is worth offering free postage and factoring the postage price in to your cost?
- If it's a Buy It Now, Yes, always. If it's an auction (which tbh i don't do with my business account), then yes add postage on separately.
I assume the 10% Ebay takes includes postage?
- Yes, correct. They didn't use to, but now do. Hence why it used to be a lot more common for sellers to have the p&p non inclusive.
is there a website I could use that could help me to predict the price of posting certain items, or is it a case of making an educated guess?
Yes, Royal Mail price finder site.
And as a rule of thumb, most things will be a small parcel (unless they are under 25mm thick, or bigger than a large shoe box, and / or over 2kg). Price is £2.90 regular and £3.95 for "signed for" for Second Class, and add 30-40p on top of those prices for First Class.
I also use Parcel Monkey to get quotes for larger / heavier parcels, as RM / parcelforce can be v expensive for this.
if a buyer doesn't receive the item as Royal Mail has lost it (worried about this happening!) do we need to refund them & then try and
put a claim in with Royal Mail?
- Again, correct. It's quite important you address not received items promptly and politely as asking buyers to wait until RM declare the item as "lost" take s along time and most people aren't willing to wait.
You don't want defects on your account, or negative feedback.
A simple formula I use to work out profit is
SALE PRICE minus
- 13% + 20p ebay / paypal fees
- Postage and Packing Costs
- Item cost
And it also doesn't hurt to factor in a small contingency of 5% or so, and if you're buying stock from overseas remember you will need to pay 20% of the purchase + postage cost in VAT plus a handling charge on each shipment.