Nick Vulich - My eBay Sales Suck!: How to Really Make Money Selling on eBay

The one thing I have found in fourteen years of selling on eBay is that the market is always changing, and that just when you think youve got it all figured out, either eBay comes along and changes the rules of the game, or the economy changes, and your niche implodes, sending your sales straight down the toilet.

One of the biggest things that youre going to have to do is deal with eBays unending string of chang es. As Im writing this, eBay has just rolled out their spring 2013 Sellers Release. You can read more about it here .

The biggest take away for sellers, new and existing, is that eBay is going to get a bigger cut of your sales. Store fees are increasing from $5.00 to $20.00 per month, depending upon the level of eBay store that you have. You can keep your basic store fees the same if you choose to make annual payments. For Premium store subscribers that means about $600 upfront, or if you have an Anchor store youre looking at fronting eBay around $2400 to avoid the fee increase.

To be fair, eBay is advertising this great deal as free listings for all sellers , and an opportunity to get up to 2500 free listings every month.

Heres the reality:

Basic Store

Fee increases from $15.99 to 19.99 per month

150 free listings (fixed price or auction)

20 cents for each fixed price listing

25 cents for each auction listing

Premium store

Fee increases from $49.99 to $59.99 per month

500 free listings (fixed price or auction)

10 cents for each fixed price listing

15 cents for each auction listing

Anchor Store

Fee increases from $179.99 to 199.99 per month

2500 free listings (fixed price or auction)

5 cents for each fixed price listing

10 cents for each auction listing

Heres what you need to do right now, to find out how eBays new fee structure is going to impact your bottom line : Visit eBays fee illustrator . Plug in a few numbers and it will show you what you will be spending every month.

The next step that you must take before May 1 st is deciding what action you need to take.

If youre just starting out, or if you are a small seller, the Basic Store Subscription is going to be your only real choice. Take advantage of the 150 free listings to save as much money as you can.

If youre running over 300 auctions, or 500 fixed price listings per month, make the jump to a Premium Store. Its going to save you money in the long run.

If youre a Premium Store Subscriber, and you list more than 1000 auctions or 2000 fixed price listings per month, make the move to an Anchor Store.

If youre a seller, like me, with over 6,000 listing s on eBay, you need to make some tough decisions. I sell historical collectibles and prints. You never know when someone is going to be looking for any one particular item. You just put everything you can out there, and wait for the right person to find it. Over the long run many of the items will sell. But, it can take several years to find a buyer for any individual item. And, each month your item is listed, youre paying fees for it. As a result, eBay fees actually cost me much more than the cost of the items that Im selling.

A lot of sellers who use the same model I do have 25,000 to 50,000 items listed for sale at any given time. For these sellers the new spring seller roll out means paying anywhere from a $500 to $1000 per month increase in fees.

This means every seller needs to make some tough choices beginning today, and decide to delete slow selling items to reduce fees, increase prices to cover the additional fees, or maybe even to pull the plug on eBay altogether, and move to another platform.

Whatever you decide, be sure to read the spring seller update , and start deciding what changes you need to make NOW!

Make a decision today and get started implementing it.

After May 1st, it will be too late.