Is There a Charge for Selling an Item on eBay?

It is not really a question of whether eBay charges you for selling an item on eBay, but rather what type of charges you will have to pay for selling an item. If you operate a store on its website, eBay charges you for that. You will also be charged additional fees for many other services, such as additional photos used in your listings. If you wish to list your item as cheaply as possible, you can simply choose not to use these extra features; however, there are still some charges that will appear on your eBay invoice each month.

Insertion Fees

Insertion fees are eBay fees charged to your account when you list an item. Although this fee will continue for eBay store owners, as of April 19, 2011, the insertion fee is no longer going to be charged to non-store owners for the first 50 auctions they list each month. Sellers will also no longer have a fee for using the Buy It Now option on their items.

Final Value Fees

Final value fees are the fees eBay charges a seller once an item sells. This fee is a percentage amount based on what the item actually sold for, or rather the payment amount the seller collects. Different percentage amounts are used; the amount might vary somewhat, depending on whether the item sold through auction or from a member's store.

Shipping Fees

According to changes announced by eBay in March 2011, the company has changed the final value fees to include not only a percent charged on the item itself, but it will also add shipping costs to the final value fee as well.

PayPal

Although PayPal is its own entity, the company is actually owned by eBay. When an eBay buyer pays for a purchase, PayPal charges the account's owner a transaction fee. Since eBay requires sellers to use PayPal, you could also say that this is an additional fee associated with eBay, even though the charge does not get taken from you account directly by them, but by the PayPal company instead.

References

• eBay: Fee Update

About the Author

Kate Hornsby has been a small-business owner for more than 20 years. She is a freelance writer, covering a variety of topics, including pet care and operating a small business. Hornsby attended the Academy of Art online, studying interior architecture and design while pursuing commercial flight training at Aviation Atlanta in Georgia.

Photo Credits

• Sean Gallup/Getty Images News/Getty Images