Ouestion about ebay selling

Tigers6884

I have a few questions concerning idiot bay selling. First a bit of background information, I have a buying account with over 100 sales and no negatives.
I am considering selling some laptop power supplies and other non sports related items. No cards for now.

Should I offer free shipping and roll the cost into the item price to avoid the shipping crybabies?

Should I have a separate selling account or take advantage of the established account?

What about Best offers? Or should I just set a reasonable BIN and let it go at that?


Thanks in advance.
Jim

orioles93

I would use the established account and i often just include shipping in my item's cost and list as free shipping. That way you dont have people complaining about too many shipping charges. I have also have had many good transactions with best offer. It just all depends how much you are willing to go down on your bin price.

JoeBanzai

I would certainly roll the shipping cost into the item price, it eliminates crying from people that don't understand that it costs MORE than actual postage to ship something.

Make sure you also include insurance on anything that will hurt you if it's lost. Delivery confirmation on everything, when I print out my labels on eBay it's free. Consider Signature confirmation on all high dollar items as well, I think it's required on anything over $250.00, but I am not sure.

I don't see an advantage of having two accounts.

If you are selling items that are not collectable, BIN with best offer option sounds good. I think you can set the best offer option to reject "lowball" offers.

Good luck!

Joe

robbiegiggs

Free or very low cost shipping in the US is great.

If you want to do international, just pick a flat rate, international box to put it in and do calculated shipping. They can't complain about it if it's calculated and you don't have to worry about calculating it yourself. Exposing yourself to the international Ebay sites is a good idea.

Brick

Free shipping is the way to go with a small increase in asking price to cover part of the expense. On the plus side you already know you will be dealing with idiots so you won't get a nasty suprise.

fiveniner

<< <i>Free shipping is the way to go with a small increase in asking price to cover part of the expense. On the plus side you already know you will be dealing with idiots so you won't get a nasty suprise. >>




even though i seldom offer free shipping.I just charge exact shipping or less.

CrazyMind2017

<< <i>What about Best offers? Or should I just set a reasonable BIN and let it go at that? >>



Sounds like you're not going to be selling too large a quantity of items, so you should take advantage of the 50 free listings per month. Auction-style with a BIN is free to list.





<< <i>They can't complain about it if it's calculated and you don't have to worry about calculating it yourself. >>



Anybody can complain about anything, especially on fleabay! A few weeks ago I sold a $94 item that weighed 15 ounces and had to ship it 3000 miles across the country with insurance. It would not fit in a small flat rate priority box, so the only options in this scenario are parcel post and calculated priority based on weight and distance. Actual priority postage was $8.55 and the buyer was charged $8.35, of which I got to keep approximately 88%, or $7.35. Parcel post would have been $8.24 in actual postage, but he got priority for the extra 31 cents. He left feedback for me and dinged my shipping charges, giving me only 3 stars. The shipping label showed the price paid as well, so he couldn't have assumed that I cut corners there. I guess he didn't like the wording in my auction, which was, "Shipping cost is for Priority Mail and includes mandatory USPS insurance."

CollectorAtWork

For the short answer, I would say, roll part of the cost into the item price and part of it into shipping. For example, if it costs $3.50 to ship the item, I would roll $3 into the shipping cost and 50 cents into the item cost. Therefore, when you ship the item, and show the postage on the label, it will always be more than the buyer paid. I would always add delivery confirmation, but never insurance unless the item cost more than $300. If you ship too extravagantly and charge the buyer accordingly, you'll still get nicked. If you are just trying to get rid of "junk," I would probably just go w/ the previous, and take advantage of the 50 free listings per month where you can set your own start price. However, if you are looking to start a sustainable ebay business, you probably need to do a little more work. That is, you need to look at your competitors on ebay who sell the same stuff. If you see a lot of other sellers selling the same stuff and that they often charge the same shipping price for that item, I would go w/ that. For example, for graded cards, it seems that the shipping standard is $3/card. (For a 3oz PSA graded card, it "only" costs $1.64 right now to ship w/ delivery confirm, so you can actually come out a little ahead here.) For pricing on your items, I would again see what your competitors typically charge, and then try to undercut them a little. I prefer auction listings because ebay charges fewer fees on auctions than BINs. In addition, there is a certain segment of buyers than only buy auctions and filter out BINs. However, saying that, there is also a sizeable chunk of buyers who want to purchase an item right now and don't want to wait until an auction ends where they might not even win the item they want. Therefore a mixture of some BINs may help your business also. You'll have to make these decisions yourself on what you think is best.

Tigers6884

Thanks for the great advice from everyone who responded.
I appreciate it.

Jim

JoeBanzai

BTW insurance is the sellers responsibility and buyer should NEVER be made to pay for it................according to eBay.