The biggest complaint among eBay sellers is listing and final value fees. Let's take a minute to examine these fees and understand exactly what eBay sellers are paying for, and if the trade off is worth the financial investment.
Listing an item on eBay is similar to placing an ad in the newspaper. A seller pays for the ad and hopes for the best. You pay a fee for the newspaper to print the ad regardless of the outcome of your sale. Whether you are selling clothing, a baby stroller, or a wedding dress, you must get the word out about your item to potential buyers in order to make a sale. eBay exposes your item to an audience of 240 million buyers. The listing fees for items under $25 are only 65 cents, which is quite affordable. Imagine the cost to place an ad in a big city's newspaper reaching 1 million readers - a fraction of the eBay audience - the cost would be significantly more than 65 cents. Furthermore, the cost to drive that kind of traffic to your own individual website or brick and mortar store would be astronomical. eBay's fees are a pretty good deal.
eBay provides a user friendly platform to sell your item. eBay spends millions of dollars advertising their site and driving traffic to auctions. eBay provides a safe, secure payment platform. eBay also provides tutorials, a help index, and a customer support department to help users. eBay is a business, not a charity. Granted, fees have steadily climbed since eBay's inception 10 years ago, but eBay offers special promotions from time to time that gives sellers a price break.
1 million people worldwide earn part or all of their living selling on eBay. Working from home has numerous benefits such as money saved on gas and car maintenance, time saved from commuting, better quality of life, more family time, less stress, schedule flexibility, income tax benefits, personal freedom, and more control over one's life. Many at-home eBay sellers agree that eBay's fees are more than resonable with respect to the benefits gained in operating a part or full-time eBay business.
Bottom line - if you want to sell on eBay, fees are just a part of doing business. Many eBay alternatives exsist on the internet, however, other auction sites do not have near the traffic, name recognition, or reputation as eBay. Agree or disagree? Leave a comment!
3 comments:
I agree with this. I could never have this kind of world-wide exposure to my items without eBay.
So the fees are worth it.
I agree with you. eBay set up the entire infrastructure and we get to take advantage of it for a TINY price. I can't even imagine all the work that went into eBay, creating the software, the advertising. I'm just thankful that it is there.
Just a recent example of how eBay is better than classifieds in my opinion: I was recently selling one of my businesses and it was a business that had to be sold locally (therefore, I thought that it would be difficult to sell on eBay).
I listed a classified ad in my local newspaper for 5 days and it was $315...I got ONE phone call from a tire-kicker and that's it! I posted my classified on eBay (in their new classified ad format) for 30 days for $9.95 plus bold and highlight (about $6 more). I got so many more responses and offers within the first week...even though it was just a local business that didn't need national exposure to sell it! It's so much cheaper and it seems that people are more responsive to eBay. In my opinion, traditional classified advertising is dead!
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