richardb

eBay Is a Losing Bid - Barron's

I used to sell laptop's and my old company equipment (sometimes 1-2 years old) on eBay, a few years back I used to sell about $140K a year. I have stopped selling for the following reasons.
a) My last batch of sales including buy it nows, none of the 'winners' paid for the goods. As the threat of a buyer negative was removed.
b) It is no longer worthwhile, the sale price price of items is now about 1/3 of their original value. This coupled with the high Paypal and Ebay fees, ensures that it is cheaper to junk or throw the items than sell on ebay.
c) It became an increasing waste of time, hours spent taking pictures editing listings to comply with all the ebay policies. Answering questions, and then a big fat ebay bill with little chance of someone paying. It was more effective to concentrate on other much more effective ways of raising money.