I have seen alot of questions and only partial information about eBay/Paypal selling fees. You can use Link hidden: Login to view, or plug a formula into Excel. Please note that I offer this advice with no statement of warranty as I am not an eBay, Excel, or financial expert! :) After playing around with this system alot I have found something that works for me and decided In order to assist those of you with questions on how to develop your own system I will share the system I use to evaluate the profitability of an item after fees.
For this example, assume that you are listing your item for $.99 or less and letting the bids determine the final price (no reserve) but also have opted to offer a Buy It Now option, that your item will sell for between $25 and $1,000, you upgrade the listing to a value pack (highly recommend), and that you are not receiving any discount from Paypal for volume. This is how you can determine the formula.
Insertion Fee: $.20
Buy it Now Fee ($50 or more): $.25
Value Pack Upgrade (subtitle and gallery picture): $.65
Final Value Fee: $1.31 + 3.25% of Sale Price over $25
Paypal Fee: 2.9% Sale Price + $.30
Total Fixed Fees: $2.71
Total Variable Fee: 6.15%
Depending on what upgrades you use and your paypal volume you can customize the total fees for yourself. Also, in an effort to keep this simple when I calculate the profitability for myself I do not take into consideration that eBay's final value fee percentage does not include shipping but PayPal's processing fee does so the potential profit data I collect is slightly less than the actual (exactly 2.9% of the shipping fee); if your shipping charges are expensive you may want to figure that into your equation.
My Formula comes down to the following:
.9385(Final Sale Value) - $2.71, - Purchase Price = Potential Profit
For Instance if you have the final sale value stored in cell A1 and purchase price stored in cell A2 In Excel:
=Sum(Product(.9385(A1)),-A2,-2.71)
If you do not want to use Excel you can obviously do the equations by hand. However, using Excel offers another great benefit: YOU CAN TRACK WHAT SIMILIAR ITEMS ARE SELLING FOR AND PLUG IT DIRECTLY INTO THE FORMULA!
If you are performing the proper due dilligence on market conditions for the items you want to sell, you are most likely watching (and should be tracking) the sale prices. Usually I look for auctions most similiar to one I am interested in offering. For instance, does bidding start at the same amount as mine, is there a reserve or not, where is the buy it now set, shipping cost, etc. The more similiar the auctions you watch are to your own the more accurate your data will be. (NB: There is never any gaurantee that your item will sell at auction for equal, lower or higher price than any other previous auction, with no reserve, but it is certainly a good indicator.)
This is how I set this data for myself in Excel:
A1 - Item Description (plain text)
A2 - Price I paid for item including all delivery and other fees
A3 - Blank space to seperate data
A4-A13 - 10 recent and actual sale prices collected from eBay
A14: Profit formula($):=SUM(PRODUCT(0.9385,(AVERAGE(A4))),-A2,-2.71)
A15: Profit foumla(%):=(A14/A2)
Please forgive me if there are any syntax errors. I am not an Excel whiz by any means. You can use the extensive help system in Excel to learn more about it for yourself. I hope that this can help some of you select the right items to sell (and what type of auctions are best for your products) and maybe even turn a profit! :)