How does selling stuff on eBay work?

[ManBearPig]

Do i just list my item and get the money when i sell it? Or do i have to pay fees or anything like that?

 

[Capt Caveman]

Do i just list my item and get the money when i sell it? Or do i have to pay fees or anything like that?

How do you think they make money?

 

[Lean L]

fee to list then a fraction of the selling price once it sells

 

[purbeast0]

wow, really?

 

[dullard]

I just sold my first ebay item last weekend.

It is fairly simple. Free to sign up (be sure to sign up for ebay and paypal). Fee for everything else.
Fee to list (although your first few listings are free if they are basic without any additional features).
Fee to list in multiple places since they overlapping areas
Fee to have a big photo
Fee to have multiple photos
Fee to sell
Fee to collect (depending on payment form)
Many misc. fees if they apply.

I guess you can include a fee to ship in your calculations, but Ebay doesn't actually earn that fee.

 

[uhohs]

the 5 "free" listings are ripoffs with a higher FVF, final value fee, or something.

thanks for being sneaky scum ebay.

 

[kalrith]

The fees aren't terrible if you make a simple listing. I actually just listed my first item a few minutes ago.

I believe that ebay just charges you monthly for your fees, so you would sell the item and get 100% of the money at the time. Then, when ebay charges its monthly fees is when you have to pay them.

 

[frostedflakes]

eBay is a pretty huge ripoff, I don't even know how businesses can make money on there.

If you live in or near a larger city, maybe consider selling on Craigslist. No fees, but you have to deal with other headaches (scammers, idiots, lowball offers, etc.).

edit: For example, what's the justification for having fees that are variable based on auction final value? It costs them the same to list a $1 item as it does a $1000 dollar item. The only reason I can think of is, because of their buyer protection, they are exposed to a greater liability with higher value items than lower value ones. But AFAIK eBay doesn't reimburse people out of their own pocket, if somebody gets scammed and PayPal can't pull the funds from the seller's PayPal account, the buyer is out of luck.

 

[ManBearPig]

jease, no wonder people sell a lot of stuff in the FS/T section here.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Then if you get decent bids, there's a 50/50 chance that the winner will never respond to pay for the item. eBay then makes you wait a couple of weeks to finish the "non-paying bidder" process before you can try offering the item to the second-highest bidder.

If you sell something expensive there's also a 50/50 chance someone will try to scam you with a fake western union transfer, forged money order, or a rubber check.

 

[MichaelD]

How do you fake a Western Union transfer? If you send me a transfer number (or whatever it's called) and I check it out against Western Union's site and it check out...how can you scam me?

 

[DaveSimmons]

How do you fake a Western Union transfer? If you send me a transfer number (or whatever it's called) and I check it out against Western Union's site and it check out...how can you scam me?

Scammers send a faked email, like with a phishing scam. They hope you'll ship the laptop without being smart enough to check the routing number. They might even have a fake site link in the email for the gullible to click on to "verify" their fake number.

 

[MichaelD]

Scammers send a faked email, like with a phishing scam. They hope you'll ship the laptop without being smart enough to check the routing number. They might even have a fake site link in the email for the gullible to click on to "verify" their fake number.

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for that info, Dave. When it comes to internet transactions, I always transfer/pickup my money before I ship anything. Even my PayPal balance gets transferred out before I ship anything. It's really a shame that the easy and convenient way of paying for things has gotten corrupted and un-safe-if-fied by the crooks. Bastards.

 

[randay]

you could probably lose about 20% to fees.