I do a fair amount of eBay selling and in listing my items (mostly shoes) only about one out of three auctions results in a sale and I sell about 12 items a week. If unsold I then have to relist the item, up to 2-3 times and/or give up on it as unsalable. In relisting unsold items I usually adust the price in doing this to just cover my costs to get rid of the items.
While some are more, and some are less, most of the items I sell go (on average) for 12 - 18 and the overall eBay fees have been mounting up lately.
eBay likes to charge out the wazoo for little add on features that assist the items in selling. Given the overall eBay costs to sell and individual items, in the end I’m paying around 20-25% of the cost of each item I sucessfully sell, just to list and sell the item. I was about to get out doing this as a hobby/business as the income it generates after costs isn’t really worth my time or the clutter involved in acquiring, preparing, listing, shipping and managing these items.
So what do I see this morning? An email informing me of huge 20% - 30 % increases in almost every listing and sale tool category across the board. eBay has always had a lot of little tricks loaded into its structure to generate maximum fees, and make the process of getting credit on non-paying auctions onerous so people just don’t pursue it for smaller items, but there comes a point where a company gets so greedy it starts eating the golden goose. It was pretty iffy before, but this shit is just abusive of the small seller. Once my current inventory is out I think I’m done as a regular seller.