Selling on Line

I've bought from on-line retailers, the Bay site and also from the NscaleYardsale Yahoo group. A recent member on that group posted the message below, and I thought everyone here might find this interesting.

Y'All:

Since early in February, I have been monitoring every auction in the N
Scale/ Micro-Trains category. Bear in mind that we are talking predominately
cars not higher price locomotives and such.

That is about 16,936 listings to date just in the MicroTrains category..

This category is dominated by 12 sellers (presumed dealers) who have about
50% of all the listings.

The top 5 sellers who have about 40% of all the listings are:

1. jointlinenscale 15.9% of all listings. Aver price per listing=$27.44
2. danstraindepot 7% of all listings. Aver price per listing=$7.84
3. pmpexpress 6.3% of all listings. Aver price per listing=$39.35
4. storman2 5.9% of all listings. Aver price per listing=$44.69
5. eothbs 4.7% of all listings. Aver price per listing=$5.86

All of these sellers predominately use the Buy It Now except for
danstraindepot and eothbs who use the Auction style listing.

How effective are the Buy It Now vs Auctions?

Buy It Now items have 18.6% sold rate, 81.4% are unsold.
Auction items have 46.8% sold rate, 53.2% are unsold.
All items have 35.6% sold rate, 64.4% are unsold.

eBay fees have increased over the years. For Auctions, they now take 9% to
a maximum of $100.00. For Buy It Now, they charge 11% plus 6% for sales
between $50 to $1,000.00, plus an additional 2% over $1,000.00.

Now those fees are based on the total invoiced amount. That amount includes
shipping, etc. costs. If the buyer pays through PayPal, eBay includes the
PayPal cost to the seller in their commission! (eBay, of course, owns
PayPal).

Add something fancy in your listing and the insertion fees are in addition
to the above.

Granted, eBay probably has a lot more buyers looking at the listings
compared to 1,732 people here.

In my experience, I have had a better sell rate here on this eGroup than on
eBay. And I do not have to pay any fees at all.

My thanks and appreciation to the Owner(s) and Moderator(s) for providing
this eGroup!

Peter White
St. Augustine, FL

 

Interesting stats! Don't they also charge to list something, even if it doesn't sell? I know a few people who sell on ebay, and they all have complaints, especially about paypal. Sometimes they'll hold on to your money for weeks before you can access it. I figure someday something else is going to come along, and ebay will go away as quickly as myspace.

I've never sold anything there. The only thing I buy on the auction site is Japanese trains from plazajapan. All buy it now listings.

 

1) Charges for Listing - yes - except for certain type sellers. Up to 4/1/2012 it was just Top Sellers that got I think 40 free auction listings a month, BUT evil-bay has now changed their requirements, adding that, to receive the discounts, the seller has to provide 'returns services' and 1 day turn-around shipping. The shipping thing was normal for me, but to me, returns on used trains are ridiculous. Most trains sellers are more than happy to work out any valid problems, which is the way it should be, but the word 'returns' to me only encourages people that 'change their mind' after they got it, or "oh - it has a dimple on its left perdunkle" , or some other nonsensical reason. And many sellers are just regular people, selling their own things, and cant afford that kind of losses.

2) You missed one charge on the first post - EBAY now has enacted what I call a TAX on the Shipping costs collected by the seller, a flat 9%. This is in addition to all other costs - reason - to punish all of the many sellers, instead of the few other sellers that charge totally ridiculous S&H costs, also probably a ploy to push their latest thing - Free Shipping, which in most cases, is built into the start price anyway.

3) Also new is that now the PAL wants everyone's Taxpayer ID number, and they have a totally insane range defined of when they will notify Uncle Sam - like over $20000 - which is a fair number, but then the kicker is I think its like an 'or' over 200 transactions in a year - geez - one could decide to sell all of his HO to go to N, and hit that number in a month and a half.
I think it all comes down to this - that there may be a whole lot less number of sellers on the Bay, myself included. And YES this forum has been good to me with the few 'I changed my mind' sales I have done this year

 

Yahoo used to have an auction service in the states (though it's still the predominant auction place in other countries such as Japan). Their fees are sky high these days. However, I tend to stay with forums for buying and selling. I stopped selling through ebay when they started forcing everyone to automate their billing combined with rate hikes. There are other auction services too, but none have really caught on. Advertising goes a long way in the US.

