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How to reduce your eBay Listing Fees and make more money with your online auctions.

You are selling on eBay for one reason... to earn money online. So stop giving it all away to Ebay.
Below is a how-to guide to save money on your eBay listing fees.

Remember to visit the Alou eBay Zone for free eBay auction tools & resources

What are your eBay items costing you?

Standard Auction Fees

eBay has not become the largest online auction for nothing. They are raking in the cash from us at a phenomenal rate each day. The more we sell the more they earn, so lets start keeping the money in our pockets.
The eBay fee listing schedule is broken up into small little fees that don't look like much by themselves but added all together it totals a ton of your cash.You spend 50¢ here & another 25¢ here before you know it your widget ad is now costing you $6.50 to advertise on eBay. You have a No Reserve on this item and it sold for $4.25. You just LOST $2.25!!

For starters let's look at ways to cut the cost of basic auction listing fees that are charged on all auctions at eBay.

Insertion Fees - Insertion fees are non-refundable this fee cannot be avoided, but you can keep the insertion fee cost to a minimum. ( except if re-listed items sell the second time around )
If you start your auction at $10.00. The insertion fee for a $9.99 starting bid is 35¢ and the insertion fee for a $10.00 starting bid is 60¢. By starting your auction item at $10.00, you lose 25¢. If you have 20 auctions at a starting bid of $10.00, you will lose $20.00 right off the bat.

How about a Dutch auction or fixed price listing? These will let you to list a quantity of identical items at once. With both types of listings, the insertion fee is determined by the opening price or fixed price multiplied by the quantity of items.

Example: The insertion fee for items priced from $25.00 to $49.99 is $1.20, and for items from $50.00 to $199.99 it's $2.40. If you have ten $5.00 widgets to sell and you list them all for a fixed price of $5.00 each, your insertion fee is going to be $2.40. But if you list all ten widgets for $4.99 each, your insertion fee is only $1.20. The net result of reducing your starting bid by a penny is an additional $1.10 in your pocket ($1.20 saved in fees minus the total of $.10 from reducing the starting bid).

Be very careful with a reserve price auction. The insertion fee for a reserve price auction is based not on the starting price, but on the reserve price for your item. When you list a reserve price auction, you want to keep the same pricing guidelines in mind as with the other types of listings. In addition to the insertion fee, reserve price auctions carry a nominal fee, which is refundable, but only if the item sells. The reserve price fee for a starting bid up to $49.99 is $1.00, but if you list twenty items in this price range with a reserve price, and only ten of them sell, you have just lost $10.00. Using this is good for larger priced auction items.

Final Value Fee - EBay charges a final value fee that is a percentage of the selling price of the item. The fee is 5.25% of the closing value on the first $25 of the final price with additional, incremental percentages charged for closing bids over $25. When you are pricing your item, keep in mind what you expect the final value fee to be and be sure to factor that into the cost of the item.

PayPal Fees - You should choose to accept PayPal, they don't have over 50 million accounts worldwide for nothing. PayPal is integrated right into eBay. You can have it automatically send your winning bidder a bill via email, create packing slips online & much more. A lot of people who shop on eBay will bypass auctions entirely if they have to bother with a money order or a complicated credit card purchase. They may think it is unsafe. If you decide not to accept PayPal, you are likely to drastically reduce the number of buyers that will consider your auctions.

PayPal offers a PayPal premier or business account this allows you to accept credit cards and does not have a limit on receiving (once account is verified), but there are fees for receiving payments.

Sign-up for your free PayPal account here

eBay Auction Tip: Sign-up for a free PayPal account today and start taking advantage of all the services that PayPal offers for eBay Auction listings. You can qualify for eBay seller protection and show your bidders they are covered under the PayPal Buyers Protection Plan (Certain restrictions apply on certain items for this).

EBay Picture Services Fees - If you are only selling a few widgets or items you pick up here & there on eBay, it is great to use eBay's photo hosting.
For basic photos: picture #1 is free and you can have up to five additional photos at 15¢ per image/photo.

If you are selling your widgets in high volume, consider using your own hosting. If you don't have your own, there are many third party hosting companies that are very competitively priced. The upside of eBay's hosting is that it is very user friendly and is reasonably priced if you are selling on a smaller scale. The downside is that it could get rather pricey if you sell in any kind of volume, and it does not allow you to control where your images are placed within the auction listing. Be care who you use for your photo hosting. Some free hosting companies do not let you use their servers for eBay or any auction hosting of photos. Use a service that is setup for action photo hosting such as:

Auction Pix free image hosting, free auction ad creator & more free ebay auction tools.

ImageShack Free web hosting that allows hotlinking to photos.

Picgoo free image hosting

PhotoCrib Free online image and photo hosting, auto-thumbnails, portfolios, and slideshow creation, with free hot linking allowed.

FreeImageUpload "Image Uploading" free image hosting service for images and photos with direct linking allowed

Optional eBay Auction Add-on Listing Features

Here are extra features eBay gives you that are optional, but have a big potential to increase the fees and the final sale price on the items you are selling.

