If I build it, they will come...

www.e-DUDS.com

Well, I didn't actually build it, I bought it, and then paid for the hosting and the company set it all up for me and I went 'live'.

www.e-DUDS.com was born!

The thing is, that I have become so disillusioned with eBay and their ridiculous rules and enforced regulations that I was convinced that the only thing to do was to open up an auction website with all the original freedoms that eBay used to provide.

Didn't it used to be a place where people came to trade? The whole world was not divided into sellers and buyers - the sellers all evil and intent on overcharging for postage and evilly scheming about ways to con the innocent, guileless buyers, and the lovely, hapless buyers wandering through cyberspace with their hands full of wodges of money, with 'please dupe me into buing something silly' written on a sign around their necks.

Then, also there is 'paypal'. Paypal have their own fees scale, all of which also go to eBay. You have to pay paypal for receiving money into your account. I'm sure there are some bank managers out there wringing their hands and thinking 'now why didn't I think of that!' You pay paypal 3.4% + 20p of all your income into paypal.

eBay fees
So, at the time of deciding to start my own auction website, eBay's fees are as follows. For a normal auction with no special categories or features, if you sell something for £1, you will pay 15p to list the item, then 8.75% of something called a final value fee (FVF). A final value fee is the commision you pay to eBay (and many other auction websites) for using their website. If you don't sell the item, you still pay the listing fee, but not the FVF.

Incidentally, I looked up Final value fees on Google and there are a million or so hits. Of the first 57 pages, all the hits refer to eBay FVFs - What they are, how much they are, how to avoid paying them, etc etc. Then on page 58, there start to be hits about other auction website FVFs. So, someone correct me if I'm wrong, the FVF was brought into existence by eBay?

Back to our £1 auction, you now have to pay 15% VAT and then paypal take their cut, which in the UK is 3.4% +20p.

So, altogether, eBay takes 52p of your £1.

Now I know, if you extend it to larger amounts it isn't quite so dramatic. But roughly take off 10-12% of what you have earned to pay eBay.

There are some very good eBay fee calculators out there. I have been using this one.

But be careful when using a fee calculator. It needs to be relevant to the country you are in, and also some of them don't automatically work add in the hidden extras like VAT.

Incidentally, although all these fees are laid out very clearly, what you actually get charged is another matter altogether. I recently listed 4 items on eBay because of their 5p to list anything weekend, and because I've been writing this article about eBay fees, and for the first time, checked what I had actually been charged. Well, for 4 similar items in the same category, I was charged for one listing twice, at 5p a go and for the other three items, I was charged £1 each. Yes, that's right, £1 each. Now, if someone is only listing 2 or 3 items, then they probably wouldn't bother to question the charges: it is too much hassle, you don't get a reply from a real person anyway, they might look into your account, they might not bother... etc etc etc, but multiply this overcharging by a few million people who list and see how much of your money they are actually taking!! They should be paying us!!

This article is now far too long. I'll try to write much shorter ones next time!! :)

OK, just one more thing, don't forget that paypal keeps your money for twice as long as a bank before they pass it on to you (5-7 days compared to 3-4 days). Think of all that interest!