Make Money Shipping Your eBay Auctions!

Hi Gang!

Today I want to share with you how to make money (or at least break even) on your eBay auction shipping costs.  This is really very simple!

The first thing you need to know is what your maximum cost per shipment is.  For most of my products I use the USPS Priority Mail service.  The added bonus for using Priority Mail is that you get all of your shipping boxes for free.  Another added benefit is that you can ship your auction product and create the USPS Priority Mail label directly from PayPal or from USPS Click N Ship.  What I do is figure out the highest possible weight for a product.  For instance, if I'm shipping several models of the same item I figure out which package weighs the most.  Then I go to the USPS Rates & Fees Simplified page and click on "priority mail". 

When you click on this link you will see the highest possible price for shipping by weight for Priority Mail.  I always choose the highest rate, and add my insertion and final value fees to the total cost , and come up with my shipping rate.  Let's look at an example:  I'm shipping a package that weighs 4 pounds and 3 ounces.  I go to the rate page and find out what the most possible shipping charge for this weight class is.  In this example it is $10.35.  Then I look at my insertion fee and my PayPal fee and my most likely final value fee to find out the total cost.

If a product is most likely to end at $100 and I can start the price at a penny, then I know that my insertion fee is 30 cents, my PayPal fee will be $3.20 and my final value fee will be $3.37.  All totaled together my eBay fees equal $6.87.  If I add the $6.87 to my most expensive shipping cost of $10.35 I come up with $17.22 which I would then round up to a $17.95 total shipping fee for that product.

Following this model I can effectively eliminate all charges that I would incur in running my auctions.  And most of the time, the fees are actually less than the estimated cost so I end up making money!  Let's hear it for more profits!

That's all for today.  Log in again later . . . same Bat Channel . . . for more ways to increase your online eBay profits!

Tiger Todd

Comments

[Freddie Cox]

Good advice. I really like using Post Office Priority Mail too. It is great because you can go to their site and have the boxes delivered to you door for free. Does anyone use the delievery confirmation option for USPS Priority Mail? I believe it is only 45 cents and should not be a problem to pass the fee along to the buyer. I have not been using it bit should probably start.

[Tiger Todd]

Freddie,

I always use delivery confirmation and do so for two reasons. One, if you print your labels online through USPS or PayPal then delivery confirmation is free of charge. Two, if you have proof of delivery your less scrupulous customers can't reverse payments through PayPal.

I especially like printing my labels through PayPal because, unlike USPS, you can print labels for 1st Class, Parcel Post and Media Mail. PayPal also gives you the option to NOT show the postage value on the label which is nice when you charge a flat rate for shipping.

Thanks again for visting,

Tiger Todd

[Freddie Cox]

Todd,

Thanks for the advice. I did not know that they gave you the option of NOT showing postage with USPS when printing through Paypal.com. I think that is important for business when you are trying to make some of those eBay fees back through shipping and handling charges.

Thanks, Freddie

[Dan]

Very useful, but does a high shipping cost hiding transaction and commission fees from ebay not discourage ebayers to bid ??

[Tiger Todd]

Hi Dan,

It really depends on the item you are selling. If you are selling a used paperback for $2 it might not be feasible to charge $3.50 or so for shipping.

I sell mainly apparel and I sell it in lots most of the time. For me to sell a lot of clothing that weighs 8 or 9 pounds isn't unusual and it makes it easy to hide those extra costs. So I guess it really depends on your product. You kind of have to search around in your market and see if there is room there based on what the competition is doing.

Thanks!

Tiger Todd

[Buy Gold - Scrap Gold Prices - Legitimate Part-Time Business - Make Money FAST]

Hence, content owners should pay themselves for fingerprinting their content ONCE, with every major technology out there, and making these fingerprints available as part of a deal (maybe even for free) to every video sharing site. It's similar in a way to the MD5 signature that for instance linux distributors put out there with their files. One technology is not enough, and we need to stay away from a monopoly. Netflix has about 70K movies in its catalog. Add in TV shows, etc. we might be facing 200- 300K...

[baron]

I`m interested there`s a lot of articles on casino gambling. There are mixed methods, tactics, strategies, algorithms of counting, calculations and so on.
But these items are putting drop of ads and i don`t homelessness to analyze them `time i don`t have to any foremothers knowledge. It`s impossible. judgment i pipe direction be wrong.
Is there anyone here who is interested in such topic?
I`d be knowing someone`s explaining to me is there any systems or strategies, what are they (what approaches or concepts lay in underpinning) and in which casinos could they be applied to?
Thanx a lot.

[baron]

tnx a lot, i`ve downloaded the program, installed it. Didn`t get into all features but there are some results already. My account is slowly filling with money.
Great thanx:-)