Over 7 Years of Selling Records Online
They both have a knack for making it harder and harder for the small seller to earn enough to make selling worth while. I will share 3 important topics from my past selling and buying experiences, that might help make your journey smoother than it might otherwise be.
1. Understand the overhead costs when you sell vinyl records
Your packing materials costs, your eBay and PayPal fees, and yes, you will have to pay taxes on your earnings.
A special note: Be mindful of how this extra income source could put you into another tax bracket, you should carefully consider all the costs before jumping into online selling.
Also: eBay loves changing policies too, you never know what new surprises are around the corner. Fee hikes, and the never-ending "new" requirements that can indirectly affect your overhead costs.
What fees are we talking about for selling vinyl records on eBay?
(eBay and the USPS change things a lot, so this can change yearly)In my category, 9% (10% without a store) is taken right off the sale+shipping price I receive. This will be paid with your eBay fee bill every month by the way.
Having an eBay store as of August is a good idea if you are going to sell over 100 items a month. If you get the basic store for 19.95 a month, you get 200 extra free listings a month.
You get 50 listings without the store. It would cost you at .30 cents per listing with out the store, for a total of $60.00 for 200 more listings. So you can see if you are above 50 listings, do the math, you could save quite a bit.
You can compare store sizes and prices here.
PayPal Fees
Also as of Dec. 2017 PayPal takes 2.9% plus .30 cents per transaction. This fee has been the same for at least the past 2 years...So you might figure it is over due to rise. The bad thing about this is "every" transaction gets charged .30 cents, even a dollar sale. So It's good to sell stuff that's priced at a level where that .30 cents doesn't become 30% of the transaction. They'll get the 2.9% regardless.
Then Uncle Sam, if you're in the U.S., gets his 10-12%. So after all of this, 23-25% of your profit is gone. That does still leave another 75% for you, minus the cost of the goods you're selling of course.
Save every receipt you have, and if it's a generic receipt, write a note on it for exactly what it was. Many thrift stores and record shops will not have specific titles, just music or records on the receipt.
Save all postage receipts. You can use those receipts to not only prove postage costs, but also mileage to the post office. You want to deduct every last thing you can... just make sure you have proof.
You would have to sell a lot of the inexpensive stuff to make it work!
Shipping Vinyl
Oh yeah, it will cost you $3.12 to ship 1 record properly packed with stiffeners. This is the Media Mail rate.
It's $2.72 min. to ship a record if you gamble without stiffeners, as under 16 ounces is 2.72, but understand: Shipping records without a stiffener on both sides is very very risky, and frankly you're asking for trouble. Don't even think about shipping 1-4 records in anything other than a pro-LP Mailer.
Here are the mailers I personally use, you won't find them any cheaper, and I have no issue with them. You can offer combined shipping to your customers since the Media Mail rate is so cheap, as the weight increases.
I charge .50 cents each after the first $4.00 LP shipping charge, people will buy a lot more from you if you offer this discount, believe me. Charging a dollar per record though is not unreasonable.
After the sale:
Don't forget to email "through eBay" new customers and let them know about discounted combined shipping, or free shipping offers you might be running, after you thank them for their purchase.
Customers aren't mind readers, and they may not read your store header at all. I fear most don't even read the listing description judging by some questions I get.
Why leave money on the table, go get the sale. Don't send a follow-up email though, if they don't respond they don't care, just don't spam them!
Other places to sell vinyl other than eBay:
As of 2015 Discogs charges 8% of the sale, but have no listing fees at all. Etsy charges .20 cents per listing every 4 months, eBay charges this every month then Etsy only takes 3.5% after the sale. eBay's listing fees, and the gauging of sellers by charging a final value fee on the shipping charge make it very hard for the small seller to prove their loyalty to the company.
I am a victim of familiarity with eBay, perhaps if you're starting out, building a reputation at one of these other sites would be more to your advantage long-term?
