There are also now different ways that fees are calculated for sellers depending which site they list on. Sellers listings on eBay.com will pay fees on shipping costs whilst business sellers in the UK will pay flat rate fees on the whole of the final value of the sale excluding shipping costs.
This opens up some interesting possibilities for listing on alternative eBay sites, especially for products attractive to overseas buyers.
As an example a UK seller listing on eBay.com will pay the same fees as a seller without and eBay store subscription. This means that it’s free to list up to 50 auction items a month with any start price and to add the Buy It Now option for free as well. The final value fees will be 9% applied to the total amount of the sale including shipping. Auctions guarantee visibility on eBay as they’re sorted by Time Ending Soonest, not by Best Match.
“Effectively any seller who has products attractive to the US market can list 50 auctions per month on eBay.com without paying any insertion fees”
Effectively any seller who has products attractive to the US market can list 50 auctions per month on eBay.com without paying any insertion fees, regardless of which eBay country is their domestic site.
Listing on eBay.com also has advantages for high value fixed price items. Whilst the fees start at 11% of the final value and include 11% of the shipping charged to the buyer, that’s just for the first $50 of the sale price. For the $50.00 – $1000.00 there’s a lower fee tranche of 6% and just 2% for the portion of the selling price over $1000.00. Compared with say an antique seller listing on eBay.com and paying a flat 10% final value fees there are some significant fee savings to be made when selling items worth over $50.00.
For US sellers there are also some advantages to listing directly on eBay.co.uk. On eBay.co.uk sellers from the US would be treated as private sellers on eBay UK. This means they’ll still pay fees in tranches compared with UK Business Sellers who pay flat rate fees. If you are a US seller listing on eBay UK means that you won’t pay fees on shipping, you won’t pay the flat rate fees that UK Business rated sellers pay, and for higher value items you’ll pay final value fees at the rate of 10% of the final selling price capped at £40.00. You’ll also get up to 100 free £0.99 start price auctions with free insertion fees each month.
US sellers listing on eBay.co.uk will also pay final value fees as private sellers in the UK, which means the advantage of fee tranches of 9.9% of the final selling price up to £49.99, 5.9% from £50.00 to £599.99 and 1.9% of £600 or more. This compares very favourably with business sellers who in most categories will be paying a flat rate of 10% of the whole final value price and of course US sellers listing on eBay.co.uk won’t be charged fees on the shipping values.
When listing on an eBay country site other than your own don’t forget to make your product available to your own country and include shipping costs in your listing. This means it’ll still be available to buyers on your home site, they’ll merely be charged in a different currency but the equivalent $/£ rate will be visible. You won’t get as high visibility to domestic buyers in search results, but if buyers browse your other listings all your items will be shown to them.
Buyers overseas may incur customs duty and sales tax/VAT when importing items, but with exchange rates and arbitrage of eBay fees there are many sellers who listing on an overseas eBay site not only makes sense, but will be financially beneficial compared to listing all of their products on their domestic eBay site.
