Quitting eBay to Avoid the Fees (a warning)

Jump around:

Can I quit eBay and set up my own website to sell stuff? 0:11
How do you track mileage and organize receipts? 4:46
How do you sort active listings by oldest? 8:07
Is it possible to add promotion to all my listings at once? 8:43
What's your tax situation? 9:52
DOES EBAY HATE ALL CAPS TITLES? 11:28
When do you add extra insurance? 12:41
How do you handle credit card chargebacks? 13:35
How do you guess at clothing sizes with no tags? 14:48
When you run auctions, do you start low or high? 15:33
Do you ever get stuff appraised? 16:26
Should I offer returns as a clothing seller? 17:50

My favorite reselling tools that I use:

Some of the links above contain affiliate codes, which means I may get a cut if you decide to make a purchase. And Flipwise is an app that I co-founded. Thank you for your support!

[kibble-net]

I spent ten years selling trading cards on my own website from 2002-2012. Ebay's fees seem like a lot sometimes, but they are a bargain compared to what you will pay in advertising, merchant account fees, and the time required to maintain a standalone website. What many people take for granted is that Ebay is only charging you a fee when you make a sale. With your own website, you have to sell several thousand dollars of merchandise in a month before you begin to break even. And yes, the accounting would be a nightmare these days now that sales tax is collected from every state. As always, thank you for making these videos, Justin!

[alisonwhou]

Right on, Justin! To the dude that wants to open his own store, don't do it! There are monthly subscription costs involved in having a Shopify store. My husband had one for over a year and there was a tremendous learning curve to set up the store and integrate it with other service providers (he had print on demand merchandise). So I would say it's not easy to set up your own store. The learning curve and money needed to drive traffic to the store can also get pricey. As Justin said, marketing is a skill, and I can tell you we gave up trying to learn Google ads and Facebook ads. The tech changes all the time and there's too many options which makes learning marketing difficult - and costly. Also Justin, thank you for bringing up credit card transaction fees. There are hidden costs to processing transactions that people don't think about and some of them might be driving up costs for eBay - things like firewall compliance, insurance in the case of a cyber attack, and the costs to recover from a cyber attack are extremely pricey - we're talking an easy $10, 000-$50, 000 for a small breach, and for a company like eBay and all the user data they store, we're talking millions of dollars. EBay is spending tons of money to protect all of our data. I'm pretty sure none of us have the money to recover from a cyber attack. It could easily bankrupt a small to medium sized business. It's not worth the risk. EBay fees are very reasonable when you consider all this.

[kathleenparker]

Notice you have been dimming the background light and the green lamp in the background makes it all look sharp 👍

[AmyMortensen]

I've been selling on my own site since 2014 and recently added selling on eBay & Etsy. Building traffic to your own site is very hard especially these days. SEO, content marketing, google ads all cost time and money. eBay & other marketplaces do all this for you.

[HeyMsVal]

OMG!!! I'm just tuning in and I see me!!! Thanks for the invaluable info😊😊😊

[operannieonebay]

About sales tax -- in Arkansas (where I sold books from a merch table at events) -- 2 towns in the same county could have different percentage. You have to pay city, county, and state sales tax on each sale. Big headache to do the research so that you're compliant. I appreciate that Ebay does the heavy lifting for us.

[TriggeredAndy]

Justin! I just joined Flipwise! My store is being imported as we speak! I’m so excited to use it. I love your videos and watch them all ❤

[pickandaprayer]

I tape my receipts on pieces of 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper. Then store them in a 3 ring binder. This also proves my shopping trip as it has the date and location of the store. I may be doing it wrong, but if no purchase was made, I just list the trip in my excel spread sheet. I have 3 surrounding towns so I already have the mileage calculated in my spreadsheet for each nearby town that I visit. Still a chicken to accept returns. My average fee for items sold in my basic eBay store is about 19% on the total sale including shipping, tax, and item purchased. Thank you for providing helpful content!

[tonytygrrHI]

I like the video question format! Very good addition to your YT videos!

[scotthulldriver]

My eBay store is very niche, but my return rate is less than 1%. I don't worry about returns at all. I 3D-print and paint historical miniatures.

[shredbraahh]

Thanks so much for answering the question about sorting listings chronologically, to allow easily end-and-relist of your older listings. Just did that for the first time. We'll see if it helps with sales of those items!

[gerijohnson]

I totally agree with a lot of this. For years I did vendor shows in person, opened a website and took orders by phone. I was licensed to sell in 4 of my surrounding states. Didn't get a lot of marketing for my website and doing the sales tax for the 4 surrounding states plus my state and other states that I sold in was SO complicated and time consuming. I am glad I am not doing that now. I just have my state to do from personal sales. So glad eBay handles ALL of the sales tax!

[sheribraaksma]

The analogy I use with clients and websites is that a website without proper marketing / SEO is like erecting a sign on the highway backwards. Useless.

[brendatomlinson]

I was just about to comment on the fees for collecting payments through credit cards, also dealing with chargebacks and such. Then that was the next sentence you said! 2:42

[Cbgrandtheftauto]

I do the same thing as Valerie and have tips if she sees this. It's not that bad keeping up with the receipts. I've done it for years when I did contracting work. If you have a scanner, scan them to your computer and file them in a folder just like you do with the hard copy.

At the end of the year when you do your taxes, the IRS is going to ask for just a few number of things like miles and costs. Keep a monthly total in a spreadsheet in that folder that you update monthly with totals of receipts. You can quickly reference these numbers and have digital copies of the info so its forever saved in case you ever need to go back to that individual receipt for any reason.

[stefenz]

I wanted to pass along a tip I use when trying to search for comps, when searching, especially for something with a model number, in the top right is a little check mark that says include descriptions. Some people don't include the Model # of things in the title and this helps get the correct search for your model

[robobosho]

Just to add to the part about sorting by Start Date... The Start Date is not a default column in the Active Listings table when you are new in the Seller's Hub. You have to click on "Customize Table" and then add the 'Start Date' column. You can also re-arrange your columns with the 'Arrange" box.

[BrucePSquirrelOfficial]

You mentioned about the "ALL Caps" incident. I'm a musician and it is not allowed for distribution. It creates "unfairness".

[kathleenparker]

Wow, the video question was a nice surprise.

[bcwam]

Matter of fact, I just completed an Offer Up transaction a few minutes ago. Best part, no fees and I got my asking price. Completed in the comfort of my home.