What If My Item Doesn’t Sell On eBay

When you list an item on eBay, you hope it will sell, but what if your item doesn’t sell on eBay?

Below, I’m going to show you the exact methods we’ve used sell things on eBay that feel like they’ll be sat there for decades!

eBay Fees If An Item Doesn’t Sell

If your item doesn’t sell on eBay you won’t pay the final fees.

These are the fees that are taken based on the sale price of the item and are usually 10% of the total transaction value.

You will pay the listing fee even if your item doesn’t sell on eBay.

This fee is for listing the item on eBay in the first place, so the fee is charged whether you sell the item or not.

The best way to avoid paying listing fees is to try and list personal items on a personal eBay account when eBay runs ‘free listing’ promotions.

You’ll be notified of these via your email used to sign up to eBay.

What To Do If An Item Doesn’t Sell On eBay

However, if the item doesn’t sell on eBay you still have the item. It’s highly likely you’re still going to want to sell it.

So, here are some of the things you can do with the item to try and still get a sale.

eBay Auction

It may seem a simple one but we had a particular item that we had on Buy It Now for around 5-6 months.

Over this period we spent time reducing the price, adjusting the listing and taking new photos to improve the listing.

However, nothing seemed to work.

We finally decided to end the listing and send it to eBay auction.

You can do it how you want, so you can either start the bidding at the price you paid for it so you at least get your money back or you can start it at the usual 99p.

You can then decide whether postage is included or not. Our item went into the auction and sold for near the buy it now price.

Auction House

Taking to an actual in-house auction is also a great way to get rid of things and this means no posting or more listing for you.

Even though you will pay a commission for the sale it works out what Paypal and eBay fees would amount to.

We generally have a spare box that anything that we pick up that is broken or doesn’t work or simply isn’t selling goes into this box and goes to auction.

You can sell things as individual lots or as one lot to save on fees.

Car Boot

Many of you will be familiar with car boots, we have in the past took some of the things we had picked up that were no good, back to the car boot.

This was a great way to get rid of the little bits and pieces we no longer needed as well.

If you planning on doing one for your own household goods, take along your items that are no longer any good and get rid.

Any money you can make on the items you couldn’t sell is a bonus if you ask me if you get back what you paid for it great!

Even if you make 50p on that item, I see that as a win.

Shpock

Shpock is fairly new to the selling market, it is an app on your phone and you can sell your unwanted items within your local area.

It is all done within your local area so you can accept an offer and they come and collect it from your house. We have sold a few things on Shpock but the only downside is people coming to your house.

It is worth trying as we have had things like a John Cena wrestling poster that came with a bundle and we sold on there for £3.

It was fairly hassle-free, some people will ask for the item to be posted but this is meant to be a collection in person and cash in hand deal.

eBay – ‘Car Boot Bundle’

When we had a big clear out of a lot of stuff we have accumulated we needed to get rid of it and quickly.

We had sold our house and needed to shift some of the stock we no longer saw as profitable. We brought all the items together and listed them as a car boot bundle.

This is great if you want to get rid of things in one go, it works well especially if you have a lot of bulky items that would be too hard to post or even take back to the car boot.

Facebook MarketPlace

We all love scrolling through for a deal on our local Facebook marketplace, well ever thought about selling on there?

We listed on some old Amazon FBA stock that we got returned and sold on there.

Using the marketplace really makes it simple in a few easy steps and you are done, similar to Shpock it works on a local basis, great as someone can be at your door taking away your unwanted items within the hour.

Charity Shop

Don’t forget you can also put together a bag of things and donating to charity. We have done this with items we feel aren’t worth our time trying to sell or if we have been in a rush.

It may not get you any money back but see it as your good deed for the day done. I prefer to send to charity shops than bin the item all together as that seems more wasteful.