Thursday, June 15, 2006
Electronic Ebay payments +Aquatones
No, the two are not related, and no disrespect was intended for the Aquatones!
When it rains, it pours. After finding the Tonettes on Doe 103, my number 1 most wanted 45, along comes the next one on my list. Well, I am cheating just a bit, but my collection is missing three promos on the Fargo label for the Aquatones. #1016 "Crazy For You" popped up, and is orange. Fargo did release at least a couple orange labels that were stock copies. 1015, which is also on my list, may also be orange as a promo, and 1022 which is probably white. I have not seen them yet, so it's my best guess. Lou Fargo was very consistent when it came to issuing promotional copies to the radio stations, so I have no doubt 1015 has a promo. 1022 was the last Aquatones issue, but I bet he still sent them to the disc jockeys.
Paypal is not just for Ebay. In fact, before Ebay bought the company, they were certainly doing business other places, and actually they still do. Do you remember Bidpay? It was basically an on-line service that would mail out a money order for a small fee. I used it for the convenience until it went out of business. There was also another on-line service, but I can't recall the name. I used them often, so I could separate myself from the Ebay conglomerate. There is nothing wrong with Paypal, if you are a buyer. As a seller, when you start to combine the Ebay seller fees and the Paypal BUYER fees, it's not cheap to sell on Ebay.
I can hear you say, "But, you have millions of people a day looking". True, but not at your listing. In the record world, if you have a basic listing with no bells and whistles, you won't get 100 people looking at your product. In theory, the people that do are prospective buyers. You could list your disc in a magazine like Goldmine or Discoveries. I still subscribe to the latter, but my last issue was just over 60 pages. That's a far cry from issues of the past that easily doubled that number. Sounds a bit like my Computer shopper magazine. But I digress.......
Say you buy an ad in Discoveries. Let go with a unit space page ad for 55.00. You can probably list over 60 records, but for arguments sake, lets go with 50. The print is small either way. Let's also decide that your records average a $20 selling price each. That is 1000.00 if they all sell. You have spent 5 per cent of your profits on advertising. Not a bad return, though it's likely they won't ALL sell.
Same scenario on Ebay. .60 insertion, .35 for a thumbnail, 1.00 final value, .90 paypal for electronic payments, for each record. That's 2.85 per record in fees. If all 50 sell, it's 142.50. Much higher than print advertising. With Ebay, if they don't all sell, you are not paying final value and electronic payment fees, and your costs go down. With print, you are stuck. Discoveries and Goldmine have a very targeted audience, and you will get more collectors actually reading your ad, by far. Even with the reduction in the size of the magazine, the fact is that more eyeballs will read your unit space ad. If they continue to decline in circulation, my argument continues to have less merit.
Granted, you probably won't sell all your records in my examples. But Ebay has the potential of costing you almost three times as much. Some of the pros and cons are obvious, but it's just not cheap to use Ebay. It is however, very convenient, instant, and can be monitored very closely. That is definitly worth something. Those benefits can be really felt if you just have a few lower dollar records to sell. The fee percentage will still be high, but anybody can list quickly on Ebay and know within a week if they made a sale or should consider the fees to set up a Ebay store.
.
When it rains, it pours. After finding the Tonettes on Doe 103, my number 1 most wanted 45, along comes the next one on my list. Well, I am cheating just a bit, but my collection is missing three promos on the Fargo label for the Aquatones. #1016 "Crazy For You" popped up, and is orange. Fargo did release at least a couple orange labels that were stock copies. 1015, which is also on my list, may also be orange as a promo, and 1022 which is probably white. I have not seen them yet, so it's my best guess. Lou Fargo was very consistent when it came to issuing promotional copies to the radio stations, so I have no doubt 1015 has a promo. 1022 was the last Aquatones issue, but I bet he still sent them to the disc jockeys.
Paypal is not just for Ebay. In fact, before Ebay bought the company, they were certainly doing business other places, and actually they still do. Do you remember Bidpay? It was basically an on-line service that would mail out a money order for a small fee. I used it for the convenience until it went out of business. There was also another on-line service, but I can't recall the name. I used them often, so I could separate myself from the Ebay conglomerate. There is nothing wrong with Paypal, if you are a buyer. As a seller, when you start to combine the Ebay seller fees and the Paypal BUYER fees, it's not cheap to sell on Ebay.
I can hear you say, "But, you have millions of people a day looking". True, but not at your listing. In the record world, if you have a basic listing with no bells and whistles, you won't get 100 people looking at your product. In theory, the people that do are prospective buyers. You could list your disc in a magazine like Goldmine or Discoveries. I still subscribe to the latter, but my last issue was just over 60 pages. That's a far cry from issues of the past that easily doubled that number. Sounds a bit like my Computer shopper magazine. But I digress.......
Say you buy an ad in Discoveries. Let go with a unit space page ad for 55.00. You can probably list over 60 records, but for arguments sake, lets go with 50. The print is small either way. Let's also decide that your records average a $20 selling price each. That is 1000.00 if they all sell. You have spent 5 per cent of your profits on advertising. Not a bad return, though it's likely they won't ALL sell.
Same scenario on Ebay. .60 insertion, .35 for a thumbnail, 1.00 final value, .90 paypal for electronic payments, for each record. That's 2.85 per record in fees. If all 50 sell, it's 142.50. Much higher than print advertising. With Ebay, if they don't all sell, you are not paying final value and electronic payment fees, and your costs go down. With print, you are stuck. Discoveries and Goldmine have a very targeted audience, and you will get more collectors actually reading your ad, by far. Even with the reduction in the size of the magazine, the fact is that more eyeballs will read your unit space ad. If they continue to decline in circulation, my argument continues to have less merit.
Granted, you probably won't sell all your records in my examples. But Ebay has the potential of costing you almost three times as much. Some of the pros and cons are obvious, but it's just not cheap to use Ebay. It is however, very convenient, instant, and can be monitored very closely. That is definitly worth something. Those benefits can be really felt if you just have a few lower dollar records to sell. The fee percentage will still be high, but anybody can list quickly on Ebay and know within a week if they made a sale or should consider the fees to set up a Ebay store.
.
