eBay has its own way of collecting fees from sellers. If you use an auction or a fixed price “buy it now” model to sell something, you need to know about the eBay fees. This lets you set the right price for your product and figure out how much you will pay eBay and how much you will make overall.
What eBay Charges Cover
Find out what fees you will have to pay before you start selling on eBay. If you aren’t ready, these costs can add up quickly and catch you by surprise. Find out what eBay’s fees are for listing and selling items, as well as any other fees that may apply to you.
If you know how to cut these costs, you can make more money from the things you put up for sale. Our goal is to make it easy for you to understand what you’re spending so that you can focus on making more money.
So, let’s begin:
Listing Insertion Fee
The first fee you’ll have to pay is the insertion fee. This is needed to put an item on the site. And this fee is the same for both auction-style listings and fixed-price listings. When a seller has a “essential” eBay account, they can list 250 items for free each month in most categories. Once you go over that limit, you will be charged $0.35 for each item you list after that.
When a seller signs up for a shop subscription, they get more free listings and pay less in fees if they sell more than what the subscription says they should. Prices for store subscriptions range from $4.95 per month to $2999.95 per month when paid yearly.
For low-volume sellers just starting out, a simple eBay account is enough. As your sales grow, though, it makes sense to buy a store membership.
Final Value Fee
When a sale is made, the final value fee is the price that is charged at the end of the deal. It costs $0.30 plus a percentage of the total price of the item, which includes the cost of shipping and handling. Unless the seller chooses 1-day shipping or shipping within the same country, the shipping cost depends on which shipping option the buyer chooses. If this is true, the price will be set in the way that costs the least. The cost is added when the customer buys the item, whether or not they pay for it.
If a seller doesn’t get Money, they can cancel the transaction or say it wasn’t paid, and they may be eligible for a fee credit. For most items (up to $750), sellers with a basic eBay account pay a final value charge that ranges from 2% to 12.20%. Up to a total price of $7,500, the absolute value cost of books, DVDs, videos, and music is 14.6%, and the cost over that amount is 2.35 %.
Fees for optionally upgrading a listing
You will have a lot of ways to improve and increase the visibility of your search listings. For example, you can pay extra to make the listings bold, add a subtitle, be able to add more pictures (the first dozen pictures you post with your listing are free), use eBay’s Listing Designer (which lets you add HTML formatting to your listings), set a reserve price for auction items, make your listings visible to people all over the world, and do other things.
There are insertion fees and an optional upgrade for items in two categories. In each category, there is only one final value fee. Also, the requirements for selling real estate and cars are very different, as are the costs, including those for adding extra features to the listing.
Optional Fee for Featured Listings
eBay sellers can also promote their listings so that their products show up higher in eBay search results and in the “similar items” section when shoppers are looking at an item from another seller. Promoted listings are open to all sellers, whether or not they subscribe to a store.
Based on what other sellers have agreed to pay for ads, the seller can decide how much to charge for promoted listings, which can start at 1% or more of the assessed value fee. Fees are only taken out if a person clicks on an ad and then buys the thing being advertised within 30 days. There are certain requirements that must be met:
- The performance of the seller must be above average or the best.
- There must be at least two photos in the listing.
- The promotion is only for listings with a set price.
- We don’t allow listings for cars, real estate, or travel.
- The list must include everything (no “parts that don’t work” lists).
- The item cannot be picked up locally.
Fees for Classified Listings
Putting up a classified ad is another way to sell something on eBay. But unlike auctions and fixed-price ads, eBay gives buyers the seller’s contact information so they can talk to them directly. Even though these transactions happen outside of eBay, if their contact information is used in a bad way, sellers could have their account limited or even shut down. Also, when customers refuse to pay, they have less power to solve problems.
You have to pay $9.95 to list a classified ad for 30 days, and you won’t talk about the final value fees.
Fees that hurt
Sellers only have to pay extra fees if they follow eBay’s rules or at least meet the minimum best practices for sellers. If a seller gives a buyer their contact information and tries to sell something to them outside of eBay, the seller will be charged a final value fee for the transaction, even if the sale doesn’t happen.
For auction-style postings, the fee is based on the highest price, which could be the starting auction price, the “Buy It Now” price, or the price that the buyer and seller agree on. For fixed-price listings, the final value charge is based on the price that was set ahead of time or the price that the buyer and seller agreed upon.
eBay Managed Payments has fees for processing payments.
eBay gives sellers a way to manage payments, so they can offer many payment methods and do all of their payment processing in one place. Before eBay switched to managed payments, PayPal was the most common way to pay for things on eBay.
There are many reasons to use eBay’s managed payments system. For example, sellers may accept more payment methods than just PayPal, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit, debit, and gift cards. Sellers can also set up automatic transfers to their bank when a customer pays, instead of manually setting up a transfer through PayPal. This way, they don’t have to pay any costs that the third-party vendor changed.
What is an eBay fee calculator, and how do you figure out eBay fees?
The new final value fee covers the costs of having eBay handle payments.
Its pricing is also easy to understand. For each sale on eBay, the company charges a processing fee of 2.9% and a flat rate of $.30. For PayPal to send money to a seller’s bank account, the seller must give PayPal information about their bank. PayPal’s basic transactions are free and take two to three days, but if a seller wants to get their money faster, they have to pay a 1% fee.
If the sale is made to a foreign customer, 4.4% of the sale price is collected. The rate the buyer pays in depends on the currency. There are no costs to open or keep a PayPal account, and all of the major credit cards can be used.
If a seller usually sells things with low prices, they have another way to cut costs. Micropayments are for people selling things that cost less than $12. This option has a higher percentage rate (5%) but a lower flat-rate fee of $.05 per domestic transaction and 6% plus a predetermined rate based on the buyer’s currency for international transactions.
High-volume sellers may be able to lower their fees even more by getting PayPal’s merchant rate, which is available to merchants who sell at least $3,000 worth of items every month.
How to Spend Less on eBay Fees
There are a few ways you can lower the fees you have to pay eBay to sell on their site.
Sign up for the right subscription to the store
You can save money by becoming a member of an eBay shop, but only if you get the right membership for the number of items you sell. Make sure the membership you choose fits with how much your store usually sells.
Don’t make unnecessary changes.
Even if you like the different ways you can improve your listing, keep in mind that these extra features cost money. If your listing is simple, you can cut down on the costs of making changes.
Find out about unpaid sales.
If you sold something but the buyer didn’t pay, don’t forget to ask eBay for a fee credit. Since you have to pay the final value fee whether or not you pay the seller, you must either cancel the transaction or mark the item as unpaid. You might be able to get the listing fee back when you relist the item for sale.
Stick to the rules
When sellers don’t follow eBay’s rules, they get fined heavily. For example, you can avoid a $20 dispute fee by being careful in situations like chargebacks where a buyer and a seller disagree.
Last Words
There are many third-party rate calculators that can help you figure out how much everything on eBay will cost. Some figure out how much it costs to use eBay and PayPal, while others estimate how much money you might make after fees are taken out, and still others give you important spreadsheet breakdowns or are available as apps.