Home Page Featured - eBay charges $39.95 to list your item as a Home Page Featured item. eBay states that your listing will have a chance to rotate into a special display on eBay's home page. They say that your item is very likely to show up on the home page. They do not guarantee that your item will be highlighted this way.
So if you want to flush $39.95 down the drain please rethink this and make a donation to your local animal shelter instead. I honestly can't see for the life of me why anyone would want to spend $39.95 for a change at a listing. eBay can guarantee this listing if they wanted to they just don't want to. This is like Alou saying to purchase our Complete Ebay Biz Cd you will have a chance we will ship it to you or that it is very likely that we will ship it to you. Come on folks what does eBay take us for? Total idiots??

Featured Plus - This feature costs $19.95 and guarantees that your item will be at the top of the search for the category in which it is listed. This upgrade can potentially be worth it. Listing an item this way typically puts the cost of your listing around $25.00. Good for the higher priced item.
Remember in addition to the Featured Plus fee, you still pay the normal fees of your auction listing.
Use with caution!

10-day auction fee - eBay does not charge for duration of auction listings, except a 20¢ charge for a 10-day listing. Use the 10 day listing option when you are using the Featured Plus. Your item will be at the top of the category listing for 10 days instead of the regular seven day listing. The extra three days maybe just what you need to sell your item.

If you are doing a regular listing, I don't purpose you use the 10-day listing, most people don't even see auction listings until they are one or two days from ending.

eBay Auction Tip: I recommend the 10-day duration to extend an auction for an item with a higher starting bid that has run 6.5 days and has no bids (you can only revise an item if it has had no bids & has 12 or more hours left). In that case, it might be more cost efficient to pay the 20¢ fee for extending the listing to 10-days than to pay the full cost of re listing the item.

Relisted Items - If you have an item that did not sell, your insertion fee (not any of the upgrade fees) will be refunded if you relist the item and it sells the second time. Watch how many times you relist an item.

Know when to cut your losses
Some items just don't sell well at a particular time

Bold - Have your item's title in bold print for $1.00. Sometimes this helps other times it is just a waste of money. I only suggest this if the competition is really high for your auction item.

Highlight - eBay charges $5.00 to highlight your item. Unless this is a large ticket item use BOLD much cheaper.

Item Subtitle - You can add a subtitle to your listing for 50¢ eBay was creative in the way they describe subtitles: you can provide descriptive information on your item below the main title that buyers will see when browsing categories or viewing search results. I have had good results with subtitles. Try using them if you are not selling the item try leave them out & save the cash.
Note: Subtitles are NOT Searchable when somebody does a basic search. The ONLY time subtitles will show up is when a bidder does a search by title and description.

Listing Designer - eBay provides templates to jazz up your listings for 10¢ per listing. The problem is the #1 they are not that great looking & #2 once everybody starts to use the listing designer all of the ads will look & feel the same anyway. 10¢ per listing does not sound like a big chunk of cash, though after 100 listings you have spent $10.00.

Gallery - The Gallery feature places a thumbnail picture of your item to the left of your listing title for 25¢. I recommend using gallery for most listings except for those with very low starting prices. The gallery can be a very well spent 25¢.

Gallery Featured - Gallery featured places your listing in the featured section above the general picture gallery for $19.95. This option will give you more exposure, but only to buyers that choose to view items in the gallery view. If you are going to spend twenty dollars on a feature to increase exposure for your auction,

eBay Auction Tip: I recommend if you are going to spend the big bucks, spend it on Featured Plus, your listing will be anchored at the top of the category for every buyer, not just the buyers that choose to use gallery view.

Listing in Two Categories - Insertion and listing upgrade fees are doubled when listing item in two categories. BEWARE this can really add up. Your Fees are $4.80 for your widget if they are doubled they will go to $9.60. Can you recover that cost & still make a profit? It is only worth it for higher items but not the lower ones that you want to sell a ton of for 99¢ or a lower priced listing with no reserve.

Scheduled Listings  - eBay allows you to schedule the date and time your auction starts at for 10¢ per listing ( 3 weeks in advance max ). If you can't place your ad at the right time this is a great feature. Having your auction end at the key buying time is crucial so for 10¢ it is well worth it.

Buy It Now - For just a nickel, you can give buyers the opportunity to buy your item immediately, at a higher rate than the opening bid. This is a popular choice of buyers. If they see something they really want & don't want to be outbid they can purchase it now. Be careful when you use this. You may have an item you do not think is popular and you will lose out on cash. It only takes two buyers to get into a bidding war & up the price of your auction considerably.
Note: In order to sell more than one item using the Buy It Now feature you must have an eBay Feedback rating of 30+ or more

Gift Services - For only 25¢, eBay will put a little gift icon next to your item. Don’t waste your quarter. This is money down the drain. Better to spend it on the Gallery feature. Or..... save your money!

eBay Upgrade Listing Fees
Listing Upgrade	Listing Upgrade Fee
Home Page Featured	$39.95 (single quantity) or $79.95 (quantity of 2 or more)
Featured Plus!	$19.95
Highlight	$5.00
Border	$3.00
Item Subtitle	$0.50
Bold	$1.00
Listing Designer*	$0.10
Gallery	$0.25
Gallery Featured	$19.95
List in Two Categories	Double the insertion and listing upgrades fees (excluding Scheduled Listings and Home Page Featured).
10-Day Duration The longest listing duration available	$0.20
Scheduled Listings	$0.10
Buy It Now	$0.05
Gift Services	$0.25

* No Listing Designer fee for Selling Manager Pro subscribers.

Ebay current listing fees - Click here to view Fees for Selling on eBay as they change