The Hidden Costs Of Selling On Ebay
Overall rating: (N/A)
The article "The Hidden Costs Of Selling On Ebay" is about auctions, it has been released by Dave Bromley.
There is little duobt that given the potential audience advertising on eBay can be really cost effective. Compared to other forms of advertising it is relatively inexpensive. However, many eBay users rarely bother to work out exactly what it is costing them to make a sale.
There are the obvious costs such as the listing, enhancements and final value fees. Also you have to add the charges made by Paypal if that is the option of payment chosen by the buyer.
But then you should raelly also consider what I call the invisible costs. Let me explain, if for instance you buy many of the items that you sell from Flea markets and garage sales what value do you place on your time going to such events and don't forget any tarvel expenses to get there.
Once you have got your items home you will need more time to research, photograph and list your purchases. Now add the time you spend packaging the items after sale and satnding in line to post them. You could easily find that each sale you make on eBay could take an hour or more of your time.
If you really want to know how much time you spend on your eBay business you need to keep a detailed diary for a few weeks.
Record the time when you leave your home on "eBay business" and when you reutrn. Add any expeness other than the cost of any items you buy to sell on eBay. Once you're home log any time you spend listing, photographing and packing items.
Do this for a few weeks and this will give you a good idea of the non costed time you spend on your ebay business in an average week.
Next decide what you guess your time is wotrh $10, $20 or $50 an hour, this figure is entirely up to you and represents what you would expect to be paid for an hours work by somebody else.
You can then work out how many items you sell a week on average. So your figures might look somethnig like this.
Average horus per week 6 at $20 an hour, average number of items sold per week 30. This would mean your time is worth $120 a week to you and if you sell 30 items it has cost you $4 of time per item.
So to work out your true profit on any item you need to add not only the cost of the item but also the other costs.
eBay, the Paypal and shipping fees and your time cotss. You will at this moment be able to calculate what porfit or lose you made on the sale.
You should also include something to cover those "mistakes" that we all buy that disprove the theory that you can sell anything on eBay. After that you will be able to calculate the true profit that you're making from your ebay business.
I am not knocking eBay, qutie the contrary; I guess it is one of the hottest methods for anyone to build a successful online business.
The point is that if you're to make real profits on eBay it is imporatnt to make sure that you use your time to hottest advantage. This can mean getting program to speed up tasks and possibly reviewing how and where you buy the items you sell through eBay.
|
Write a comment about the article
The Hidden Costs Of Selling On Ebay
|
