General

eBay is bad but Amazon is ten times worse. Their so-called strictness is ignored in favor of scam shops with randomly generated names and they're not seller friendly - you can't browse or search someone's inventory easily, there's no options for shipping discounts or even combined packages... I've been browsing items that have a discount coupon if you buy two or more from the same storefront, only to click on it and find it empty, not even showing the item I was browsing. It's nuts.

I think I sold maybe 3 things this entire year on eBay. Instead I trade in all gaming items to a local retro shop that pays cash. Everything else I sell on Mercari. I make everything free shipping and bake it into the item cost. I list items high and have it set in smart price mode to drop over time. Their fee structure feels simpler than eBay and its made my end of the year accounting very easy. I ship everything via Pirateship, not Mercari labels. Collect the data, send to my tax accountant.

Edit: I do claim the retro shop cash buys, thus I can claim the mileage to and from the shop. Same with my mileage to and from Goodwill, Estate Sales, etc.

benstylus wrote:
.63 might not sound like a lot, but for every million sales, which eBay easily gets, that's another 630,000.

I am so confused by the math in this thread.

nonamesleft wrote:

Um, no. 0.63% of $1,000,000 is $6,300.

EDIT: Wait. NOW I see what you are saying.

You're saying that for every million SALES that EBay makes -- of $100 each -- that they get $630,000. That would be accurate.

That being said, I'm not sure the 0.63% is accurate, so I'm not saying anything on that part.

If any of you buy from Goodwill to resell, make sure to check glasses. I bought a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses for $2, flipped for $60. Also bought a weird pair of Jacques Marie Mage eyeglasses. Limited edition, numbered. I spent $3 and resold for $200.

My brands I look for: Ray-Ban, D&G, Coach, Prada, Maui Jim.

I'm sorry if it was mentioned in this post but they delayed the PayPal tax again for 2023

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-delay-i...

John wrote:
Yeah, for every $100 sale, based on the .63 you mentioned. Even if it was just .50, or even .25, that would still be a nice amount extra that eBay is getting.

They can get more money while claiming their fee is a lower percentage than what you actually end up paying after taxes are added

And the difference in the amount per transaction is pretty negligible on the seller side so most casual sellers won't even miss it.

Probably a remnant of the change from the days when shipping wasn't originally included in the final value fee. Once ebay realized sellers were scamming them by charging low for the item but high for shipping, they closed that loophole. And now they have turned it around on the sellers so ebay gets just that little bit more

benstylus wrote:
In 2010, there was a popular Yu-Gi-Oh card called Pot Of Duality that then was going for $100. Sellers were selling them for .99 and 100 shipping. Or .99 and 300 shipping for 3 of them. I guess that was still before eBay caught on.

I guess a way to not eat that fee as a seller would be to charge more for your item. Though, that might make the item harder to sell. But I can't make sense of how things sell. I've seen identical items with different prices, and the more expensive one sold first. I don't know why.

nonamesleft wrote:

Some sellers get pushed higher, more visibility, than others.

It's why I can't sell any crap despite having a lower price on my things.

Foxhack wrote:
Ahhh, that's what's going on? What gives a seller that higher visibility?

Listing more items is one way. I reckon sell through rate and using photos help.

Paying ebay more to be sponsored works too.

"Higher seller ratings", which is some bullcrap metric they came up with.

They want me to add more info to all my listings, but what if there isn't any more info to add?

EBay isn't meant for one-off sellers like us any more. Their big money comes from the (Chinese and other such) companies selling thousands of widgets and parts and such.

It has transitioned from it's original "sell your own stuff" platform long ago. It is now a marketplace for those selling thousands of items. The rest of us are just minor side notes.

John wrote:

You could replace eBay with Amazon and your statements would still be true.

Amazon was never really intended to be for individual SELLERS though. So that doesn't bother me as much. We're generally just buyers at Amazon -- so them having more sellers with more items -- even if they sell thousands of them -- doesn't really bother me.

It's not really the same at all to me. Amazon hasn't "transitioned from it's original 'sell your own stuff'" platform like EBay because it was never intended as a "sell your own stuff" platform. (You could do it, sure, and I did for a bit -- little one-offs here and there -- but I don't see that as Amazon's original intent or platform at all.

For a while Amazon had much better rates and service than ebay for individual sellers. Then they slowly got more hostile towards small sellers, to the point where you couldn't even sell things like dvds or video games as an individual because they were "high risk" items.

It didnt feel great being pushed out of that marketplace after years of never having any seller complaints because I didn't want to pay extra for a premium seller account. Especially with all the obvious dropshipped aliexpress bootleg crap all over the site now.

Sure, like I said, there were some using Amazon to sell, but I don't think that was ever what most people saw as Amazon's original intent -- unlike EBay.

But, I agree, I also stopped selling even the little one-offs on Amazon because it got too complex.

The new crap where they hold your money when you sell something ,I rarely sell on ebay now.

Hm? I get my money in a day. Better than Mercari, you have to wait for the receiver to hit got it for that one

If you don't mind credit you can start using it soon as you make the sale.