eBay fees for UK sellers - a beginner's guide

I've been a seller on eBay UK for about seven years and the one thing I'd say is hardest for sellers to get their heads around is the fee structure!   New sellers on eBay are often surprised by just how high eBay fees are.  Even as an experienced seller, I often find myself having to do mental gymnastics to work out just how much selling an item is likely to cost me.   So if you're new to selling on eBay, it's worth taking a bit of time out to work out how much it's likely to cost you to list and sell your item.   This hub will try to demystify selling fees for anyone wanting to sell their stuff on eBay's UK site.  Read on and see what you think!

How do eBay seller fees work?

When you list something on eBay, you get charged an insertion (or listing) fee. If the item doesn't sell, then you only pay the insertion fee but if it does sell, you get charged a final value fee in addition to the insertion fee. And if your buyer pays via PayPal, then you'll pay a PayPal fee as well! So it can all add up.

Before discussing each of the types of fee in turn, it's worth pointing out that there are two fee structures: one for private sellers and one for business sellers. They're broadly similar but there are differences, most notably in how the final value fees are calculated. In this hub I will concentrate on private seller fees but if you want to know about the fee structure for business sellers, I've provided a link to eBay.co.uk's "fees" page at the bottom of this hub, so you can check them out for yourself. You can also check out the fees for "non-standard" selling categories, namely:

• media products (books, magazines, DVDs, comics, music and certain games)
• property
• mobile phones with contracts
• technology, i.e. consumer electronics/computers, photography and (confusingly enough) mobile phones without contracts.

In the next few paragraphs, I will describe each of the three types of fee in more detail.

Insertion/listing fees

The insertion fee varies depending on the following factors:

• How much your starting price is (the lower the starting price, the lower the listing fee)
• Whether you list your item as an auction item or a buy it now, or both. As you can imagine, having both does work out more expensive than having either one
• Whether you choose to take advantage of extra selling features (e.g. subtitles or supersized pictures)
• What category it goes in (most categories are the same but media products, property and mobile phones with contracts have different insertion fees)
• The number of pictures. In a lot of categories (e.g. clothing), you can insert up to 12 standard-sized pictures free of charge, but other categories such as jewellery will only let you put one picture up for free - you have to pay an extra £0.12 per picture after that!

At the time of writing, the insertion fees for personal sellers in most selling categories (apart from media, mobile phones with contracts and property) is as follows:

Final value fees

These depend on:

• How much your item sells for (the higher the final selling price, the higher the fee although there is a threshold for private sellers)
• Whether you're a private or a business seller
• What category your item is in (again, most items are the same but media products, property, mobile phones with contracts and technology have a different final value fee structure).

For personal sellers in all but the non-standard categories, the final value fee structure is as follows:

PayPal fees

As mentioned earlier, if your buyer pays via PayPal, you the seller must pay a transaction fee/commission. This is deducted from the cost of the item at the time of payment. For most transactions, this is 3.4% plus £0.20 for each transaction.

If you've got this far without losing the will to live, you might want to have a look at the following examples which will hopefully make things a bit clearer! I haven't included any charges for extra pictures (which as I've said, applies to some though not all categories), or for extra listing enhancements such as subtitles or supersized pictures.

Examples

(1) Suppose you list a T-shirt in auction-only format with a starting price of £4.99 plus £2.00 postage costs, and the final selling price is £25.00. The buyer then pays you the £27.00 (i.e. £25.00 + £2.00 postage) via PayPal.

The total fees work out as follows:

• £0.15 listing fee
• £2.50 final value fee (10% of £25.00 – the postage cost isn’t included in this. eBay is trying to whittle down the amount of postage sellers can charge, and I imagine that eventually postage charges will be abolished altogether)
• £1.12 PayPal fee (3.4% of £27.00, plus £0.20)

…giving a total of £3.77 in fees.


(2) An antique vase sold in auction format with a starting price of £200 and a final value of £350. This time you’ve done it as a pick-up only option, without any postage charges to the buyer. The buyer pays in cash. The total fees work out as follows:

• £1.30 listing fee
• £35.00 final value fee (10% of £350).
• No PayPal fees, thank goodness (if the buyer had paid via PayPal, it would have cost £12.10 in PayPal fees (3.4% of £350.00, plus £0.20)

…giving a total of £36.30 in fees.

(3) A piece of jewellery that you sell using for £100 excluding postage as a Buy It Now without auction. The buyer pays via PayPal. The total fees work out as follows:

• £0.40 Buy It Now insertion fee
• £7.90 final value fee (9.9% of £49.99, plus 5.9% of the remaining £50.01)
• £3.60 PayPal fee (3.4% of £100 plus £0.20)

…giving a total of £11.90 in fees.


As you can see, selling high value items on eBay is more expensive than you might think! So I would recommend doing the maths before you sell your stuff on eBay - you may find that with some items, you're actually better off trying to sell them at a boot fair or in your local paper.

© Empress Felicity October 2010