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I just know or have heard or read posts about a very few of the ebay sites around the world. They all mostly seem to have slightly different rules as to pricing.

Right now the US and Canada are pretty much the same. 9% final value fee on the preice of the item ( ebay does not take anything from your shipping amount but restricts you to how much you can charge for many popular items.). There is a listing fee for items with a starting price over 99c, so ccool did not pay that fee but just 9%. They charge you once a month.
But, surprise, there are other fees involved, depending. Using PayPal is not free so I pay a 30c per transaction fee to them for accepting a payment for me plus a 1.9 - 2.9% final value fee on the total fee accepted. Also, since I sell in US funds I will have to change my money back over to Canadian to be able to withdraw it to my bank account so there is a 2.5% currency exchange fee for that. Also if you withdraw less than $150 at a time you pay PayPal (they take) a 50c withdrawal fee.

Can be cheaper if you live in the country of currency. There are sales on free listing days or 5c or 10c days, not sure if they still have them. Also you could accept payment to your bank account directly from the customer if he was in Canada (for me). Right now, in US and Canada we cannot state in the auction that we accept any form of payment not safe, but must accept one that is safe, like PayPal or Moneybookers or perhaps others.

Link to ebay.com fees: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html

Example: you are selling a $5 stamp (starting price) so the listing fee is 25c, CAD or USD depending on the listing currency you chose. You use US because that's the biggest market. You charge $2 to ship to the US.

The stamp sells for $9.54 so you owe ebay 9.54 x 0.09 = 0.86 in final value fees.

The customer pays via PayPal and lives in the US so the PayPal fee is 0.30 transaction fee plus (9.54 + 2.00 = 11.54) x 0.019 = 0.22 final value fee = 0.52 plus the currency exchange fee to Canadian is 11.54 - 0.52 = 11.02 x 0.025 = 0.28. That's 11.02 - 0.28 = 10.74. Minus the withdrawal fee from PayPal (less than $150) because you are disgusted and are getting out of this racket, of 0.50 so 10.74 - 0.50 = 10.24.

Oh, and the ebay fees so 10.24 - 0.86 -0.25 = 9.13 left over for you to buy an ice cream cone to calm your nerves.

So, out of the 11.54 you have paid (almost worst case scenario) 2.41 in fees or about 21%.

Some places in the world you have to pay 15c to list an item under $1 start so that makes that percentage more, about 25-30%.

If you sell a lot or higher priced items you avoid the withdrawal fee hopefully by taking out $150 at a time. Selling in your own currency helps. if you sell cross border or out of Canada or the US you pay another one percent fee to PayPal.

Good day you lose 15%, bad day 30%. Allow for human errors, acts of God and man and some more of your hard earned money is lost to pay for these (call it insurance.)

But it's fun. I think you must expect fees pretty well however you sell something. It is best to know the fees and the costs of everything before you do anything, or learn on the way, so you don't lose too much and actually do make money hopefully. Some folks include all these fees in the shipping And Handling change but most folks (including me) get their dander riled up over seemingly overcharging for shipping. You look at the face value of the stamp on the envelope when you get it and don't know about all the hidden stuff.

The 30c PayPal fee is a big kicker on low priced items but if you let the stamp pay say 0.08 and the shipping pay the other 0.22 everything looks better and the shipping is helped to stay within bounds of customer acceptance.

The more items you list the more you will sell. Sometimes. Good stuff sells, junk is junk. Depends on the market you are trying to sell to.

Watch sellers who are big and see how they do it and then if you figure it out how they charge so little and still make a profit let me know. I haven't figured that part out yet.

edit: added bold text, my statement was incorrect without that added bit

Gee, thanks guys, quite comprehensive advice.

Hi !

It's more complete answer that mine lol

Its sure that you have fee on ebay and like you tell is around 15-20% but !

I'm not a dealer, I just collect stamps for fun, I can resell my duplicate or stamps that I don't want to have few dollars to buy other.

