A great number of people make money by selling on eBay each month. Obviously, the service is free to sign up for, but there are fees associated with selling on the auction site. Under most circumstances, you have to pay for listing an item to sell, any extra features you use, and a percentage of the final sale price. Paying these fees can be a little difficult because they are easy to forget about and aren’t billed as soon as an item is listed or sold. With that in mind, here are some ways an eBay seller can reduce their fees and pay them off too.
Increase shipping fees just a tick.
Sellers are allowed to charge shipping and handling costs. Of course, some sellers abuse that by charging heinous amounts for extremely slow and bad shipping. Anyways, sellers looking to pay their fees can pull a little bit of a trick with shipping charges. Reducing your selling price and increasing your shipping charge can help you incur reduced fees and more to pay those fees. Sure, it’s not the most righteous thing to do, but it will save you some money. On the other hand, you could simply increase your shipping price by a dollar or two to help pay for fees, which is a completely legitimate and fair thing to do.
Always use PayPal to take care of fees.
Never have eBay automatically debit your checking account or charge your credit card to pay for eBay fees. Doing so can cause you to overdraw your account or exceed your credit limit, which will do a lot of harm to your financial well-being in some cases. Therefore, you should always have your eBay fees deducted from your PayPal account. Linking a secondary bank account that you don’t usually keep much money in will help too. You might get your account suspended for not paying fees if you don’t have enough money, but you normally have a little bit of time to get the money together and pay the fees. Through this method, you won’t harm your credit score or get a bunch of overdraft fees.
Donate some money to charity to pay less in fees.
Through eBay Giving Works, you can donate some of the proceeds from your individual eBay sales to various charities. Doing so will fetch you a credit on your final value fees, which can help out greatly. Sure, you might lose a little extra money from donating to charity, but these donations are tax-deductible in most cases. Your fees will be lower and you can help out a charitable organization. Who can complain about that? On top of that, your items are more likely to sell at a higher price because the item will have a charitable donation badge associated with it.
Use less features to minimize fees.
You get charged on eBay to use multiple pictures. to use “Buy It Now”, and tons of other things. Most of these features are optional though, so you don’t have to utilize them. So then, you should minimize the amount of features you use on your listings to lower your insertion and feature fees. Most items will sell without tons of pictures, giant pictures, and bolded texts. Therefore, you shouldn’t waste your money on making your auction or sale look like the best one out there. Your item will still sell and you will end up with less fees at the end of each month, which is always a good thing.
Utilize free listings when possible.
Each month, you can get free listings under certain circumstances, which means you won’t have to pay any insertion fees. The final value fee is still there, but it’s always good to save where you can. If you list a hundred items per month, then you can get almost $100 in savings for the insertion fees, depending upon what you sell. On top of that, eBay sometimes does promotions where items can be listed without insertion fees for a certain time span. Taking advantage of these “free” listings is the key to reducing your eBay fees because you will only have to pay for features used and final value fees if your item sells.
Sell items in categories that receive reduced or free features.
Certain categories of items have the added benefits of free or reduced features for sellers. Of course, you should take advantage of this and sell in these categories if you have any items that can be sold there. Sometimes, you will be allowed to add pictures for free or you can use a free subtitle. The reduced or free features are always a good thing because they allow you to set your auctions and sales apart from the rest without wasting too much money on these features. On that note, you should always take advantage of the free features when you sell items in certain categories, and the reduced fees for features are occasionally worth it.
Don’t get killed by fees!
Sometimes, fees for selling on eBay can get a little out of hand if you don’t manage the way in which you sell your stuff. You have to ensure that you minimize your fees and pay them on time to avoid spending too much or having an account suspended for nonpayment. Fortunately, it isn’t that difficult to reduce your fees to where they are manageable enough to pay without a problem.
