Sean is so legit.

For shipping I charge $1.50 and $0.25 for each additional auction. Most of the time if someone buys 8-10 cards or less I'll just invoice for the $1.50 as the postage doesn't change. I use toploaders, sleeves and another type of card protector called a "card saver" (size 1) It allows me to put anywhere from 4-12 cards in it comfortably and still arrives just as safe as cards in a toploader. I use no. 7 coin envelopes to ship 1-12 cards and bubble mailers for anything exceeding that. The post office also provides a lot of ready to go shipping supplies such as flat rate boxes and flat rate priority envelopes which are definitely worth picking up if you plan to do any bulk selling. Buying a stamp with your return address and a small label printer are definitely a good idea as well (unless you plan to use paypal/eBay shipping labels)

As for fees, eBay recently started charging a percentage of the entire sale to combat people who were circumventing fees by listing at high shipping costs (i.e. a force of will with a buy it now of $1.00 but shipping is $60.00) so shipping is definitely factored into that percent now. Aside from that the fees are all laid out on eBay and differ. There's also two different types of accounts on paypal and I believe they have 2 different fees, I haven't changed mine in years so I forget exactly what the difference is. Please note anyone using GBP the fees are tiered based on how much you receive monthly (1.4%-3.4%)

Hopefully this answers most of the questions, if people would still like a follow up I would be happy to do it or I can answer the questions here, whatever works.

haha oops! Didn't expect that to be a link. Was trying to click on the word "here" 🙂

Also with an EBay store, they don't take a cut of your shipping.

The link is the big banner in the middle? All these followup questions are great and will be addressed in one way or another.

A few points to follow up the conversation here: I believe if you pay for a store they don't charge you a percentage on your shipping costs. (Another great reason to pay the monthly fee for a store rather than run a simple seller account.) Also I wanted to note that it's actually $0.20 per listing for the first tier of eBay store. You have to move a loooot of cards per month before your fees drop to a nickel per store item. However, I'm a powerseller and still at 20 cents level and still have plenty of room to profit.

However, I find it tough to get profit out of any card worth less than a couple bucks. Yet there are stores out there charging a dollar for worthless commons. How are they doing it? If you do a followup, I'd love to hear more about Sean's tactics for what to list and how to list it (singles vs playsets / how to build effective mixed bulk lots) especially when it comes to tactics for moving smaller value cards worth less than what it would cost to ship them.

Last note for everyone: Chas Andres had a great article a few months back on CFB for those interested in seeing his eBay tactics. He's definitely coming at it from a different angle than Sean but it's cool to see where the two articles line up. http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/traderous…

Oops! The only confusion was on my behalf, getting the names switched around.

I feel like this article needs a follow up 🙂

I am doing this more as a kind of extra small income, but indeed interesting stuff!
Perhaps we should open a thread on the forum to discuss and answer questions regarding this particular aspect?
It would be something we can all learn from isn't it?

About the shipping question (Sean can answer as well ofcourse :-P) : I ship everything in a bubble envelop each morning before taking the train to work 🙂 I sleeve all cards (using extra cards front/back for protection against stamp damage) and the sleeves go between 2 postcards. Protection is key!

Sorry if there was confusion! Sven was a reader who had questions for my dealer, who's name was Sean. They look similar. I'll ask about that and update here. I know where he lives, and would presume a post office is near by, but I don't know his process.

One lingering question I do have for Sven is: How do you ship? Do you live close to a post office? Or do you just toss the cards in the mailbox?

Thanks for the great questions Sven. The interview lasted an hour, and i literally couldn't fit everything we discussed into the article. If you feel i didn't address something you wanted to know, or you have follow up questions, let me know. chad at torerotutor dot com

Great stuff here Chad. A big thanks to you and Sean for the information, and Sven for the great questions.