Selling on Ebay used to be fun and profitable, but has all but lost its charm for me now. I just sold a lot of DVDs for $11.95 Buy It Now price, and around $12 was going rate for this lot. I paid $5.40 wholesale price for the lot.  Sounds like I made out pretty good, but not reallly.

Out of that $11.95, I paid:

$5.40 for the items
$1.94 to ebay (15 cents insertion and 1.79 FVF)
$0.65 to Paypal fee
$2.76 Postage at media rate

$10.75 total paid out!

Ebay/Paypal made $2.59 and I made $1.20!  Ebay took 21.7 % and I got 10%, and that 10% was more like 5-6% after buying packing tape and materials!.  And I did all the work basically, writing the listing, packing and mailing, while ebay took most of the profit.

Of course they provided the venue, but then should they also get 4 times the profit I make??  And as far as asking more for the lot, that's not realistic because it sells for $12 typically and sellers are competing with each other, while ebay has no competition and makes money from all of us regardless of whether we make anything or not..

In the past, before all of the inundation of product from giant wholesalers, I could have asked $18-$20 for that lot and did okay. Even $15 would be okay, but small sellers are just flotsam now to the giant markets that have dumped all there stuff here, and can make do on small profit margins.

If I'd have been smart, I'd have just set up a yard sale and sold my DVD lots there. I could have gotten $10 for the lot for sure, and would have had over $4 profit and sold many others too, and would have wasted a day, but it took longer than that to do all the listings anyway.

Also, I get only about 20 visits per DVD lot now that my auctions don't show up much anymore, and that stinks, I used to get at least 100 visits per lot. So as soon as these auctions end, my plan is to sell my DVD lots at weekend yard sales and such. Even paying for a swap meet space would probably make me more profit.

ADDENDUM: As of the evening of the day I wrote this, I had 25 DVD auctions end, all were geared toward Halloween movies, Horror & a few Sci Fi. Out of 25, 19 did not sell and 6 sold.  Out of 6 that sold, 4 made basically no profit, and 2 did well. There are several Buy It Now DVD lots still out there, but with Halloween just a week away, I think these are just not going anywhere. Still, when I view my Ebay fees, I have fees of about $34 so far for the DVD lots I've listed and sold, and that is MORE than I made on the TWO Good Sales I had out of 44 Halloween DVD lots listed!!

I never had such a LOUSY showing for Halloween DVD or even VHS movie lots. In the past few years I typically sold nearly all of them, and I always have very competitive prices. Now is Ebay going to tell me that it's because of the bad economy and nothing of their doing?  I don't believe it!  Not when even I myself can't locate my own listings with their new search methods that are designed to Best Match THEIR CHOICE of sellers to show up first. The bad economy doesn't stop people from buying inexpensive DVDs that offer free shipping.  It's the way they've skewed everything around, and I know this is a fact when I see 20 visits on average per movie lot, and I used to see 100 visits on average, before this October.

If you agree, vote that this guide has helped you. As for me, I'm selling the rest of my movie stock here at swap meet locations on the weekends before Christmas for less than listed on Ebay and I will still make more for myself guaranteed with less work and no feedback worries, and no nickel and dime pocket pickers making more off of my effort than I do myself.

Oh, I forgot to mention the deadbeat bidders who don't pay for an item because they think they are immune due to no negative feedback for them!