Chispas De Muerte wrote:
quoted 13 lines yeah, but everyones tastes are different, to a degree.>yeah, but everyones tastes are different, to a degree.
>Someone might be all happy to pick up that Quinoline
>Yellow you couldn't wait to get rid of, or you might
>be all excited about Plaid and someone else not so
>excited about them. So everyone wins. And fuck,
>someone bought it in the first place, so the artist
>got some money. What I wonder about is there are ebay
>fees, plus the shipping cost, how can you actually
>make much, if any money this way? I mean outside of
>shuffling around those oh so precious "mask" records...
>
>
>
Yes, there are eBay fees. They charge you to list an item (rates are
based on the starting bid) and then they charge you a percentage of the
final price on top of it.
Paypal also charges you a percentage of each payment, which varies
according to whether the payment was from a paypal balance, a credit
card or a bank transfer; I believe they also charge more for
international transactions. Both eBay and Paypal take a bigger chunk
proportional to the amount for which the item sold.
The packing supplies (envelopes/mailers, tape, bubble wrap, flats/boxes
for LPs) have to be bought; a digital scale and tons of stamps come in
handy.
Anything over a pound or sent international (or w/ insurance,
registered, etc.) has to be done across the post office counter, so
there's lots of time in post office lines to consider. There's also the
issue of people who bid things up and never pay or take 6 weeks to do it
(and there are many), tying up the portion of your original purchase
price you'd hoped to get back.I'm not even going to elaborate on the
amount of time it takes to post new items, package, do email exchange,
etc. This is not a whine, but it's the truth. You'd have to be insane to
do this on a regular basis if you're only in it to make money unless you
have some inside track on low-priced releases (which I haven't
discovered!) or else you have a ton of highly sought collectors' items.
If you happen to need to get some of your money back from your
music-spending, there aren't a ton of viable alternatives. What are you
going to get if you take them back to a store? $3 in store credit? I'd
rather sell them on eBay and I'd rather buy on eBay from people I "know"
than to browse the used bins (all of which I do, from time to time).
Besides, I can find the occasional collectible on eBay more often than I
can in the used bins. I might pay more for it on eBay, but when I want
something related to music, I never have been known to exhibit the most
reasonable behavior anyway. If this sounds like I'm rich, I'm not -
trust me. I live paycheque to paycheque and in an apartment. If I could
afford not to sell records, I wouldn't.
You may love eBay, you may hate it. But for most sellers, it's not
the cash cow which seems to populate the visions of those idly observing
it. It's a lot of work - especially if you already have a job, an
ongoing education and any kind of life.Consider this an explanation and
not an apologia. Rant off.
jeff
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