eBay Sellers...Can You Help?

[me-n-my guys]

Lately my fiancee & I have been seriously considering selling on eBay..
We both have our own buyers accounts & want to sell our own things. He wants to sell sports cards & I see this as a gateway opportunity to begin selling my art(among other things)
I'm wondering about the Paypal account. It looks to me that I have to get a premier account, because the personal account wont allow you to accept payments. Am I right on this?
Also, the transaction fee chart is kind of confusing, can someone simplify it for me? Are these fees added to the eBay auction fee?
As you become more successful, how much time does it actually consume, answering emails & such?
We are lucky in the way that we have easy access to shipping materials, ups, & also the post office is 2 blocks away. I also have a digital cam, scanner & photo editing software.
I want to do this the right way, I don't want to put on a lame effort & end up with bad feedback.
The PayPal questions are the most critical because if I end up with my own website selling my art, I want to be able to use PayPal there, also.
I would sincerely appreciate any advice, I know that there are alot of intelligent minds on this board, this is the first place I like to go to get opinions!

 

[rosehawke]

I'll give you the short answer as best I know until someone else comes along

. You need the Premier account in order to accept credit/debit cards and I believe there is a percentage taken out for this. As far as I know, just person to person does not require the premier account, but there may be a limit on the transactions. I haven't looked into this as I've not sold anything in a long time.

And yes, the transaction/listing fees are paid up front. Regardless of if your item sells, you pay this amount. If/when it sells you pay an additional percentage or a flat fee depending on the nature of the transaction. This is called a final value fee.

Some things, like cars and motorcycles, are a flat fee up front with no final value fees.

 

[scamperfarms]

alrighty here you go. Pay Pal personal accounts CAN accept payments. BUT they can only take payments from Bank accounts directly, or funded from pay pal. If you have a premier. or buisness account you can also accept credit and debit accounts. personally i have one of each. i use the buisness for ebay, and such.

http://www.ppcalc.com/ this is handy for the fee's

time is gonna vary on how much you sell and how many questions you get. I found i usually didnt get to many..of course my auctions are straight foward.

 

[captiva]

I just sold stuff this month. It really was easy. I think you can receive funds through Paypal for free but they need to be a direct debit from the buyer's bank account. I ended up signing up for the prem. account because I found that some of my buyers wanted to charge their transactions. Because I have the premiere account, they charge for every transaction which you see on their grid.

Ebay's set up is very slick, it has reminder notices of exactly what you need to do when (i.e. send invoice, ship, give feedback, etc) Very well organized. The payments go into your Paypal account and then you can transfer the funds back into your bank acct.

 

[jennyr]

With personal account, you also have a limit of how much you can take into the account each month - around $1000.

 

[me-n-my guys]

ScamperFarms, thank you for that link, it will be useful! So are the PayPal fees added to the eBay auction fees?
If you sell alot, does it make sense to get a seperate bank account to make it easier to keep track of everyting?

 

[evnshawn]

I haven't sold on eBay for a year or so, so some of my info might be out of date, but I doubt it.

You can use a personal PayPal account, but people would have to pay you with existing PayPal funds, they couldn't use debit or credit cards. If you're going to sell a lot, I think the premier account is probably worth it, since telling people you don't accept credit or debit cards will reduce the bids you get.

As far as the fees go, at their simplest, your auction fee consists of an insertion fee (based on your starting or reserve price and charged regardless of whether your auction sells) and a final value fee (based on what your auction sells for; not assessed if the item doesn't sell). So, if you have an item with a starting price of $9.99 and a final sale price of $25.00, your total fee would be $1.66 ($.35 insertion fee + 1.31 final sale fee). If that item didn't sell, your fee would only be the $.35 insertion fee. The other eBay fees are optional. (The PayPal fee is a transaction fee of $.30, I think, plus a small percentage of the sale. It's only assessed if you actually complete the sale and the seller pays using PayPal.)

As far as time goes, I think most successful eBay sellers use tools like Turbo Lister, which is free, to help manage their auctions. Also, some of them limit their shipping to certain days per week, weekdays only, etc. As far as answering emails, I recommend that you try to do that every day (though if your auctions are well-done, you probably won't get a lot because all their questions will be answered in the auction).

One other thing: many people (me included) ship USPS Priority Mail as much as possible because the boxes, envelopes and labels (though not packing materials) are free from the US Postal Service. You can even sign up and get the boxes and stuff by mail so that you don't have to drive to the post office.

 

[scamperfarms]

Originally Posted by Me-n-my guys

ScamperFarms, thank you for that link, it will be useful! So are the PayPal fees added to the eBay auction fees?
If you sell alot, does it make sense to get a seperate bank account to make it easier to keep track of everyting?

Yw..no the pay pal fees are taken out by paypal when it gets sent to the account..

heres any example from my Buisness account how it appears:
Payment From name edited Jan. 13, 2006 Completed Details $10.50 USD -$0.60

 

[vespacat]

It's great to hear all of this info as I have been thinking of selling some of my impulse purchases on eBay.

At this point, I have only been a buyer, but that may soon change.

 

[me-n-my guys]

Originally Posted by vespacat

It's great to hear all of this info as I have been thinking of selling some of my impulse purchases on eBay.

At this point, I have only been a buyer, but that may soon change.

Yay! Hopefully we can both learn something & it won't be so intimidating to start. I'm sure it will get easy as time goes by, but trying to shuffle through the info on ebay can get crazy. If you read about one subject, you can click on so many links & it's easy to get sidetracked & lost in a sea of information.

 

[lunasmom]

Wow! I never realised that they made Paypal so confusing! I signed up after a year of their premier.
Anyhoo, I THINK I still have the personal account as well. The Paypal fees are separate from eBay. Which may seem kind of daunting, but what I do is in the area for shipping, you can add on a handling charge. I usually choose $0.50-$1 depending on the item, and that's what will make up the Paypal fees for me.

If you are going to have your website though, you may want to consider the Premier account. This will cover you financially for credit card fraud: you won't be responsible, but Paypal will be.

I would seriously suggest dipping your feet into the water with eBay selling. I've been selling off and on for years now and have noticed more sellers than there are buyers. Of course this could mean that I'm selling crap now. LOL.

Anyhoo good luck!

 

[momofmany]

I sell from time to time and also have a website where I accept paypal. I use turbo lister, but its a memory hog and sometimes I have to reboot the PC after I use it for a while. Still worth it IMO. I have a separate business account for my business - if you get to a point that you are doing this seriously, it's easier from a tax reporting standpoint to have everything separate. And if you want to get your money out of paypal, you must give them a savings account to transfer money into, otherwise they hit you with another fee to mail you a check.

I should check on this, but I don't have a premier account, but paypal does allow my buyers to select a credit card directly. I think this is something that they just started doing.

 

[me-n-my guys]

Thanks, everyone!
Yep, my fiancee took the plunge last night & now has 2 listings on there for football cards. I'm having to teach him the scanning/editing/resizing photo thing, & we'll see how it all goes, I am learning with him.
He's noticed that you can really rack up some money on posting your auction by adding fancy extras like extra pictures, borders, stuff like that.

 

[scamperfarms]

yup the only extra I ever use is a gallery listing. Its worth it IMO i find myself looking at more listings with gallery..so i think about my buyers as well