eBay fee savings: 20 Top tips

We’ve looked at how to see how much money you’re spending, and how to budget for listing enhancements. Today we have 20 top tips for fee savings using the to your advantage:

Save where you can

1) When listing set your start price a penny less to fall into a lower fee bracket.
e.g. List an item for £15.00 and the insertion fee is £0.50, list the same item for £14.99 for a £0.25 insertion fee – 50% saving!

2) Use Multiple item listings where it can save money
e.g. If you list an item for £7.00 Buy It Now (BIN) you could list two on the same listing and still pay the same £0.25 insertion fee.

3) Open an , the £6 the shop costs are easily recouped with Shop Inventory Format (SIF) listings, cross promotions and email marketing.

4) Make full use of SIF listings with listing fees from just £0.03

Strategies for savings

5) Sell more expensive items to get lower Final Value Fees (FVF)
e.g. Sell 10 items at £10.00 and you’ll pay 7.5% FVF or £7.50.
Sell 1 item at £100 and you’ll pay 7.5% of £29.99 plus 4.5% of £70.01 or just £5.40.
The FVFs drop for items over £30.00 and again for items over £600.00

6) BIN can be cheaper than SIF if you sell multiples.
e.g. If you sell £10 items and sell 12 or more on a multiple item listings:
A SIF with £0.09 insertion fee and 10% FVF will cost £11.01 total
A BIN with £1.90 insertion fees but lower FVF will cost £10.90 total.
For £10 items selling less than 12 from the listing makes SIF cheapest, but if you think you’ll sell 12 or more then BIN will save you money, plus you get higher exposure in search helping you sell even more.

7) List in the cheapest catagory, Technology and Media categories have lower fees.
e.g. A multifunction Printer/Fax/Scanner can be sold for lower FVF in than under .

8) When the maximum insertion fee is £8.00 and the maximum FVF is £35.00.

9) Use to bring back previous buyers – it costs nothing to get more buyers to view your listings.

Instant Discounts

10) Make sure you qualify for , 20% – 40% off your FVFs

11) Make full use of Cheap Listing Days when they fit your selling strategy

12) Apply for the PayPal Merchant Rate Discounts as soon as you receive more than £1500.00 in a single month.

13) If you’re VAT registered add your VAT number to eBay for a 15% reduction (Luxembourg Vat rate) on eBay fees.

Seven fee freebies

14) If you use there are no insertion fees

15) If your final value is £0.06 or less there are no FVFs (less than ½p rounded down to zero)

16) If you use there are no FVFs

17) If you use use and then it’s free.

18) If you auctions sign up for (SMP) and then it’s free

19) If you use SMP sign up for a Featured Shop and then it’s free (Plus you get thrown in for free on top)

20) If you use multiple pictures eBay charge fees – your own webspace or PhotoBucket is free

And finally

The lower your start price the lower your insertion fee. (Yes I know that’s obvious, but it’s worth a quick reminder 😉 )