Those fees at the other places will likely rise some over the next few years too, but I don't doubt eBay will raise theirs at a similar rate. eBay lives for fees in my opionion... but my traffic especially in the winter months is very good on eBay.
If you sell a t a place without good traffic you won't sell much, so go ahead with caution, and know that you will be promoting your own store via social media and maybe even your own website, hey, who knows maybe then you can kiss fees goodbye.
Again, here's that fee comparison chart again from eBay, they have made almost impossible not to need a store to save money if you have more than 100 items listed .
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| Click photo to see Price. |
2. Carefully develop a reliable vinyl record grading system
While visual grading is OK, you do need some sort of base-line VISUAL understanding of what is a worthy playable record for re-sale, only trial and error, and bright light inspection of the surface, and play testing can you get the greatest feel for the records true grade.
If you don't test, make darned sure you look at the record under bright light, tilting while inspecting.
Marks you can feel are the main thing to watch out for:
If it's a rare title, you can still take a gamble for a dollar if it's found at a thrift store or record shop bargain bin. If you find a rare record, like a Blue Note for instance, feelable marks aren't necessarily the end of it.
Many times the thicker vintage vinyl holds up well to deep marks and even scratches. This is where a turntable could pay off, here's why:
Once I had several Blue Notes that I would grade at VG Minus at best, these were records that had multiple deep marks per side and moderate scuffs, visually not what I would typically sell, and hey, if it was a 5 dollar record I wouldn't bother; but when It's a 1950's original Introducing Johnny Griffin Lexington Label Blue Note that's a different story.The record played very well, did not skip, and had light surface noise, but nothing so bad that a bargain hunter wouldn't like to have it. That record in near mint condition recently brought over $3,000 dollars, so I thought OK my VG Minus copy with a fair tape job cover?
What the heck, $120 I put on it, it was gone inside of an hour. Probably could have got double the price." If you ever run across some vintage Blue Note Records, check out this page on label identification, it might mean hundreds if not thousands of dollars difference in what you can get for a record.
It's better to under grade than to over grade: I also feel it is best to just error on the side of caution, I grade conservatively, rarely ever grading above the VG+ grade, even if the record in near mint and the lowest grade being VG, even then, no deep marks seen.
You can go by the Goldmine Guide, as most people have their own variation of this grading system, but if you grade cautiously, and make people pleasantly surprised at your conservative grading, you will get repeat customers.
"If you sell scratched up noisy vinyl, you won't be selling for long"You really should invest in a turntable to test records:
If you are a collector yourself, it will lend credibility to your selling presence. I know as a collector and seller, I like shopping from people who sell almost nothing but vinyl. If they have lots of feedback, I can trust them better when it comes to grading.
Here is a list of GOOD cheap turntables.
It will take some time to build up good feedback:
If you make the following mistake before building repeat business, you could be out of business before your even get going. If you want more detailed discussion about vinyl record grading, you can check out this page for more in-depth thoughts about grading from both a seller and buyers perspective. It's always going to be buyer and seller beware, the more you know the better off you'll be.
3. Don't Get baited into arguments with Buyers:
Many times I have had people think they were buying a CD instead of a record. Not to mention the impatient buyer who blames you for the USPS' slow shipping. Stay calm, a few unreasonable customers is something you must consider as one of the costs of doing business.
You must accept that there will be a certain amount of customers who can never be pleased by anything you do. It's the percentages of life, right? So learn to accept it, or you will quickly shine a light on yourself, that trust me, won't be flattering.
People stay away from conflict, even if you are in the right Don't let your feedback page become a soap opera of he said she said they said. It's better yo defuse the situation quickly with friendly humor or honesty without name calling.
The worst situation is the picky archival collector guy, who thinks a Very Good (VG) graded record should sound like a Near Mint copy, here's an example below: I had one guy who bought a Dave Brubeck record from me, clearly described the record as VG at best, with moderate marks and scuffs, I even emphasized moderate static first 30 seconds of each side.