The problem with the big seller is the service, it can take 3 day to answer to a e-mail with a imcomplete answer... often the big seller have a real store and you must pay taxes lol

I never draw mt money I just buy other stamp lol so I never pay the fee of withdraw. You can have a US account to save this fee.

ebay or other site like that are not miracle solution but you can show your item at a lot of people without any expensive cost.

Delcampe is a another place but the major part of the item are for 1 stamps lol with the shipping you pay a stamp 1.50$ and it have a value of 0.50$ lol I don't know who pay for that but....

THe better time of ebay was gone because the fee are now more expensive and the major part of the seller sell " new" item in general at the price of a store. In the past it have more item at low price !

Thanks !

ccool, I like your answers better than mine. You have it figured out pretty good.

That was a lucky thing on those Write Me Ring Me stamps / cards. Nice.

There is another cost, one of the hidden things, and that is the cost of keeping a paper trail for the revenuers and printing packing slips. I have calculated that the printer ink makes one sheet printed cost about 0.11 black and white plus tax here.

So if you print three sheets of paper plus an envelope you had better also look to find paper and ink on sale and print in draft mode to save ink and keep the costs down.

Everyone is different though. Some can mail things from their place of work or use the office supplies etc.

I get caught up in the details too much and stop having fun some days.

And I am one of those who pay the $1.50 to $3.00 shipping to get one stamp (or just a few) from somewhere. People do it all the time. It has to be that stamp that you want to complete that set or a great cancel or topic or something and you haven't seen it for a long time and boy oh boy it's not going to get away from me this time. Or you don't want to wait around for the auction to finish,, you want that stamp now so you buy it now and pay the higher price and fee.

Of course not everyone is like that. But some are. Sometimes.

ebay UK used to let you list unlimited items that were under 99p but have stopped this practice and limited sellers to 100 items under 99p at free insertion fee and then 10p per item above the 100 threshhold. It has its pros and cons - It stops the thousands of rubbish items that should not be on ebay in the first place but stops sellers from listing lower value items that might not sell immediately but might be picked off every now and then.

I have found some great deals on ebay - but it can be annoying sometimes. Does anyone use auction snipers ? I couldn't live without them.

That is how it is here now, bur 99 cents rather than 99p and up to 100 items and then 10c after that.

I do not use the snipers but I have noticed one buyer that does. He won three items I think and all the bids were 6 seconds before the end of auction. Amazing reflexes I thought at the time but then learned of the sniping services.

A friend likes to do it himself, more exciting that way. I find with dial-up connection there is a few seconds delay between the east coast and when my bid hits ebay in California but with high speed that delay is less.

Do you know many people that use Delcampe in Great Britain or is it mostly ebay there?

Puzzler, you made a comment in one of your posts which I read as implying that Paypal and Moneybooker are unsafe. Did I read that correctly, and if so, why are they any more unsafe than other methods (other than being done on line)" Right now, in US and Canada we cannot state in the auction that we accept any form of payment not safe, like PayPal or Moneybookers (perhaps others)." is the part of your post to which I refer.

Thank you rohumpy for pointing that out. My statement was not correct without adding in "but must use one that is safe" , which I have done above now.

I did not mean to imply PayPal or Moneybookers was unsafe.

Too many words flowing and not enough editing going on there by yours truly.

My apologies.

Realizing that doing business on line is inherently risky, I am glad that such sites as paypal and moneybookers are relaively safe.

I had an e mail recently pointing out the difference between http and https. These are the letters which occur at the start of the URL in the address of a site. the https is supposedly a secure site, for monetary transactions.


Check it out. Https occurs at the beginning of paypal and similar sites.

This is very good advice. If you are ever requested to put personal financial information into a website, make sure it has an "https" address. It should also have a small yellow image of a padlock at the bottom of the page.

The encryption used to process transactions is military-level. Please don't be afraid, or paranoid, about using online payments. The media beat-up around this drives me to distraction!

Correct advice Jubilee. I read in the local paper that most debit/credit card fraud in the Vancouver (BC) area is STILL through the "old fashioned" ways: theft, modified card scanners, peeking over shoulders, and the most common, dishonest employees in stores/restaurants you entrust your card with. I am sure it is the same with most places in the world.

What the...? This topic should be moved to a thread of its own!