Today I will tell you why I decided to go in parallel with my eBay account and this official art shop. The main reason is the increase in eBay’s commission fees, mainly due to the emergence of new commissioning methods through which the auction platform collects more and more money from independent artists.
If a year ago I paid about 10% of the final price of a work to eBay + about 7% to PayPal, since the beginning of this summer, after the introduction of the new payment system, the company receives from the seller taxes in the accumulation of about 18%, to which is added the collection of a so-called sales tax of 9% from the buyer outside Europe. And if I add the cost of promotion of 7-9% (without which a product is not visible in searches) I will only receive about 70% of the displayed price and the buyer has to pay that “sales tax” in addition to this. – see image 1
If the seller is from a country other than the U.S.A. (as is my case), then it will lose a few percent more in the USD / Euro conversion which is done automatically at an exchange rate below the official one (Example: if the parity is $ 1.10 for 1 Euro, the calculation is made at about 0.80 Euro for 1 dollar). – see image 2
That’s why I encourage everyone to use the simplest online payment method that suits them, processed by PayPal, with the guarantee that the price displayed here is lower than the one on eBay. I think it’s fairer that way: instead of just winning eBay, it’s better to have both the art collector and the artist to win.
Maria Marcu 