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So, what's a good eBay shipping charge to offer?

Started by Chip Cataldo,

61 posts in this topic

Chip Cataldo

Chip Cataldo

Posted
Posted

I know what YouMeChoose charges but what do you other eBay sellers charge for shipping? I know Divad has been up my rear end to reduce my shipping charges so I just ordered 175 of the Affinity mailers in order to reduce my apparently "stratospheric" shipping charge of $6.50.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

Peace,

 

Chip

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kav

kav

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Free shipping is great you get higher bids anyway and it encourages people to buy several of your listings.

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kav

kav

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Ha ha ok yeah that wouldnt make sense. But rather than sell a single cheap comic I've had great luck selling them in lots and free shipping.

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rjrjr

rjrjr

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Ha ha ok yeah that wouldnt make sense. But rather than sell a single cheap comic I've had great luck selling them in lots and free shipping.

 

Kav, you sell comics on eBay? hm I didn't know that. I knew you were a collector, but I never took you as seller too. What era or is it all over the map?

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kav

kav

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Yep I've sold a lot of stuff-SA and BA spiderman, ASM 300, OA, SA DC, 2 GA superman, books, a lot of different comics really. Sometimes I buy lots, pull out the HG books and sell em at a profit, keeping the rest.

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gcstomp

gcstomp

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I think you are choosing a challenging route of doing .99 starts on single common copper X-Men, for instance, with a $6.50 ship charge. It appears to be working for you but that has lots of resistance working against it. I know someone with that model that makes it work and he works crazy hard and has a following, so what do I know? porkyscomics is his id, not associated with me at all, but he lists 500 new listings a weeks, auction format, low starts, and gets strong bids.

 

Every one of his listings tried to be at least a $10 lot of books, most every listing multiple comics or a single tpb. He does a $4 shipping charge 1st item, $1 per additional lot won, with a $10 cap, even if you win 100 items.

 

 

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bababooey

bababooey

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Free shipping is great you get higher bids anyway and it encourages people to buy several of your listings.

 

A seller who combines & offers a discount on additional items encourages people to buy several of your listings.

Offering free shipping gives a buyer (like me) the impression that a full individual shipping charge is loaded into EACH listed price...so if I am the buyer, free shipping doesn't encourage me to buy more, it might encourage me to haggle more on price if I'm buying multiples.

 

:sumo:

 

 

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rjrjr

rjrjr

Posted
Posted
I know what YouMeChoose charges but what do you other eBay sellers charge for shipping? I know Divad has been up my rear end to reduce my shipping charges so I just ordered 175 of the Affinity mailers in order to reduce my apparently "stratospheric" shipping charge of $6.50.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

Peace,

 

Chip

 

Chip:

 

I didn't have a problem with your shipping charges, but something like this might be useful:

 

$4.50 for 1-3 comics

$5.50 for 4-8 comics

$6.50 for 9-12 comics

 

Some sort of tiered shipping charge (the above was just an example) to encourage a buyer to buy more than one comic. Single comics should have a S&H of $4.00 - $5.00.

 

The problem I have with free shipping as a buyer is I've come to realize I get what I paid for and I now avoid those auctions. :( A seller who prices the S&H too low at $3.00 or less, scares me too. More often than not, unless the listing specially mentions a box and good packaging so the books arrive in the condition they are currently in, I interpret it to mean the comic is going to come in an envelop, maybe with 1 or 2 pieces of cardboard, maybe taped to the cardboard, etc. My favorite response when you tell the seller the books were damaged in shipping: "I've never had any problems with my packaging before." Yeah, right.

 

I just received 3 comics from Europe that were in a envelop with a single piece of cardboard. No bags. All these elements were free floating in the envelop all the way from Europe. :frustrated: What the hell is wrong with some sellers? Really?

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kav

kav

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Free shipping is great you get higher bids anyway and it encourages people to buy several of your listings.

