“Oh You Must Be Loaded!”: The Dark Art of Selling £4.99 Items on eBay (And Why We’re Not Laughing)

Cosmo Canker Powder
Jun 8
5 min read

“Wow, you must be loaded selling all those little bottles of Canker Blaster Drops for £4.99 each! Bet you’re rolling in it!”

Ah, the phrase we hear all too often — usually from people who haven’t run a small business for more than two minutes. Or from those delightful folks who leave bad feedback on eBay but can’t be bothered to pop over to our website for a better experience (and to support an actual human rather than the eBay overlords).

Today, we’re going to show you exactly why selling low-cost items on eBay is about as lucrative as selling snow to penguins and why we grit our teeth every time someone says, “You must be making a fortune!”

The Illusion of “Volume = Profit”

Sure, we’ve sold hundreds (actually thousands) of our Cosmo Canker Powder and Canker Blaster Drops through eBay.

Yes, each order might say £4.99 paid.

But here’s the cold, hard truth: after the fees, postage, eBay’s cut, ad fees, postage label costs, and the unpaid labour of standing in line at the post office… we’re lucky to see £1 left per sale.

Don’t believe us? Let’s break it down using real screenshots from recent orders.

eBay order breakdown: £4.99 sale, £ — Sold item for £4.99. After eBay fees? £1.16 left. No, I’m not retiring next week. Yes, I’m still at the post office. #SupportSmallBusiness

The Reality of a £4.99 Sale

Here’s what the buyer sees:

Subtotal: £4.99
Postage: £0.00 (because we offer free postage to attract customers — you have to these days!)
Order total: £4.99

Now here’s what we get:

Selling costs:

Transaction fees: -£1.15
Postage label: -£1.55
Ad fee general: -£1.13

Order earnings: £1.16 (Yes, you read that right — £1.16 for an order worth £4.99!)

Oh wait — there’s more!

We also get surprise fees like:

Promoted Offsite Fee: -£0.13 (even when someone already searched for us and found us, thanks eBay)

The Human Cost

Now, let’s say we’ve sold 300 units this month.

300 x £1.16 = £348 gross earnings.

But wait — what about the hidden costs?

Trip to the post office / courier depot: about 10-15 hours a week
Time to pick, pack, print labels: at least another 10 hours a week
eBay messages and customer service: easily 5 hours a week dealing with “Where is my order?” (even when it was shipped yesterday)

So conservatively, 25 hours a week of work.

£348 ÷ 4 weeks = £87 a week gross profit (before tax).

£87 ÷ 25 hours = £3.48 per hour.

The UK minimum wage is £12.21/hour (June 2025) We’d be better off working at Tesco.

Why We Hate Neutral & Bad Feedback on Low-Cost eBay Sales

Now imagine we do all that, bending over backwards to ship your £4.99 item lightning fast. We pay out over £3 per order in fees, packaging, and postage — all for £1.16.

Then we get this little gem:

“It’s too soon to say if the product works.” → NEUTRAL FEEDBACK.

Or:

“Delivery took longer than expected.”

(Ordered on a bank holiday weekend with FREE 2nd Class Post — what do you want, Amazon Prime for £4.99?!)

Every bad or neutral feedback hits us hard because unlike the big corporations with thousands of transactions, we rely heavily on feedback to stay afloat. A few neutral or bad reviews can cripple sales for weeks.

And here’s the kicker:

The SAME buyer could have ordered directly from our website with faster dispatch, better tracking, and often a free gift or discount.

But no, they stayed on eBay because it’s convenient. Then they left a neutral review for our trouble.

Why Are We Still on eBay, Then?

Because frankly, that’s where the shoppers are.

eBay has the traffic, the marketing muscle, and the habit-forming convenience that independent websites can’t match — unless we spend thousands in Google Ads and SEO every month.

We WANT you to buy from our website: www.canker.co.uk.

No eBay fees
Faster shipping
Free gifts & discounts
More profits stay with a small business owner (hi, it’s me 👋, not eBay shareholders)

But most buyers stick to eBay. If we leave eBay, our sales drop 70% overnight.

So here we are — stuck in the hamster wheel of £4.99 sales, losing £3 to fees per order, spending our lives at the post office, and holding our breath every time feedback rolls in.

The Catch-22 of Selling on eBay

If we raise the price:

Buyers complain and go elsewhere
Competitors undercut us with even lower prices

If we stop offering free postage:

Listings tank in search rankings
Buyers abandon the cart when they see shipping added

If we leave eBay entirely:

We lose 70% of our traffic overnight
Our website isn’t big enough (yet) to fully replace eBay sales

If we stay on eBay:

We lose money on every £4.99 order
We get punished by neutral/bad feedback for factors we can’t control
We burn hours a week packing, posting, and answering daft questions

The Real Profit Isn’t In The £4.99 Sales

Truth bomb: we don’t make our living from £4.99 Canker Blaster Drops alone.

We do it:

To attract new customers
To encourage repeat orders
To bring people to our website where they can buy more products directly

But we can’t survive on £1 margins forever.

And that’s why we get so disheartened when:

Someone buys on eBay instead of our website
Leaves a neutral review because they “haven’t tried it yet”
Expects Amazon Prime service on a £4.99 order

What You Can Do To Support Small Businesses Like Ours

If you love our products and want us to keep making them, here’s how you can REALLY help:

Buy direct from our website (www.canker.co.uk) → We get 3-4x more profit this way.
Leave a positive review if you like the product → it keeps us visible on eBay and our site.
Be kind about delivery times → we are a small business, not Amazon.
Understand that neutral feedback hurts us badly → if you’re unsure, just wait before leaving a review.

In Conclusion: Are We Loaded? HA!

To everyone who says, “Wow you must be loaded, selling all those £4.99 items!” — here’s your answer:

No. We’re not loaded. We’re knackered.

We do this because we love making great products for your pets — not because we’re getting rich off £1 profits.

So next time you place that £4.99 order, remember:

We’ve just paid £3+ in fees to send it to you
We probably stood in a queue at the post office to post it
We’re praying you leave kind feedback so we don’t get punished by eBay’s algorithm
And we’d LOVE it if you came to our website instead — where you’ll get better deals and help a small biz survive.

TL;DR

Selling low-cost products on eBay is: