Starting Bid

[CCUP]

Ok ive got some items to sell on Ebay ive noticed some people start there auctions at 99p does it work out cheaper to start at 99p when you get your FVF

[AndrewGC]

FVF stands for Final Value Fee, so it makes no difference what you start at. You get charged a FVF of 9.9% + VAT on the FINAL selling price.

For some sellers 99p listings are free to list but for most they are about 10p. But that is the listing fee - you still have to pay a FVF if you sell AND Paypal fees.

Selling on eBay incurs a few charges:

1. Listing Fee to actually put it up (one piccie is free but use Photobucket or the like to put some other pictures in the listing using eBay's HTML option on the Description Section). Listing fees are based on the price you start at and what options you pick.

2. IF the item sells you have to pay a FVF - 9.9% + VAT.

3. If the buyer uses PayPal you will pay a fee to them which starts at 3.9% (+20p) + VAT and this is charged on ALL the money received.

4. You then have to pay Postage and Packing to send it - and you should charge accordingly by 'mock' wrapping the item and weighing it to get the price.

Couple of obs:

The 99p listing idea relies on enough people seeing it and then bidding to raise the price to what you want. One off day and you will be selling for 99p. I'd personally choose a figure closer to what I want, but as a Business Seller I am selling items I need to make money on.

Charging the 'correct P&P' is essential - do not underprice what it costs in total. We have encountered someone on eBay who apart from selling some items of a similar range to us now undercuts us on price and postage. Frankly he's welcome to it. He charges 60p postage where the item is 61p to send (he missed that Royal Mail increased prices from April!) AND then you have the cost of an envelope. Oh, and PayPal DO charge commission on all the money received so he doesn't even get 60p. We charge £1 and after PayPal fees, actual postage cost, cost of envelope, time spent wrapping and then getting it to the Post Office I feel that is pretty good value without cutting my throat or ripping off the punter. I aim NOT to make money on postage but also not to lose either.

Use the following when you have weighed you stuff to get UK and Worldwide postage prices:

Seajays

But remember to add on for packing!

On larger items we have to buy in boxes and have only encountered one problem customer who said he wanted to pay the exact postage only - we emailed him to urgently ask where we too could get free boxes! He had to good grace to email and acknowledge his error.

Finally a good Title and Picture sell an item. Do not waste time with words in the Title that you would NOT use in a Search.

[CCUP]

FilthyRaider thanks for all that good information ive got the pictures just need to upload and fill in ebay selling details about item do you think items sell better at nights or better in day and does things sell better near end of week or does all that not really matter. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[AndrewGC]

It is the How Long Is Piece Of String question.

Fridays can be good one week, awful the next. Saturdays usually poor. Monday can be good and Sunday is often a good day. To finish that is. It is worth listing on Thursday for 10 days so that it will finish Sunday. Because we do mostly shop listings we usually use Auctions more as a way to get people to look at the other shop items, so I'm probably not the best to answer.

Time wise: generally 7pm to 11pm. Anything earlier or later I feel does not work, but it is all different for everyone. List the item at the time you want it to finish, basically.

Watch out for 'events' so if you get, say, the X Factor final one Sunday, try to avoid (personally I avoid the X Factor final by being on line.........).

Essentially if the item is what people want, you have used 'keywords' to attract buyers (see later note) and got some good piccies and GOOD spelling, punctuation and grammar in the description (some buyers avoid sellers that cannot use a capital letter or a full stop - seriously), you should do okay.

Keywords: Say you are selling a Widget. You might have come up with the title: Widget In Very Good Condition! Great Buy!

The only useful keyword there is Widget. Try to think what you might type in to find it. Some of our titles are eseentially just search words and you should get away from the conception that a title is a sentence on eBay - it's a buyer trap. Obviously avoid 'spamming' by chucking in words like, say, Nokia, when the item has nothing to do with Nokia - it's against eBay rules for one.

[greysts]

[ QUOTE ]
(some buyers avoid sellers that cannot use a capital letter or a full stop -

[/ QUOTE ] Count me in as one of them. If the seller can't be bothered to describe his item correctly then that suggests to me he won't be bothered about the condition of the item that he's selling. The OP's 2 posts are examples of that very problem so - CCUP - take note of what FR is telling you.