 

A seller who combines & offers a discount on additional items encourages people to buy several of your listings.

Offering free shipping gives a buyer (like me) the impression that a full individual shipping charge is loaded into EACH listed price...so if I am the buyer, free shipping doesn't encourage me to buy more, it might encourage me to haggle more on price if I'm buying multiples.

 

:sumo:

 

Well I was talking about auctions not BIN but that is a good point. With auction there's no loading and people bid higher with free ship.

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rjrjr

rjrjr

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I think you are choosing a challenging route of doing .99 starts on single common copper X-Men, for instance, with a $6.50 ship charge. It appears to be working for you but that has lots of resistance working against it. I know someone with that model that makes it work and he works crazy hard and has a following, so what do I know? porkyscomics is his id, not associated with me at all, but he lists 500 new listings a weeks, auction format, low starts, and gets strong bids.

 

Every one of his listings tried to be at least a $10 lot of books, most every listing multiple comics or a single tpb. He does a $4 shipping charge 1st item, $1 per additional lot won, with a $10 cap, even if you win 100 items.

 

 

This is another key point if you are going to sell inexpensive comics. You need to offer a lot of them so someone looking can buy lots of them and save on S&H. Unless someone really, really wants the cheap book, it will be hard to hook them if you only list 10 books at a time, they need one book, and the S&H is high.

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prez

prez

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Yep I've sold a lot of stuff-SA and BA spiderman, ASM 300, OA, SA DC, 2 GA superman, books, a lot of different comics really. Sometimes I buy lots, pull out the HG books and sell em at a profit, keeping the rest.

 

Cool. What's your eBay ID? I wanna buy stuff from you

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kav

kav

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Anyway I'm withholding my oft-requested ebay ID like Tom Hanks in Private Ryan to break up a huge fight one day.

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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I think you are choosing a challenging route of doing .99 starts on single common copper X-Men, for instance, with a $6.50 ship charge. It appears to be working for you but that has lots of resistance working against it. I know someone with that model that makes it work and he works crazy hard and has a following, so what do I know? porkyscomics is his id, not associated with me at all, but he lists 500 new listings a weeks, auction format, low starts, and gets strong bids.

 

Every one of his listings tried to be at least a $10 lot of books, most every listing multiple comics or a single tpb. He does a $4 shipping charge 1st item, $1 per additional lot won, with a $10 cap, even if you win 100 items.

 

I think it would work for someone with hundreds of listings and of course combined shipping. Make it clear in your auctions. Something like "$6.50 for one to five, $7.50 for five to ten, $10.00 for up to 20" or however you want to do it. Maybe a pic showing good packaging somewhere on the page as well.
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kav

kav

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Personally I avoid anything with shipping over $4-I figure I'll just find it elsewhere.

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gcstomp

gcstomp

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$4 Boxed with tracking for a pile of comics is a great shipping charge for buyer, and that will often be a money loser for the seller. That seller I referenced I would think often loses on shipping but gets strong bids because of other factors, huge lists of new fresh listings every single week.

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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I usually take a slight loss on shipping, but I don't like to list comics for less than $40 or so on eBay. Losing three or four dollars on shipping isn't so bad then. I wouldn't even waste my time listing a dollar comic on eBay. Too much work to list, sell, package, and ship a single comic even if I didn't lose money on shipping.

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WebSlinger

WebSlinger

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If you can wait for payment and have the room you can offer to hold books for 30 days, this will encourage them to buy more books during that span to save and combine on shipping. It works well........ Also I always charge exact or as close to exact shipping including my packaging to ensure they don't feel like they are being ripped off and to ensure the comic gets there safe.

The 2 worst things in my eyes are someone who feels ripped off or your book arriving f'ed up.

 

 

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darkstar

darkstar

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I've mentioned this before but you would be much better off listing your books with a starting price of $2.99 and a shipping charge of $4.50 instead of starting them at $0.99 with a shipping charge of $6.50.

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