PayPal fees are astronomical for such small sales.

[Frenchpastry]

I'm having a clear out before we move and normally I would take things to the charity shop but as I'm on maternity leave and money is very tight thought I would try my hand at selling things on eBay. Because I know they're just not worth much second hand, I started everything off at £1 and figured that that was better than nothing and am happy to sell at £1 if need be with the idea that selling lots of things for £1 will add up to a little something for us so DD and I can do something nice in a few weeks (zoo or something similar). A few things sold for much better and they are fine but also a fair few have sold for £1 and now I've logged onto PayPal I cannot believe the cost of the fee! Obviously they take a few from the p&p as well so they've taken in total 50p but obviously the p&p is genuinely how much that costs me to post it so there's no profit for me there. Bare in mind eBay will take their cut in a few weeks too which I think will be another 10p at least so essentially 60% of my sale goes on fees! That is absurd! What is the point?! I've cancelled all my other listings and will take them back to the charity shop as 40p is not worth the effort to walk to the post office!
I'm not really sure what my question is other than that I am disgusted at this and wanted to rant about it!

Don’t sell things for £1. That’s just ridiculous.

Yes paypal fees are around 20p + 3% of the final sales fees or something like that. If you run a small business I think you can apply for “micropayments” where the cost will be a lot lower for sales

It's never worth selling for less than £2 IMO. I add at least 50p to my postage as well as I have to think about petrol costs. You could try starting listing low at say £1.50 and then cancelling them around 15 hours before if they are low on views and have no bids or watchers.

I'm clearing out too right now. I tend to go in phases of making money overall then getting fed up and charity shopping the rest. I keep swearing I'm just going to do one winter listing spree and one summer spree so I forget how pointless Ebay is as a seller.

Mind you have made over £100 in a month before so got the kids brand new shoes. It's ok to make it bit of cash but the profits are small

It’s not worth selling anything online for £1. It’s probably not really worth going to a car boot for that type of money unless you’ve got well-visited free ones... I’d bundle up anything that isn’t likely to sell for much.

I don’t bother with anything less than a fiver and make sure I charge correct postage