I have been selling on eBay (seriously) since 2021, and I have been an eBay member since 2004. I mainly used eBay in the beginning to buy things I couldn’t find elsewhere or things that were cheaper on the platform.

eBay is a great platform and is one of the easiest ways to reach customers that need your products…but it dawned on me as I began to get serious about my online marketplace that it was not a good long term solution for the following reasons:

#1. eBay’s Cut
If you have a product on eBay that many other sellers have, the only way yours stands out is if you lower your prices and/or pay to promote them. When you promote your item it bumps it up the list of results if a keyword for your item is searched. The more you pay the higher your chances of your item appearing at the #1 spot

When a sale occurs e.g. $34.99 item, with taxes a buyer pays roughly $37.26. I as a seller have to pay for shipping the item if I offer free shipping and eBay’s cut is close to 12% + promoted rate if any. So for my $34.99 item, I am left with:
Buy pays: $37.26
eBay final value fee: $4.33 , fixed amount fee: $0.30, promotion fee: $0.70
Shipping cost: ~$4 nationwide

So my total take home on a $34.99 item is
$34.99 – 4.33 – 0.30 – 0.70 – 4.00 = $25.66

That is a total of %27 off what I listed the item at…

%27

That is a lot to expect for each item sold and this is on the low end, with top seller credits being applied.

#2. Advertising / Promotion
When you place your item on eBay, eBay will evaluate all similar items like yours that match certain keywords e.g. Cozmo Charger to be submitted to Google ads, so if someone searches for your item, the listing eBay has sent gets shown. There is no way to control this so you are at eBays whim as to if your listing shows up when someone google searches.

#3. Listing Format
Unless you are paying “online shop” fees, you are limited to how your product page is displayed. Only recently did eBay add the ability to add videos to your listing. Prior to that I had to resort to using a code generator that created an image with a link to YouTube video.

#4. I’m a Software Developer
There are a lot of things I can do with web technologies, setting up an online shop is trivial, but time consuming. If I plan to be serious about my online shop, then I need to build it and set it up so in the long run I’m not paying %27 per item I sell.

That is why I decided to setup TechShop 82 using the technology I know so I can cut out as many middle men as possible and retain as much in sales that I can.

It’s new, and I know I will be learning a lot of things eBay has probably encountered as an online retailer…so I look forward to learning and growing when that happens.

Thanks for visiting my site, and hopefully you’ll find and buy something you need.