I don't know where your numbers come from? He most likely didn't pay any listing fees. I get 50 or 100 auctions per month with free listing fees. Pay Pal charges around 3%. Most likely he pays for the photos and the final value fee. I would think he has the same deal as me. For us it doesn't mater if we start listings at $1.00 pr $1000.00. Our fees are determined by what we sell the item for.
no listing fees Pete? "He most likely didn't pay any listing fees." No listing fees Pete? A neat trick if you could pull it off. Can you imagine how insanely high asking prices would be if they charged nothing for listing? Do you remember Yahoo Auctions? (no listing fees) Where is Yahoo Auctions now? "I don't know where your numbers come from" I get them mostly from facts, some by logical deduction, the rest from assumption. He lists 60 items per day on average which is about 1830 listings per month. Subtract 50 Free listings is 1780 times $.30 each = $534.00 monthly. Multiply by 17 months and we get $9000+ in just listing fees. He's been doing this since day one, relisting the same junk, selling less than $1100.00 worth of stuff. The seller no longer gets a free relisting when his item doesn't sell after the first attempt. eBay wised up to that scam when rather than pay their seller's invoices, sellers would abandon the ID and register a new one, leaving eBay unpaid for both listing fees and final value fees. (granted, it took eBay more than 12 years to figure that out - good thing for eBay they're not more dishonest but clever sellers out there)
With a broadband connection it takes less than 2 seconds per listing. Maybe you should have invested the time in reading eBay's tutorials regarding selling like you're supposed to? Remember n scale seller, "transactual"? He used to list 1000 n scale auctions on Sunday evenings, each starting at $.01. He was a well organized, very industrious guy! Loading listings isn't time consuming at all, and hasn't been in more than 11-12 years. Preparing good images which is now (supposedly) required, is time consuming. Good, thorough descriptions also require some thought for best results. The majority of the 'work' used to involve manually preparing invoices, then exchanging emails with the winning bidders, waiting for payment and packaging. The widespread acceptance of PayPal streamlined the process remarkably. Automated invoicing and printing online postage labels, has also reduced sellers' time investment by a great percentage. I haven't been able to teach the dog how to wrap packages...
My experience has been the same as Pete's. I get a quantity of free listings each month, pay only for pictures beyond the first one, pay a final value fee only if it sells, and pay a Pay Pal fee if the payment comes through them. Ebay went to the free listing model a few years back to encourage more listings, and increased the back-end (final value) fees to make up for the loss of the up front listing fee. Ebay is not worried about the listing fees as much as you think, or there would not be as many Ebay stores with large quantities listed.
I can't believe people are throwing monkey poo at each other in a thread that is 189 pages long and was intended originally to "highlight" some ridiculous prices for items on sale at an auction site.
paying for images...? Why would you pay extra fees for including more images? Since day one, eBay has never limited the number of images the seller wants to use. Although they did (supposedly) at one time, limit the file sizes. And they discouraged an excessive number of images in a Description. It wasn't until years into the auction business that eBay started offering to host images. Soon after that they started charging a supplemental fee for hosting more than one image per listing. "Ebay is not worried about the listing fees as much as you think," Where in this conversation, have I or anyone else said anything about being worried about listing fees? "or there would not be as many Ebay stores with large quantities listed." They're a lot of "stores", and store listings, because it's so much more economical to list items at higher prices in a "store", than it is when listing individual auctions as this seller does. This seller could have saved himself more than $6000.00 in fees had he bothered to read the sellers' tutorials. But again like I wrote earlier, he's not a rocket scientist.
I believe that eBay stores get a certain number of 'free' listings based on the price point they pay for having the store. I don't know the quantities since I've never been interested in opening a store. I do know that practically every time I log into eBay there's a message and/or a splash page waiting for me telling me I can list 50 items for free per month (that's down from 100), paying "only" the Final Value Fee if it sells. (They conveniently leave out the Paypal fees.) There are also up to 12 pictures, not one picture, free with the free listing. The back end of the sale is where the casual seller gets it (no pun intended). Final Value Fees are now up to 10% of the total of the sale price and the shipping charge. Top rated sellers who jump through enough hoops get a small discount on this. I would imagine that high volume stores do as well.
I believe Mark was referencing a couple of posts which were just previous to his input. One person of which is getting a bit too wound up!
I know. But metahumor is basically jokes about jokes. So when someone in this thread starts posting in a manner that can be described using the same terms as those used to describe the ebay auctions listed in this thread... And that was a bad pun, Kenneth.
I was also listing from my phone...but that is because its easier to post photos. Only part that sucks is that ebay then tries to be "helpful" but normally its not. I'm also not delaying my post so they all start at a certain time on Sunday afternoon. Probably how he listed 1000 auctions each Sunday. Plus ebay isn't my full time job like it seems to be for some of the sellers.
This thread is getting wound a little tight for me. I am just a simple seller that gets 50 or 100 free listings per month. I never hit 50 so it doesn't matter. Each listing gets 12 free photos. I never have 12. I don't get charged for starting a listing at a certain time. It used to be $0.10 per listing for picking a start time. I probably should look at the seller tutorials more often. Ones I looked at didn't pertain to selling trains. I just finished an intense month of selling. Sold almost everything I listed. Now I'm going to the Narrow Gauge Convention in Pasadena. Almost no N Scale there. Half my stuff shipped international. Most to Canada, but some to Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. So few sellers ship internationally that it cuts down on the competition. Imagine someone that paid international postage opening the box and seeing some of the junk that we laugh about on this thread. Time to go be "Narrow Minded" for a few days.
Also, what difference does my internet connection make, its going to take more than 2 seconds regardless of my connection. Putting a description and a title will take time, plus loading pictures...maybe "reading a tutorial" will make me a super ebayer and increase my typing speed from 40+ words a minute to 1000+? Only way I can see able to post in 2 seconds. Yup just read it again...lets see, take photos, write a description and set a price...no idea how it takes 2 seconds. Maybe you could post a youtube video on how to make a posting in under 2 seconds so I could learn your amazing ways. *sarcasm*
Folks, the pointless arguing about how to list/sell on eBay are both completely beside the point to the thread, and are getting into arenas of arguing and personal insults which are both unnecessary and not wanted on TrainBoard. Please, from now on, stay on topic within the thread and think twice before hitting the "Post Quick Reply" button. What has been happening here has not gone unnoticed, and appropriate comments have been made privately. We now (hopefully) return to the regularly scheduled programming.
Not ebay, but Craigslistt. I had no idea that these sets were worth $1200 and continuing to go up. http://houston.craigslist.org/bar/4030654873.html