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Several factors determine the percentage.
1) category (stamps and coins are cheap IF you have a store)
2) average selling price
3) shipping charge in relation to selling price (since eBay charges FVF on shipping)
4) Top Rated status
5) Store or no store (store owners pay a monthly fee but get a lower FVF. It could be very substantial in some categories.
6) Overall monthly volume (store fees will be a much smaller percentage of sales if monthly sales are $2,000 compared to $200 for example.
My own eBay fees, including listing, FVF, monthly store, etc... etc... are less than 6%.
I have a store, sell stamps (FVF 6%), am TRS (20% discount on FVF resulting in 4.8% net FVF) and offer free shipping (no FVF on shipping).
I look at it as 4.8% FVF (after 20% rebate for TRS) and 1.0% for my eBay store (based on $2,000 monthly sales since I retired) and no listing fees.
Total eBay fees: 5.8% (a fraction less if monthly sales exceed $2,000; a fraction more if monthly sales fall below $2,000).
As far as exchange conversion fee, that is a very questionable calculation.
If a seller sells in US$ and receives (for example) Cdn $109.00 for a US$100.00 transaction, there is no point in calculating a conversion fee since it is already included in the conversion.
PayPal I can see as it is 2.9% + 3.5% exchange = 6.4%
As Pierre points out the currency exchange costs have no place in this calculation. If for no other reason that you can sell in Canadian Dollars and therefore the buyers cover the exchange costs.
On the other side of the coin PayPal fees can be a lot higher than 2.9%. If you make a sale for $10 (item+shipping) to a US buyer your PayPal fees will be 5.9%, for an overseas sale 6.9%.
On a $20 transaction PayPal fees would be 4.4% or 5.4%
On a $50 transaction 3.5% or 4.5%
Even on a $100 sale the fees are 3.2% or 4.3%
The 30 cent PayPal transaction fee may seem incidental but it`s impact is actually substantial if your average transaction value is fairly low.
Sorry, I left a number of 28% and didn't clarify much.
My total ebay fees as a percentage of my sales is the following based on my last invoice.
| Fees as a percentage of your sales | ||||||||||||||
| This month's eBay sales and fees | ||||||||||||||
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This includes all listing fees (sometimes nothing but sometimes I list outside the promotions), all FVF on item and shipping, store subscription, less refunded fees for refunded lost items. + lost FVF on multiple refunded extra shipping costs due to eBay.com's corrupt cart system. It also includes my 20% discount.
For Paypal, I get the 6.5% from my monthly statements. Total monthly PayPal fees / total montly sales paid with paypal. I don't acknowledge any 2.5% conversion fee since all my sales are in CND (buyer pays the conversion if from the USA). The 30 cent fee from paypal is quite substantial in my case because my average sale is only a couple dollars or so. It hurts even more when multiple payments are made for one order.
I answered 12.5% shipping as cost in response to the OP's question thinking that the OP is looking for a general cost of doing business involving coins (minus office expenses and other expenses not directly related to sales totals on eBay only).....mostly fees yes but the shipping cost has to be factored in especially if you offer free shipping. The cost of shipping comes out of your sales total provided by eBay so it is just like a fee that has to be paid. This is only for Domestic sales. I charge a cost for US and World shipping so I don't include those figures here.
If you charge a price for shipping then that value is not included in your sales figures or sales report from eBay (aside from the FVF on shipping included in your monthly fee) and then your shipping costs are covered and don't need to be factored in as a fee-like value.
If I factored every expense in, my "cost of doing business" in coins is %52.48
Everybody's situation will be different.