The guy went nuts, threatening bad feedback and PayPal claims. I simply responded with a copy of the text in the listing, describing all the things he was upset about, "he still amazingly, had not bothered to read the listing".
I just went ahead and refunded his money and then blocked him. Sometime no matter what you do, you won't make some people happy.
Just remember to be friendly and positive:
I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen the cringe worthy inter-feedback arguments between seller and buyer.
Usually it only serves to put the seller in the bad light. It also can lead to some follow-the-leader feedback, where others might not give you the benefit of a doubt, and now have an itchy trigger finger regarding the red negative.
Your best course of action is this:
"Be kind and sympathetic, respond quickly, don't delay your response a day or two. Be quick to resolve the issue; AS SOON AS YOU SEE THE MESSAGE."
Things you might consider offering the buyer:
- Offer to pay for the return, you'll then refund the purchase+original shipping price.
- Offer a partial refund, half off the total cost+shipping usually does it.
- Offer a store credit: and ship that for free
Check their buyer feedback, and check the feedback they give, sometimes you can get comments from the seller they are dinging with negative feedback in a heated exchange. Many times, this will give you a clue about what you're dealing with.
Offer a return, many times they won't do it, even if you pay for the return, this is a dead give away that they may be trolling for a free record. Report them to eBay, supposedly eBay is now keeping tabs on complaints. This will help you and others in the selling community. Block their rear end using the site preferences tab: Problem solved!
100% positive feedback is overrated:
Unless the feedback drops below 99% I wouldn't stress too much about it, as both a seller and buyer. Go ahead and click on the red negative, see what's going on.Often times it will be a buyer who just didn't give the buyer a chance to fix the issue, or the buyer blames the seller for a USPS slow shipment.
Of course if you see 10 negatives in 6 months time, where the buyer is making excuses and calling other buyers a scammer or worse, you can plainly see there is an issue with them.
One or 2 negatives shouldn't wipe out the thousands of positives though. Judging by the number of people who buy stuff from me without reading the description.
I highly doubt most customers even look at feedback until something went wrong. All of this depends on the number of items sold of course.
I have had only a few negatives in 6 years on eBay, after I quizzed the buyers about why they were unhappy, they gladly offered to remove the bad feedback, even without asking for a refund or return.
Both times the issue was USPS delivery and not my mistake. I used to stress about 100% feedback, and early on there were a few people who sent me private emails trying to extort a refund out of me.
Threatening to leave bad feedback is against eBay policy, but I was just building my modest business and could not afford a negative so early on. Today though, in that situation I will tell them to "go pound sand".
If I deserve a negative, and nothing within reason can make the customer happy, I will just accept it. no more stressing out over it.
Recently I have had a few customers who I suspect troll for free stuff or discounts, they have become well-known in the eBay selling circles as people to block from buying from you. Sometimes they slip through the cracks.
Just stand up to them, don't play games with them, just tell them flat-out if they aren't happy, to please return the record. I can't count how many times those people never respond again and disappear.
Bonus Tips:
Always give repeat customers the benefit of a doubt, whether that's late payments, or the rare complaint. Go the extra mile for those people. Of course do your normal good job for every one else. I like to send special thank you notes to my better customers.You should detail how appreciative you are of their business. Perhaps, give them a free-bee in one of their larger orders. You need to be mindful of too many give always though, your buyers might leave feedback mentioning the free item, and you might start getting other customers assuming they will get one too, it could backfire, and actually cause disappointed customers.
Save all the PayPal transaction emails from your eBay customers:
Leave notes on the contact form labeling who they are, how many orders they have placed... In the future during slim times, you could send out personal emails to those contacts announcing new items etc...
By the way, don't spam them, and only bother them once every 6 months or something. You never know, you might need to tell your list of buyers that you are leaving eBay and going elsewhere someday.
