What p&p charge to clear minimum sell price?

[informatica2007]

If you are a small infrequent seller and accept payments using PayPal you will be screwed for maximum fees. If your item ends up selling at its low start price the amount you actually receive can be as low as 56% of the sell price depending on the Auction site.
Some sellers use the p&p cost to offset some or all of these fees but how much should this be in order to clear your minimum sell price?
I have written a program to do this calculation. It uses default fees for eBay and PayPal (worst scenario?) but the figures are all alterable to reflect fees for eBid or any other site and payment methods.
I wrote this out of interest and am not suggesting that it be used for grossly inflated p&p charges but it is informative.
If anyone wants to try it out you can download it from www.stock-shallish.co.uk/Postage/ (a site I am working on for purposes other than what is now on it).
If you are a programmer and have the Visual Basic 6 system you can download the source files and see exactly what is being done otherwise simply download Postage.exe, save it anywhere you like and run it. You will get warnings about unknown executable files but it is perfectly save and makes no alterations to your system (the Registry).
It is totally free and if you do download the source files you can make any alterations you want to.

Instructions:

Goto http://www.stock-shallish.co.uk/Postage/
( Postage is Case Sensitive and must be followed by the / )

You will get the following file list

[DIR] Parent Directory 22-Sep-2008 17:15 -
[ ] Postage.exe 22-Sep-2008 17:15 28k
[ ] eBayPostage.frm 22-Sep-2008 17:15 16k
[ ] eBayPostage.vbp 22-Sep-2008 17:15 1k
[ ] eBayPostage.vbw 22-Sep-2008 17:15 1k

Postage .exe is the compiled (executable) of the 3 eBayPostage source files.
Double click on what you want and save to your hard disk.

If you want to see how I waste my time and respond to some scams double click on the Parent Directory (this also has nothing to do with what the site is actually being programmed for. I'm simply using it for my own purposes until I've finished the web programming).

[Supercheap]

does it really has to be so complicated? all i have is a table of all selling fees, paypal fees etc for certain values of fee so i know exactly how much fee to pay for sale item of certain values..its more complicated for ebays sale as higher value item or certain category has different fee....or just excel can do the calculation in no time....

The problem with setting high postage for me is when the buyer will collect it instaed of me posting....i will lose monies over there...I just cant do what some seller do, "there will be some administartion fee if you collect the item" or "I will not allow collection as i'm very busy and have 10 kids etc..."

PS: too bad that i still cant get a micropayment account for paypal....

[informatica2007]

Bit late for a reply but I've been away for a while. The program is for information only and was never intended to provide a means of inflating postage costs. Also I think you would find it rather difficult to set it up in Excel without resorting to a macro and that would simply repeat my programming but in VB for Applications rather than pure VB. There is no simple one line solution when what you are trying to find is part of a calculation on deductions the value of which alters as what you are trying to find is altered but it is ideal for a computer program Loop type calculation.
The program files will be there for about another week and then the site will be cleared ready for its proper purpose.

[JudesNiceThings]

Thanks for that!

I would have NO idea where to start or how to use it!

I just work things out the simple way - ie in my head or on an old envelope!! LOL

[Gill]

it works for me. Thanks informatica2007

[Gill]

I was just playing with some figures on this and have 2 questions.

Isn't the 'Initial amount cleared' out by 10p?
Minimum sell price - listing fee - fixed fee = initial amount cleared. Or am I missing something?

Can you get rid of the swear word 'e**y?

[savagebtings]

Not sure why you need a program to work this out..?
Or maybe schools are worse than my day....

I would have thought the postage charge should be near as dammit actual cost, taking into account postage and packing.

I avoid auctions with clearly inflated postage costs.Several auctions i looked at last night were clearly taking the p with their postage.How is £2.00 second class for something the size of a playing card EVER correct?(The majority were on other sites to be fair).

Also, i'm not paying for people's petrol to drive to the post office.How the hell were they going to post it in the first place?
Such a lame excuse.

Sorry for the rant, but p+p is a major bugbear of mine.

[Gill]

Not sure why you need a program to work this out..?
Or maybe schools are worse than my day....

I would have thought the postage charge should be near as dammit actual cost, taking into account postage and packing.

I avoid auctions with clearly inflated postage costs.Several auctions i looked at last night were clearly taking the p with their postage.How is £2.00 second class for something the size of a playing card EVER correct?(The majority were on other sites to be fair).

Also, i'm not paying for people's petrol to drive to the post office.How the hell were they going to post it in the first place?
Such a lame excuse.

Sorry for the rant, but p+p is a major bugbear of mine.

Informita isn't suggesting it's used to inflate postage costs; just merely a tool for some sellers. As he/she states "The program is for information only and was never intended to provide a means of inflating postage costs".

[Gill]

Sorry informatica I typed your name wrong on the last thread.

[informatica2007]

The logic behind the initial amount cleared is as follows:
Using all the initial start figures then clicking calculate gives £0.56 and £0.81 for Initial Amount Cleared and Advertise Postage at

The buyer pays £0.99 + £0.36 into PayPal
e*y fees = £0.10 + 8.75% of £0.99 = £0.19
PayPal fees = £0.20 + 3.4% of (£0.99 + £0.36) = £0.25

Total fees = £0.44 for a sell price of £0.99
This actually gives £0.55 cleared (difference of £0.01 between working on a calculator and a computer program).

The £0.36 postage only comes in for the PayPal calculation as if it were not for PayPal it would simply be an IN/OUT

Deriving the £0.81 is another matter and as I posted earlier it is not easily set up in a Spreadsheet. Basically if you want to clear the Sell Price 'S' by charging 'P' postage then (S+P) goes into PayPal.

e*y fees remain at £0.19 for an 'S' of £0.99
PayPal fees are now £0.20 + 3.4% of (£0.99 + P)
P must now be increased in steps of 1p starting at 36p and for each step change a new amount cleared calculated. When P gets to a value such that the amount cleared equals the sell price then that is the figure shown against the Advertise Postage at

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I've deferred to the request, here at least, not to mention the other side and for the wrong name - I'll answer to anything! (I'm a HE by the way, retired Master Mariner and Lecturer in Computer Science. I'm only interested in buying/selling GB stamps but at present they are just not selling on this site. A typical example is one stamp I had up here that finished about 10 days ago. It could have gone for £1. Had 3 views and no bids. It's just gone on the other side for £8.70)