Anyone who has sold items on auction sites or considers doing so is aware that there are auction insertion/listing fees involved.

There are numerous auction sites on the Internet these days and most, if not all, sites charge them.

What is an insertion/listing fee?

As you all know, placing an ad in your local newspaper costs money.

Of course, adding coloring or borders costs extra.

Likewise, placing a listing on an auction site works in the same manner, though it's not as expensive.

An insertion/listing fee is any type of charge applied to an auction or fixed priced listing on an ecommerce site.

To better understand insert/listing fees let's use eBay as an example.

Here, the fees you'll pay to list an item depend on if it's an auction listing or fixed price listing and the asking price of your product.

Features that make your listing stand out are subject to these additional insert/listing fees:

Reserve fee – to set a minimum price you're willing to accept.

Buy It Now fee – to allow one to buy your product at a specified price before the auction ends.

Listing upgrade fee – features that make your ad stand out as Gallery Plus, Subtitle, and Listing Designer.

eBay Hosting Picture fee - for adding pictures to your listing.

Your profits

No doubt, insertion fees will decrease your sales profits. Some fees as the insertion fee and final value fee take a percentage out of the final selling price of the item assuming it sells. Overall, your final profit on a sale depends on:

What you sold the item for less (what it's worth + all listing fees)

Can you work out your seller fees? You don't have many options but to keep them to a minimum by doing the following:

Start each listing at minimum price (below a dollar).

List your item as a fixed-price listing

Roll the total of expected listing fees in the price of your item. That's if you expect to make a fairly decent profit on your item.

Buying the Value Pack - If you want to get fancy you can buy the upgrades value pack and pay less for each upgrade feature than purchasing them separately.

High insertion fees are those that arise from adding upgrades to your listing or starting out pricing your item for a large amount.

Low insertion fees are the exact opposite: starting out below one dollar and putting minimum features in your auction.

To the reader:

This article uses eBay as an example.

There are numerous auction sites on the Internet and each has different insertion and listing fees. By reading this article, one knows what to expect when placing a listing on an auction site.