Thursday, December 17, 2009

aBay and paypal fees rant!

You know back in June I had decided to sell more on Art Fire and less on eBay as eBay's fees were just getting higher and higher. I pay $12 a month at Art Fire and can list as much as I want and I have NO Final Value Fee's to pay plus, Art Fire allows me to collect my payments via money orders or PayPal. But, eBay gets more exposure than Art Fire and I felt it was time for some exposure.

So, I had listed my Shadow Box Baby on eBay and she sold, which I am delighted to have her going to a new home as she really is a neat and creative little piece of decor.

Her selling price was $165. The buyer paid for the shipping but somehow the eBay shipping calculator got messed up and it was short $4.23 for the shipping so I covered that.

The Final Value Fee from eBay was 8 3/4%!!!! That is almost as much as my Lord requests me to give as tithe! Good Grief! And of course there is a listing fee~oh and by the way, when eBay does a "free insertion listing" they bump up the Final Value Fee quite a lot compared to when they don't have a promotion going on. Pretty tricky eh??

And then Paypal takes a little chunk...about 4% of the amount the buyer sent me. And eBay ONLY allows PayPal as a method of payment now. They used to allow us to accept money orders but not any more. PayPal and eBay are closely entwined you see.

So all in all, for the $165 sale, I get to keep $137.87. Before taxes. I do pay my income taxes on my business sales as it is the right thing to do.

OH an wait...now just how much did it cost to create the Shadow Box Baby?? Well, let's see. The vinyl kit was $39.90

The Shadow box was $19.99 plus Idaho Tax of 6% since I could not find one in my No Tax state...oh and that meant traveling 240 miles round trip.

The two little bows were $1.00

The two ornaments were $4.00 on sale :)

The Santa hat was $1.00

The drums were $1.00

The hair bow and magnets about 50 cents.

So the grand total for expenses, not including shipping items was $72.40, not adding in the gas it took to drive to find a shadow box. So my net "profit" if you would call it that was $65.47 before taxes. I spent oh...about 14 hours or so creating the doll too...that puts my income at $4.67 per hour...before taxes and that gas it took to drive! LOL

I am not complaining about the sale at all. I am thrilled that she/he found a home. I am just shedding some light on the truth behind selling artwork on eBay and the expenses it really takes to create them.

I guess you can call it my eBay and PayPal Fee's tutorial!

Have a good day!

Debbie




2 comments:

  1. And then they take the fees out of your checking account instead of your Paypal card like you set it up to do and screw up your checking account. Not that that's happening to anyone I know right now... =P

    ReplyDelete
  2. That STINKS Nike! Now just why did they do that? I am so sorry. This is NOT the time of year to have that happen, is it? Awe, I feel bad for you. Take care my Sweet and have fun in California!

    ReplyDelete