring back previous buyers - it costs nothing to get more buyers to view your listings.

Instant Discounts

10) Make sure you qualify for Volume Seller Discounts, 20% - 40% off your FVFs

11) Make full use of Cheap Listing Days when they fit your selling strategy

12) Apply for the PayPal Merchant Rate Discounts as soon as you receive more than £1500.00 in a single month.

13) If you’re VAT registered add your VAT number to eBay for a 15% reduction (Luxembourg Vat rate) on eBay fees.

Seven fee freebies

14) If you use Second Chance Offers there are no insertion fees

15) If your final value is £0.06 or less there are no FVFs (less than ½p rounded down to zero)

16) If you use Classified Ad Format there are no FVFs

17) If you use Listing Designer use TurboLister and then it’s free.

18) If you schedule auctions sign up for Selling Manager Pro (SMP) and then it’s free

19) If you use SMP sign up for a Featured Shop and then it’s free (Plus you get Sales Reports Plus thrown in for free on top)

20) If you use multiple pictures eBay charge fees - your own webspace or PhotoBucket is free

And finally

The lower your start price the lower your insertion fee. (Yes I know that’s obvious, but it’s worth a quick reminder ;-) )

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Glitches, Selling Tips | 10 Comments 

eBay fee savings: Setting a budget

May 25, 2008

This post was written in May 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Yesterday we looked at how to find out how much money you are spending on eBay fees. Today we’ll look at how to deploy your money more effectively

One of the best ways to save money on eBay fees is to stop using listing enhancements on an item by item basis, but start deploying them strategically. The only enhancement I’d use by default is gallery which is free until the end of September so won’t cost a penny for the next four months.

For your remaining listing enhancements set a budget for the month. Whether that be £10, £50, £100, or £1000, decide in advance how much you want to spend on boosting your listings visibility on eBay. You can then look at how to deploy that budget effectively

It’s all too easy to have an item which you know will sell for £500 and decide to add Gallery, Bold, Featured Plus and Subtitle, but that may not be the best use of your funds. Try adding some of those features to your lower cost items, but the ones that sell on an ongoing regular basis. Use these items to draw your buyers into your eBay shop where you can cross sell additional items.

Don’t be put off adding a Featured Plus enhancement costing £9.95 to an item you know will only sell for £10.00. If you can draw enough buyers into your shop and make additional purchases it can be well worth making a loss in fees on your “loss leader”.

Use features sparingly on single quantity fixed price items. Once the item has sold the features no longer work for you, whereas on a 10 day auction or multiple quantity item they remain active for longer. The other benefit of using expensive features on auctions is that buyers searching for the lowest price will find these first, and if your auction is loaded with features it will stand out from the crowd.

Make sure on all of your auction and Buy It Now listings you have strong links to your shop items. If you have an auction with a low start price but are using listing enhancements it’s an absolute pre-requisite to maximise your investment with a link to a fixed price listing that the buyer can purchase immediately.

Setting a budget for fees (and sticking to it!) should enable you to maximise the return on your listing enhancement fees. Rather than adding a Featured Plus to an auction simply because it will fetch a high value look at how the money can be deployed most advantageously.

It’s your money, make sure it’s working as hard and effectively as possible within your budget. Tomorrow we’ll reveal the best ways to reduce your eBay bill.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 12 Comments 

eBay fee savings: Know what you spend

May 24, 2008

This post was written in May 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

One of the most voted for suggestions in TameBay’s Skribit is “How can i pay less Ebay fees?”, so we’ll be running a series of three articles over the Bank Holiday weekend, with some ideas to do just that.

Firstly though you need to know what you already spend. Hand on heart how many of you know what you spent on Gallery fees last month? What about Bold, Featured Plus, Highlight and all of the other eBay listing enhancements? Do you know what you spend on insertion fees and what your final value fees cost you?

Unless you have a good understanding of where you’re spending your fees already, it’s nigh on impossible to identify how you can save money. eBay have made this easy with downloadable invoices, in your Seller Accounts - Select your latest eBay invoice and download it into a spreadsheet program such as MS Excel. Then sort the entries by the fourth column - Fee Type, you’ll now be able to total up exactly what you’re spending for each type of eBay fees.

This should immediately give you some instant feedback on how you can save fees. The only good fees on your invoice are the Final Value Fees, as you’ll only incur those when you’ve made a sale. Scan down the other totals you’ll easily identify where your money is being spent.

Now you know where your money is going you can start to identify where you can cut back, and how to deploy it more strategically. Did you for instance discover as I did that you’ve a couple of relists that have Featured Plus on them? Are you spending a large amount on Bold or Highlighted listings? Just how much a month are you spending on Subtitles and are they all essential?

Examine your eBay invoice and you may be surprised to see just where your money is going. Tomorrow we’ll look at how to set a budget to ensure you deploy your funds effectively.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 23 Comments