How Ebay, Paypal, and USPS conspired to eat my lunch

One of my hobbies is to finance toy purchases by selling off other toys. This week, it was video games. I sold off 2 older games to finance the purchase of a newer game.

I used ebay, since it's quick, easy, and has a huge audience. It also ensures that an item will sell, provided you set the opening price low enough.

The games I sold this time were 1) Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for Gamecube / Wii and Capcom vs SNK 2 for PS2. Both are somewhat rare, and there's really no chance of me playing either very much, since I have another metal gear game I haven't even played yet, and I have another street fighter game I far prefer playing. So on to the fees.

I listed both games for $1 starting bid. That amounted to a 25 cent insertion fee for each game. Already, I'm in the hole:
$0.50

The games eventually sell. Each happened to sell for the exact same amount, $26. I also offered free shipping on each (we'll get to that) to theoretically get the price higher. I like to buy things that have free shipping, and I'll pay more when I do, so I assume my psychology also applies to others. Because of Ebay's fees, which are calculated based on your final selling price, I was charged an additional $2.22 on each game. Because of rounding, the combined selling fee was $4.45. Add on my listing fee, and the price just to use Ebay's service puts me in the hole:
$4.95

Now, I have to get paid. If you're using Ebay, you're going to get paid in Paypal. There's really no way around it. If you're paid from someone paying with paypal funds, a personal (no fee) account is great. Nothing is lost. But if someone pays you with non-paypal funds (credit card backed), you'll be forced to upgrade to a business account. This happens all the time with ebay buyers. So you're kind of forced to use a business account, which takes a bite out of all transfers that come in. In this case, each $26 purchase amounted to a $1.05 fee. Combined, it's $2.10, and that puts me in the hole:
$7.05

Free shipping...damn. This always comes back to bite me. The cool thing is that paypal lets you print your own shipping label on their site, and that saves me the hassle of waiting in line at the post office, which is a legitimate concern. The line there is horrible, and it's worth a fee for me to avoid it. Luckily, there's not really any fee for printing your own postage, other than the printer paper, which is essentially free. Each package weighed about 5 1/2 oz (using Amy's kitchen scale) but you have to round up to the nearest oz for shipping purposes. Each package was sent 1st class, with delivery confirmation ($0.18), which is nice, since you have something to point to in case the buyer claims they never go their package. All told, each package cost $2.20 to send, for a total of $4.40. So all together, I'm in the hole:
$11.45

WOW! I made $52 in sales, but it cost me $11.45. So I should say that I made $40.55. $20 per game. I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed, I might have made $20 total on both trading into gamestop. Alternatively, I could have tried on craigslist, but it's hard to say how long I'd have it on there before finally selling it off.

The lesson taken away is that my costs were about 22% of my profit. Wow. Maybe I'll put more weight into patience and try craigslist next time.