eBay fees in Australia: a $50 sale is not $50

The $50 sale, opened up

Assume a common Australian listing: you want $50 for the item and you charge $10 postage.

Buyer pays $60.

eBay does not take a cut of “the $50 bit.” Transaction fees sit on the total.

Pro Starter (13.4% incl. GST, typical category)

Line	Amount
Item price	$50.00
Postage charged to buyer	$10.00
Order total (fee base)	$60.00
Transaction fee 13.4%	-$8.04
Per-order fee (illustrative $0.30)	-$0.30
Left after eBay transaction fees	$51.66

You have not paid for the satchel yet. You have not subtracted what the item cost you. You have not added ads.

Same order, with promoted listings at 8%

You set 8% on Promoted Listings. The sale came via a promoted click, so eBay takes 8% of the sale amount as well.

Line	Amount
Left after transaction fees	$51.66
Promoted listing 8% of $60	-$4.80
Left after eBay ads	$46.86

Then the costs eBay does not know

Line	Amount
Left after eBay	$46.86
Cost of goods (op shop)	-$15.00
Satchel and tape you actually paid	-$9.50
True profit	$22.36

$50 on the listing. $22.36 in your pocket, on a clean sale with no refund. That is the whole point of this page.

If you had subtracted only the $15 cost from $50, you would have written “$35 profit” in the spreadsheet and bought five more. Two of those would be ads-on-postage disasters and you would call eBay “unpredictable” instead of calling the math incomplete.

Free selling does not make the $50 real either

If you are Australia-based, not on a Pro subscription, and under $25,000 in eBay sales over the past 12 months, eBay's free-selling offer can zero the transaction fee and the $0.30-style order fee.

Same $60 order:

Line	Amount
Order total	$60.00
Transaction fees	$0.00
Promoted listings 8% (if you still ran ads)	-$4.80
COGS	-$15.00
Satchel	-$9.50
True profit	$30.70

Better. Still not $50. Still not $45 after COGS. Postage you covered and ads you chose are not “eBay being greedy.” They are costs you accepted. A tracker that only celebrates $0 FVF will hide them.

Rates above are the published Australian shape as of 2026 (Pro Starter 13.4% incl. GST on most categories, free selling under the $25,000 trailing threshold, ads as a seller-set percentage). eBay changes this. The worked numbers are a flashlight, not a contract. Flippedit does not need the flashlight for your live store, because it reads the charge.

Promoted listings are a per-sale cost, not a marketing vibe

Sellers ask “are promoted listings worth it?” as if that were a store-wide yes. It is a per-item question.

From the product, a Dead Like Me DVD set:

• Revenue $21.71
• Transaction fees $2.88
• Ad fee $4.34
• COGS $7.00
• Profit $7.49 (35%)

The ad cost more than the transaction fee. If that pattern repeats on a category, you do not need a motivational video. You need to cut the rate, kill the campaign, or stop sourcing that line.

Flippedit puts the ad fee on the sale. Seller Hub will show you ad invoices and sold prices in different places. The formula page is the full line-item list. This page exists so “ebay fees australia” and “promoted listings cost” land on a worked $50 example instead of a homepage section.

GST is already in many of the percentages

Australian GST of 10% is payable on eBay fees unless you have provided your ABN for the treatment eBay documents. The 13.4% Pro Starter figure is published including GST.

Practical traps:

• Applying 10% on top of a GST-inclusive fee in your sheet
• Forgetting that postage is inside the fee base
• Comparing a US blog's 13.25% + 2.9% + $0.30 to your eBay.com.au invoice

If you are GST-registered (the usual trigger is $75,000 turnover), your accountant cares about the GST on fees and on sales separately from “how much did I keep.” Flippedit keeps the keep-number honest. BAS mapping is still their job.

Why the dashboard expense number looks “high”

A 31-day store window can show $3,964.22 expenses on $6,854.36 revenue, 42% profit, 119 sold items. People who think in listing prices read that as “almost half gone to eBay.” It is not. Expenses here are the full bucket: fees, ads, postage, costs. That is why the profit figure is usable. A fees-only chart would look kinder and be less true.

If your sheet's profit percent is 70% and Flippedit's is 42% on the same month, believe the lower one until you find a missing cost in our system. We have not met a seller whose sheet was the conservative one. The lower number is usually the one that includes postage and ads.

Insertion fees, store bills, and other “not on the $50”

The $50 example is the sale. Your month also has costs that are not a line on that order:

• Insertion / extra listing fees if you are past the included amount
• eBay Pro subscription if you are on Basic ($27.45/mo incl. GST), Featured, or Anchor. That is a store cost, not 13.4% of one toy
• International fees if you posted overseas
• Returns postage when you eat the label
• Promoted offsite or other ad products if you turned them on

True profit on the item should still get the per-order cut (transaction + ads + satchel + COGS). The monthly store bill belongs in expenses, which is why the dashboard expense figure is larger than “fees on 119 sales.” Mixing a $27.45 subscription into a single SKU's margin will make that SKU look random.

If you want the store-level view, use the period totals. If you want to know whether to buy another DVD, use the item card. Both are eBay fees. They are not the same question.

Category traps

Athletic shoes, some luxury lines, and high-value categories use different percentages and sometimes waive the per-order fee. A “13.4% on everything” sheet is wrong the first time you sell a $400 pair.

Flippedit does not need you to maintain a category table. The invoice line is the table. If a blog post and your order disagree, the order wins. That is the only scalable answer to “ebay fees australia.”

What to do after you see the $22

1. Price postage like a cost, not a gift, unless the item price already ate it.
2. Cap promoted listings on thin SKUs.
3. Track fees as charged, not as a cell named fee_rate.
4. Re-source from the items that still print money after the table above.

Flippedit is the software for step 3 and 4: $39 AUD a month or $299 AUD a year, with a free 7-day trial. Start free 7-day trial and open your last $50 sale. If it still looks like $50, you are not looking at true profit yet.