 

I agree with all the points of selling in Feebay. However, I have also ran into some troubles on here too. I sold some stuff several months back on here to pay for my fiancees engagement ring. Well lets just say there was NOTHING wrong with ANY of the items I sold on here. In fact, some of them had only been out of the box to give them some weathering. Well I found, at least on here, that it seems like people wanted a $20 car for $5! YIKES! Seriouslly? I even had one person on here wanted a car I had for $7 and I paid the shipping. It was a car with a high auction value of $113. I was only asking $25 for it. So even at $25 someone is still getting a good deal.

 

It takes a buyer AND a seller to decide what an item's value is. If you think an item is worth $20 and nobody agrees, is it really worth $20? Apparently not, because no one is willing to pay that price. In which case your best course of action is to hold on to it for the value YOU place on it.

The 'bay used to be a decent option for selling model railroad items. IMHO, it no longer is. I spent a couple winters buying and selling on Ebay; I still have 50-60 cars and engines I don't need and will unload when I get around to it (probably next fall). They will be listed here and on Nscaleyardsale. If I receive less money than I expect for those items, I'd rather it be because I gave a fellow N scaler a screamin' deal than because Feebay turned the screws on me.

Jim

 

Their policies/fees are so blatantly unfair to the small time seller. I am dumbfounded. I think they forgot their roots. One international buyer of mine simply claimed to have not received their item. After all the fees, I was forced to refund the money. They will very soon be losing a good seller. So much for building my business with them...

 

I understand the desire to protect a supporter of TrainBoard, so let me clarify:

Ebay has been and very well may continue to be a fine place to buy used model railroad equipment. About 90% of my rolling stock and 15% of my engines were purchased on the 'bay. I would not have been able to build up a fleet as quickly and cheaply any other way. Almost everything I purchased was used but in good condition, and I paid half (or less) of the original retail price for virtually everything.

So it's been a great place to buy. Selling, on the other hand (taking into account the current fee structures) ... not so much.

The fear, of course, is that if eBay's fees discourage too many people from selling MRR stuff there, it will no longer be a good place to buy, either. Or the fee structure will end the days of finding the bargains that I enjoyed, because sellers will have to jack up prices to maintain a profit margin.

Listen, it may very well be that eBay's evolving business model and fee structure is not consistent with selling things like MRR stuff. That doesn't make eBay a bad company, and it doesn't mean it wouldn't be a great place for other types of merchandise.. But it would be disappointing for many model railroaders who have enjoyed buying and selling on that site in the past. I think that's what we're hearing here.

Jim

 

I realize bashing becomes a negative thing, etc etc, but its hard to be put down for explaining that these problems are real, unfair, but they are the only game in town that works, because not enough people will revolt, or quit, or whatever. Besides, you cant talk to anyone in ebay about it. They have put increased resistant restraints against any kind of email to them.
A revolution for any reasonable thing has to start somewhere.

 

Tell me about it. I have an issue with an item sold on Ebay right now to the UK. I stated specifically for shipping charges was domestic shipping. So when the buyer bought the item as buy it now and laready paid me for the item, I can't hardly go back and get more $$$ for shipping. Well the situation is that the item sold for $11 with domestic shipping listed and it is going to cost me $16 just to ship it to the UK! So I fired off an Email to Evilbay and have yet to hear a peep from them.

But you are also right that they are the "only game in town" so what are our options?

 

Thanks for the clarification. I assumed it would be considered a supporter because of the click-thrus. Makes me appreciate your "real" supporters that much more!

Jim

 

It's quite clear that, over the past few years, eBay has been migrating toward becoming a more commercialized service. All of their policies on shipping and payment, plus their fee structures and software tools, are all geared toward the higher-volume sellers. They are moving away from individuals, onesies-twosies and mom-n-pop outfits simply because they do not generate the revenue eBay is looking for; consequently individuals have been leaving eBay in droves--and eBay doesn't feel it, because the ones they want are sticking with eBay. They've not come out and made their intentions clear, simply because the truth is a bitter pill for the individuals who have helped build eBay into the giant it is today. However, it's not difficult to perceive exactly what they're doing.

The alternative? There simply isn't one that has the eyeballs eBay attracts. Personally, I'm coming to the conclusion that "classified" sections at forums such as TrainBoard may be one of the few viable paths to take for those modelers looking to offload a handful of rolling stock or whatever.

FWIW.

 

cwwrman - if you dont normally sell international, you can refuse the sale, cancel it, reason is listed, something like item sold to area I dont cover, something like that. The buyer has 7 days to agrre or disagree - if they agree and cancel you get the return of the fees. If they dont agree, it still cancels, but you get charged the sell fees. I just did this with an SD7 that someone in Italy bid on.

 

In fact, there is a TrainStore link at the top of the page right under your "Welcome" sign if you are signed in.