The E-bay scam

E-bay has an interesting model. You pay to post, pay to get paid, and you do all the work. You have the item to sell, you post it. You get the money, you get to the post office and you mail it. E-bay is just the middleman on the whole transaction taking a cut.

For the uninitiated, e-bay encourages you to start the selling price low (99 cents) so stuff will sell and to provide cheap shipping so the total cost is low. However, you can easily end up losing money on the transaction. Take for example something that sells for 99 cents. It costs about 60 cents to list the item with a picture. Then there's the box or envelope that you'll need, that's about a dollar. When you get paid, paypal (part of e-bay) takes a cut. This is about 50 cents on the cheap stuff. To list something for 99 cents, costs you about two bucks and this doesn't include the time and money to take the picture, pack, and get to the post office. You end up losing a dollar on each transaction unless you set your shipping high enough to cover all your costs.

Nice scam. Wish I had thought of it.