Attention hobbyDB Marketplace Sellers, we’re excited to announce that we’re changing the way that Seller Fees work.
After careful consideration and consulting with the community, we came to the conclusion that the Token System was not ideal for our members. So we decided to find another solution for our community.
Effective today, we’re removing the Token system altogether and transitioning to a Final Value Fee, officially known as the PayPal Partner Fee.
How does this sound? You can now list all of your sale items for free!
When you make a sale, you will then only pay the hobbyDB Partner Fee of 5 percent on the total value of the transaction. The Partner Fee automatically comes out of the Checkout, so we will never send you a bill.
At 5 percent, that’s significantly more cost effective than what other sites charge. Amazon and eBay’s effective take rate is above 15% (that is their Final Value fee combined with other fees charged), Mercari is at 10% and if you can get approval to sell on WhatNot, they charge 8%.
When it comes to Facebook, although there are no fees, we have all been burned when it comes to deals gone bad and it always seems to be a nightmare when managing what has and hasn’t sold. The good news is that you can actually use the hobbyDB inventory management system to post on Facebook, giving you access to their buyers, while being able to maintain your inventory all in one place.
In fact, when you post your listings on Facebook, our integration creates an ad for your items that links directly back to your items for sale. You can post in as many FB Groups as you’d like, and if the item has already sold out, your customers will be able to see what else you have available (so you won’t have to answer those pesky “Is this still available” questions anymore). To see how it works, check out this help article here.
Did you already purchase tokens that you haven’t used, yet? Have no fear. Contact us separately at support@hobbydb.com and we’ll get you squared away.
With free sales listings, there is no risk to list an item for sale on the hobbyDB Marketplace. Not only is the Marketplace a more cost efficient platform than the competition, but you’ll also benefit from an excellent inventory management system powered by a database of every collectible ever made (eventually).
The hobbyDB Marketplace also is the only site that has total ease when it comes to listing. With the combination of Best Offers and Request Shipping, you don’t have to know the exact value of your items or calculate shipping costs ahead of time. So you can put thousands of your duplicates on the site for free, and then sit back and relax until the offers come rolling in.
If you’re a new seller and finally ready to give the hobbyDB Marketplace a try, we’re here to get you started with a handy Introduction to Selling Guide that you can peruse by following this link.
As for buyers, we also want to make sure that they have a marketplace experience that they can trust. You are secured by our Trusted Seller program as well as the PayPal Protection Guarantee.
Have any questions or concerns? We’re here to help. Message us at support@hobbydb.com and we’ll do our best to address any issues.
Yes…. I hated the token system.
The Tokens shall rest in peace…
Definitely like this more than Tokens, not sure why but just feels better to pay at the time of a transaction and 5% seems fair.
To sell an item I will be paying 5% of the total sale, including shipping? Does that include 5% of PayPal fees? You have to come up with a different name than “Partner Fee”. This is a rant I had on Youtube one morning. This was written in December 2019. About 6 weeks ago I started selling cars on eBay. 2 days ago, I stopped. Why? Well eBay explains their fees as such. 2 main fees, insertion fees of $.30 per listing and final value fees (FVF) when your item sells. They say FVF typically amount to 10% of the final sale price. So, If I list something that sells for $30, I should expect to pay $3.30 for the sale, leaving me with $26.70, right? Not quite. See, Ebay includes the amount the buyer pays for shipping when calculating their FVF. Let’s assume that I charge the buyer $10 to ship the $30 item they bought from me. I don’t know why, but they charged me 17%, not 10% as stated in the terms. So, what I thought was a 10% fee on a $30 sale ends up being 17% of $40. So, from the sale of my $30 item, I receive $23.20. Remember, the buyer paid $40. But it doesn’t end there. Today, I looked at my 1st PayPal invoice. (PayPal charges amount to $0.30 plus 2.9% of the transaction amount) Now my $30 item nets me $21.74. And again, there is more. On my PayPal invoice is a “partner fee”. Nowhere on PayPal’s website could I find an explanation of this partner fee. So, I call PayPal – No one at PayPal could tell me what a partner fee was. In fact, none of their customer service reps had ever heard of a partner fee. Well Google knew what they were. Turns out those partner fees are fees that eBay charges PayPal, sort of as a referral fee. (At one point eBay owned PayPal, so they made the rules themselves.) PayPal, in turn, charges us sellers that fee, and they amount to 5%. Now my $30 sale nets me $19.74. That is a total of $10.26 that I pay in fees. But wait, the buyer paid $40. And eBay makes even more money. See eBay purchases shipping from USPS at commercial rates that are typically 25% to 35% cheaper than regular retail rates. To entice sellers to purchase shipping through eBay, they offer shipping about 12% to 15% lower than retail shipping rates. So eBay is making 12% to 25% of the shipping fees too. So, let us think about this for a minute. I sold an item for $30 for which the buyer pays $40. I net $19.74, that I still have to pay taxes on, PayPal nets $1.46, USPS gets about $6.50 and ebay nets $12.30 from my one $30 sale. They own no stake in the items being sold, don’t carry any inventory or associated cost. They do absolutely no work for what they get. In fact, eBay only has 30,000 employees worldwide. Yes, That’s Worldwide. I supply the product, do all the work and assume 100% liability if anything goes wrong. And usually net less than I paid for the item I’ve sold. Considering the millions of sales that take place on eBay, it is easy to see how eBay quickly became one of the richest companies in the world. And that is why I no longer sell OR BUY anything on eBay. If it matters to you at all you won’t be either and you will share this with everyone you know to protect them from getting ripped off by eBay.
Hi Tracy, eBay in my opinion has a 20-30% take rate for most sellers. Re what is called the Partner Fee, that is what PayPal calls it on their emails and it cannot be changed – to avoid confusion we thus use the same name. And re Shipping we opted for 5% over all versus 8% over the item price as we know many sellers will otherwise inflate Shipping (you can see that everywhere there is a charge on the item and not on shipping).
And there are good discounts for our Squad and our Shareholders (i.e. the folks that make the database happen and gave us funds to build it).
Is paypal.the only method of payment?
Our Checkout allows using PayPal or Credit Card (which PayPal processes). You can also bypass the Checkout for other means of payment but obviously need to ask the Seller if they are confortable with that.
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