Ebay Fee Calculator and Selling Tips

  
  I know a lot of you Thrifty Momma's are very Ebay savvy and know that Ebay is a great way to generate some extra cash and get rid of items that are just taking up space in your house.  I also know that it is sometimes hard to decide if there is enough profit in an item to make it worth your while.

   I have been selling on Ebay for about 4 steady years in order to pay for our vacations, Christmas and other little fun things.  I have shifted my selling strategy away from volume selling to higher profit per item selling.  This is the first in a series of posts on my tips and tools that helped me come to the conclusion that this type of selling best suited me and how it can work for you.  I will be posting more Ebay tips in the future so there will be more to come but feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have a question.
 
   If you decide to auction and item you always want to keep in mind that no matter how much you research there is no guarantee on the items end price.  Here are some tools to help determine your profit though.  Always remember if you are running an auction that it may close at the opening bid so make that price one that you would be comfortable selling the item for.

   First do an advanced search here viewing completed listings.  That will give you an idea of what the going rate is.  Remember to check the sold items shipping cost.  I used to just glance at the completed list and wonder why the prices fluctuated so much and then I noticed that the ones that appeared to sell very low had very high shipping costs.  You will also want to take not of days and times that both the high and low ending cost items sold on.  Certain times seem to do better for certain things. 

  In order to determine your true profit you also need to be able to calculate all of your selling fee's.  PayPal and Ebay both have their hands out you know.  Here is a great fee calculator and profit tool.   Certain items have higher final value fee's than others so it's good to have a tool like this calculator to get a better sense of what your profit after fee's will be.

   More to come.......