To sell or to trash: Is it worth your time to list on eBay?

Here's a small Excel calculator that to the best of my knowledge is a fairly accurate determinate of whether or not one should sell on eBay or toss that old thingamajig in the trash. Mind you, one should never toss in the way of landfills but in the way of charities. To reduce, reuse and recycle.
The thing about auction sites is that even if you sell and make a profit, it’s then eaten up by insertion, final value, and processing fees. You’ll want to somehow incorporate those fees into the selling price so you’re not spending money to make money. At best, it’s a wash and you breakeven but that’s okay; you were going to throw that ole thing in the trash anyway, right? But at least now you have the opportunity to boost your feedback score; so, make it a smooth transaction and make it count!

You'll want to start with the price you bought your thingamajig for. Because theoretically you'd want to get at least what you paid for it so as not to have lost anything while you owned it. That said, we’ll shoot to break even and anything on top of that consider it icing. Yum! (Note: I generally just put zero here because if I’ve had the item for a while, it’s probably depreciated enough not to matter what I initially paid for it.)

I tend default my list fee to $0.60 which covers a wide range of listing prices. But for your reference, here is eBay’s current schedule of fees for listings:

Start Price and List Fee
$0.01 - $0.99 = $0.20
$1.00 - $9.99 = $0.40
$10. - $24.99 = $0.60

Your sale fee is:

Sold for and Fee
Not Sold = No Fee
$0.01 - $25.00 = 5.25% of the closing value
$25.01 - $1,000.00 = 5.25% of the initial $25.00 ($1.31), plus 3.25% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00)

Once you set up your own calculator in Excel, you can use a formula to help generate this number so you won’t have to keep inputting it manually.

If you choose to use Paypal, which I highly recommend, you will have a processing fee. It will cost you:

Monthly Sales and Fee
$0.00 - $3,000.00 = 2.9% + $0.30 USD

Now for shipping. I include my mailer and handling in the cost of postage. Honesty is best when it comes to shipping. People generally know when they’re being taken for a ride. Use the shipping calculator in eBay to determine this price. Sometimes if I don’t want to go through the hassle of finding out what shipping will be, I will just use a Priority Flat Rate envelope. The rate on these do not change with destination or weight so there is no guesswork or weighing. Just seal it up and send!

At this point, the only fields you have left are selling price and total cost. To get your sell price, input a number into the sell field that is a couple dollars greater than the total cost. The profit field will then light up with total profit on the sale. You then list at the sale price and ship at the shipping price.

My personal strategy is to list as close to the total cost as possible or slightly under. I really only want to breakeven anyway and do so with a fair asking price and without scaring away buyers. This calculator is a way to help me figure out what I need to list at in order for it to be cost effective.