Seller Hub is good at one thing: showing you how much money came in.
It is terrible at showing you how much you kept.
That gap is why a lot of Australian eBay sellers feel busy, ship constantly, and still cannot explain last month's profit. Revenue looks healthy. Net looks... missing.
Matt walks through three costs that quietly eat that number, using real sales from his own store. This page is the written version: the formula, the three leaks, and what to do about each.
The number Seller Hub hides
True profit on a sale is not sale price minus what you paid at the thrift store.
True profit = sale price − eBay fees − promoted listing fees − postage − cost of goods
That is the whole formula. You can add packaging, fuel, and storage later. If you skip those five lines, you do not have a profit number. You have a story.
Worked example from the video (a cheap DVD, the kind of item that looks fine in Seller Hub):
- Sale price: $24.95
- Cost of goods: $4 (thrift store)
- eBay fees including promoted listings: $13.35
- Australia Post satchel: $8.92
$24.95 − $13.35 − $8.92 − $4 = −$1.32
You "sold" it. You also paid for the privilege. Seller Hub still counts the $24.95 as a win.
That is the clip worth 30 seconds on Shorts: the sold price next to the number you actually keep.
Hidden cost 1: Promoted listings on thin-margin stock
Promoted listings are not evil. They are a tax you choose.
The trap is running ads on items that cannot afford them. Matt showed a sale where promoted fees stacked to $12.86. On a low-price DVD, that left about $1.14 of profit. On a partial set, it was enough to kill the reason for buying the lot in the first place.
If your item is already tight after final value fees and postage, a 2–8% ad rate does not "boost" it. It donates the rest of the margin to eBay.
Fix:
- Do not promote anything until you know true profit without ads
- Promote stale, high-margin stock, not everything with a "Boost" prompt
- Read the ad fee on the sale it belongs to, not as a monthly lump that you shrug at
If you want the longer version of this, we already wrote whether eBay promoted listings are worth it.
Hidden cost 2: Postage you did not price in
Australia Post is not a rounding error. A small satchel at $8.92 on a $22 sale is almost 40% of the sold price before eBay takes its cut.
Two DVDs in one satchel still cost $8.92. If you bought them cheap and listed them cheap, postage wins.
New sellers underestimate this because:
- The MyPost Business rates look "discounted" next to consumer prices
- You price from sold comps without checking what those sellers actually paid to ship
- You quote free postage and eat the satchel
Fix:
- Price from sold comps in Australia, then subtract your satchel, not a US media-mail fantasy
- Prefer items that still double your money after an $8.92–$15 label
- Bundle when the label is the expensive part (two DVDs in one satchel beats two labels)
Postage is why "I buy for $5, sell for $25" is not a strategy. It is a sentence that has not met Australia Post.