eBay Vendors

How do sellers on ebay make money?
I found items on ebay that are sold for $0.01 (with about $14 for shipping). So how the heck do they make any money?
I just bought a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for $0.01 and had to pay $16.49 for shipping.

the shipping is cheaper than $14… or they are just stupid =P
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From the shipping! you will see many items which are quite small and light to post out which cost 99p and then the postage will be £20. This happened to me recently when I bought someting for my car.. they make up the money through the postage which is often a totally unreasonable postage cost.
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yeah…….
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Volume
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They overcharge for shipping, so that is how they make the money. They do this because ebay takes a final value fee out after the auction is over. That is why they only charge .01.
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Is that how much the end bid was, or was it the starting bid before it closed? The seller could make money on shipping, but it would be very minimal.
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sellers charge your credit card, check, or paypal to receive the money through electronic transfer
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Volume
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The shipping probably costs about $5 and you’re getting a $3 item.
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Sellers who list 1 cent items with $14 shipping do not actually spend $14 at the post office. The shipping fee is allowed to be "shipping and handling," and most sellers justify this by saying that they have "handling" costs aside from the actual post office charge (packaging, traveling to the post office, whatever). There are a couple reasons people list items will all the money in the S/H fee:

First, people often sort search results by price, and making the item 1 cent with high shipping makes their items show up first without costing them profits.

Second, eBay charges a listing fee based on a seller’s asking price (shipping does not affect it). By asking 1 cent for the item, they only pay 20 cents to list the item. Sellers also save a ton of money on eBay’s final value fees, which are a percentage of the final price (shipping not included).
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You have to have money to make money especially when putting things on EBAY i have put things on and they didn’t even sell so i guess it all depends on what is popular.
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The seller is making 0.01 on that purchase but the buyer is paying the 14 bucks shipping. E-bay sellers put items for sale at cheap prices and watch people fight over items that aren’t worth what they end up at. Or they will put a price that is market value and bump up the bids themselves. Also a little know fact is that most things on E-bay are not where they are originally from. Most things are stolen, grabbed, asked for to sell, and are collected from the trash of local businesses.
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If they have plenty of items that ppl like and they sell them 4 cheap ppl r going 2 want 2 buy them. THat’s how u make money. It’s a pretty smart idea if u really think about it. Hope I could help!
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eBay doesn’t get ANY of the shipping costs, so some people have found a way to make sure eBay gets as little as possible, by charging 2-3xs the cost of actual shipping for the item. They only have to pay eBay from the sale price (generally .99 or less) and a small cost for the category they placed the item in to sell. The rest is their money. I don’t sell that way because eventually eBay may go under if enough people decide to work that scam. It is also rough on some customers who do not check the shipping costs before they bid. They end up with a HUGE surprise when they see the shipping and handling fees.

k.m.
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eBay seller and buyer for many years