What Does It Really Cost To Sell on eBay?

July 7, 2007 in Book Selling with 4 Comments

I have always maintained that selling on eBay is a great proposition assuming two things:

  1. An above average sell through and
  2. The item you sell is of high enough value.

Sell through rate is basically the percent of items you put up for auction that end with someone buying them (Say you put 5 auctions up, 4 of them end with someone buying the item, You have an 80% sell through rate).

The item we sell should have an average closing price above $15.00, $20.00 is better.

Thanks to this little tool here, you can see exactly what it costs to sell an item on eBay.

For example, all day long you see people put auctions up for $9.95, the end at $9.95 and then the buyer pays with PayPal. The tool tells us that the cost of that transaction is $1.62, or more than 15%.

Thought it was a pretty cool little tool.