# Ebay, Paypal, ProPay numbers



## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

Was just sitting here doing the books and I am pleased to say that my little business grew by 3K in sales this year.

I was curious about the various fees I pay to get these sales accomplished and came up with the following.

Ebay fees equal only 2% of actual sales UNLESS I add in my little store charge of 15.00 per month then the Ebay fees take up 21.7% in total sales! WOW

PayPal fees equal another 3% of gross payments received. Both my web site and ebay payements go through paypal. So the items I sell on ebay are now up to a total of 23.7 % going toward fees alone! (this does not include postage and materials to make the products)

My farmers market and craft show sales sometimes go through ProPay when I process credit cards. Propay charges me 60.00 per year for this process. So, including the annual fee payments going through Propay cost me 7.3 % of the sales price.

Remeber I am also paying 39.99 for my yahoo store space monthly as well as business banking fees of 14.00 monthly.

No wonder I am always trying to find where the money went LOL Just looking at these numbers tells me I need to do something different on ebay. Maybe lose the store and go with fixed price listings or something, will have to investigate further. Any thoughts or ideas of how these fees affect your home business? sis


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

I wish I could be of help. I think I will learn something new too, as a result of your post.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

Sisterpine Interesting about your fees.

I'd be curious.

Did you figure,,,

What does it cost you to make or purchase the item, package the item, time handling and processing the order.

If you make the item how long does it take and did you figure it by at least minimum wage to see what it actually costs you per unit in time, materials?

Time IS money. If for instance your item takes you two hours to make, and you only charge $ 20.00 for the product and you haven't even figured your fees, shipping, telephone, internet and all that you will be surprised at what you ACTUALLY make per item. You are starting at $10.00 per hour and then work backwards. Transport to the post office etc.

I think once you crunch the numbers you can see why large companies take their manufacturing out of the country. I do not condone this by any means but understand it.

One of my services that I sell, I charge $220.00 for. After you figure all of the connection fees, time and maintaining the servers and free telephone support, telephone, heat in the office and other utilities, I actually clear $ 104 per unit. This dollar amount is based on 400 units sold. If I sell less, I make less per unit.

Numbers can be very sobering.


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## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

I do figure in labor when i calculate the price of an item. Have a regular formula that I use. My items are priced appropriatly for the u.s. market. I also include an increase in price to cover such things as ebay, paypal and propay fees. I just thought it interesting that I was able to figure out how much of the product cost was involved in getting the item out there and sold. I can not even imagine if I were paying rent for a store in town instead of a percentage of my property/mortgage payment! I sell a stone knob, say for 15.00 each (folks usually purchase between 12 and 24 total) Figuring my net profit on that item when subtracting, materials, labor, advertising, ebay etc fees, cost of space, utilities and anything else I can think of including all kinds of taxes is about 5.00 .That seems to be an okay set up for me? sis Oh ya and i figure my labor at 20.00 per hour.


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