Wii Update

My experiment in reselling a Wii for some extra cash is now over. I am a bit disappointed in the results, but I still came out ahead, so it wasn't a total failure.

My eBay auction ended with a high bid of $450, plus $39 for shipping, handling, and insurance. I was hoping for closer to $500 though. Here's all the details:

Sales Price$450
Shipping, Handling, & Insurance$39
eBay Listing Fee- $4.35
eBay Final Value Fee- $15.13
PayPal Fee- $14.48
Cost of shipping box- $8.00
Shipping & Insurance- $24.78
Cost of Wii- $375
Net Profit$47.26


The profit wasn't close to $100, as I had hoped, but it is still acceptable, considering the tiny amount of time I put into this. Close to a 13% profit in five days, most of which was just waiting for the eBay auction to end. I figure I spent less than 1 hour on the whole deal.

eBay and Paypal fees killed me. I knew they were expensive, but forgot how expensive. No excuse for this. I could have easily looked up the fees before I placed the auction. However, had I decided to sell this on Craigslist or some other site instead, the amount of time I had invested would have been more, so it's a trade off between effort and cost. I also could have used a 3 day auction length instead of 5 days. No one bid until 2 hours before the end time, which I half expected, so there was a lot of wasted time there. I also only had 5 bidders. I was expecting closer to 15, based on the other auctions I was seeing. And finally, my auction ended on a Tuesday night, at around 9 PM Pacific time. Auctions that end on weekend nights tend to do a bit better.

All in all, I'm happy with my $47 profit, considering how little work I put into this effort.

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