The Advisor Advises

I've learned a few things in the last couple of weeks about selling on Ebay. If you read my Dec. 5th entry, this will make more sense. There were a few costs that I either did not anticipate or did not calculate correctly, but overall, it was a decent learning experience. I was aware of the Ebay Insertion Fee and Final Value Fee, I was not, however, aware of the Paypal fee. It also would have been advantageous to have weighed the item after packaging for shipping, as my rough estimation of the weight, relative to liver pate - you may recall, was off a bit. I quite confidently guessed that my package weighed less than 250g, but in reality it weighed 383g after I wrapped it in a Canadian Tire flyer(it's going to New Jersey, I couldn't resist). This led me to believe that the 'Small Packet-Surface' shipping to the US of A would be $3.35. In the end I paid $0.45 for listing the item on Ebay, $0.39 for selling the item on Ebay, $0.86 for accepting a credit card payment through Paypal, $5.00 for the actual item purchase, $0.35 for GST and $5.10 for postage...a total cost of $12.15. I was paid $10.84 by the lucky bidder. Oh well, I've adjusted the details on the listing of my next item - which happens to be the exact same item - and we'll see how it goes this time. The score thus far: Ebay-1, Paypal-1, a buyer in NJ-1, The Advisor-0...but the game's not over yet.