For the Amazon vs Ebay debate, I thought I would work out the math for myself (and I thought other CAGs would find this informative) using real world examples with S/H margin factored in to assess true % costs. I haven't factored in overhead costs, gas to the post office, and time expense since those costs are going to be same for both (or at least close enough...I believe amazon gives you a bigger window of time to ship, so you possibly could go to the post office less frequently)
Amazon charges 15% on a used video game sale, plus 99 cent per transaction fee (however, this fee is waived if you join their pro merchant program at $40 monthly cost but we’ll ignore that since this CAG and most sellers here are not necessarily going to be doing tons of transactions on amazon month in and month out), so for a small time seller selling a $24.99 used video game would be charged 3.75 plus 99 cents transaction cost, or 4.74 or 19% of the total paid….but there is a 3.99 shipping allowance credit and assuming that actual shipping cost of a 7 oz game (2.15 not including delivery confirm) with the cost of bubble wrap envelope (say 20 cents) is $2.35 out of pocket shipping cost, so you do get some margin on the amazon S/H fee.
So here’s the math for the folks in the home audience…
$24.99 game on amazon with amazon fixed 3.99 shipping fee gets bought
$24.99 –99 cent per transaction fee-3.75 (15%) closing fee-2.35 actual shipping cost+3.99 shipping allowance =21.90 in your pocket at the end.
$21.90/24.99 =12.4% of the sales price is kept by Amazon.
Here’s the Ebay math under the upcoming rates
$24.99 starting price/buy it now price video game with $3.99 shipping gets bought
$24.99-55 cent listing fee-2.18 closing fee-30 cents per transaction fee paypal fee-84 variable paypal transaction fee (2.9%*28.98) -2.35 actual shipping/packaging cost+3.99 shipping fee =22.76 in your pocket in the end
$22.76/24.99=8.9.% of the transaction kept by Ebay/Paypal under the new rates.
To understand why so many sellers are upset, under the current and soon to expire rates structure, the math would have worked out to $23.58/24.99=5.6% Ebay/Paypal bite or an 82 cent jump in total fees…and if you are only making a few bucks on each item, that sort of increase is pretty serious.
Now that said, you can fiddle with the Ebay math by pumping up the S/H fee, and lowering your selling price, which no shortage of sellers already do and is certain to become endemic under the new fee structure. But there’s no cost to list on Amazon, so you if you end listing a couple of times on Ebay and not selling it, the advantage goes to amazon, where it stays until you sell it or pull it off. And there is the added benefit of not all of Amazon customers are necessarily the most cheap ass people in world, so may be able to get away with higher prices than you would on Ebay (although that depends on other sellers on amazon as well). Also unlike Ebay where you might have one big seller dumping 25 copies of the same game at the same time and flooding the search page, on amazon that seller would only have one listing so you might not have to fight as much to be at least seen by potential buyers. But that said, you have far less opportunity to distinguish yourself from other sellers on Amazon than Ebay. But Amazon lets you price things without having to worry about the inserting fee selling breakpoints (ie, you’ll never list something at $26, since 60 cents of that additional dollar is consumed the higher listing fee by going over 24.99). And for amateur sellers, you also don’t need to take a photo for amazon listing either which saves time and listing hassles. And no suck ass anal retentive buyers nagging sellers for feedback 5 seconds after they left it for a seller. But all of this said, the math gets much worse for Amazon vs Ebay on items over $25, at least on non-computers and non-electronics items.
Personally, I've been putting off selling on Amazon due to their higher fee structure but I’m going to start shifting a very good chunk of my biz to them, despite the higher fees, solely due utter A-holeness of Ebay’s behavior both now and in the past (the feedback stuff sucks too…why bother to have feedback for buyers at all come May?…That’s just more work and dumb ass questions I have deal with from buyers, esp when I stop giving feedback at all to buyers when the new policy comes into effect…or I may just add a new level of shipping that includes “free and automatic positive feedback” that costs $2.50 more). Ebay will still get some of my business (and buyers are going to get at least a $1 or $2 increase S/H fees as well) in the handful of categories I deal with that amazon doesn’t have much of an audience, but I expect that my payments to Ebay/paypal will drop at least 60-70% this year.