Across row 24 we have various potential prices.
This is a stalwart Excel tool for financial modeling - which is a fancy term to describe what we are doing by trying to make a buck on eBay! Preparing the data tableĪ data table will allow us to compare what profits result from various combinations of price and postage costs. That’s precisely what we are going to do, using two-way data tables. It’s like we want to compare several combinations of each of the two at once! There is a lot of information to keep in mind as we enter in new data and try to memorize the results as we compare them. However, this feels like we are “walking and chewing gum,” by trying to balance the competing interests of sales price and cost of postage. We could of course just do this by keying in figures of interest and seeing “how the cookie crumbles:”
We want to experiment with what levels of pricing and shipping costs lead to a profitable outcome. Our very simple shipping model is set up. You can name a cell by clicking inside the box to the left above the worksheet and typing over that cell’s respective reference ( B1, in this case).ĭouble-check and toggle between these named cells by clicking the drop-down button in this menu: Each calculated cell’s formula is displayed next to it, courtesy of the FORMULATEXT()function:Įxpecting to see cell references and not words in cells B6and B8? I named these cells SalesPrice and PostageCost, respectively. We’ll also add some “fixed costs” for the cost of packaging supplies such as a mailer, paper and ink. These will be our “variable input” cells that can change and drive the rest of the model. Let’s keep things simple here by focusing on the sales price, cost of item sold, and cost of postage. What a dilemma! Let’s use Excel to plot a course forward.Įven something as simple as shipping a package on eBay can include multiple costs and inputs. So, you want to “bake this into” the final selling price to some extent while still pricing the item at a level someone will actually pay for. Consumers more or less expect free shipping nowadays, so it’s easy not to factor this into the final tally and end up losing money (not to mention your precious time, which I am sure you would rather not spend in line at the post office). If you’ve ever sold online before, you know the cost of shipping is literally a “make-or-break” input in profitability. I’ve been a dilettante in eBay sales since college and, wanting to add a little more rigor to what I sell and how to price it, looked to the spreadsheet for guidance.
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