Here's an Overstock Auctions Fee Calculator I wrote to help people calculate all the fees and profit they can expect when selling on Overstock Auctions. Overstock Auctions is getting bigger and bigger each day and I know a lot of people are switching over from eBay because the fees are so much lower. Since they have a fees page but no fee calculator on their site I decided to make one.

This calculator is divided into two parts. On the right side you have the actual fee calculator itself where you enter your item's opening and closing price and it tells you what your fees are, and on the left you have optional stuff like listing upgrades and choosing whether or not to include any payment processing fees. Since not everyone accepts PayPal and Overstock actually recommends the use of O-Auctions Checkout instead of PayPal, there's an option for that as well. First, you get to choose whether or not you even want to include these fees, and then you are given the option of editing it's fee rate to any amount of your choosing. O-Auctions Checkout offers a slightly lower fee rate than PayPal, but to use them you have to pay a monthly fee of $24, so you have to decide which is more cost effective for you.

I've also included a way for you to edit the different fee rates used by the calculator. Just click on the approriate Edit link to view and edit all of the different fee rates for that category. I added this feature just in case Overstock ever feels like changing their fee rates and I don't get around to updating the calculator or you simply want to view Overstock's fee rates in a table. This also makes the calculator open-ended so you can enter in the fee rates of any third-party service or company.

On the right side of the calculator is where you enter your item's opening and closing price, and optionally a shipping & handling amount. Your Shipping & Handling is the amount you charge your buyer for shipping and handling. Your Cost of Postage is the amount you actually pay to ship your item. By default, the calculator will assume these two amounts are the same and so whenever you enter an amount into the Shipping & Handling box it will mirror it into your Cost of Postage box, unless you specifically decide to change it.

Once your fees are calculated you can click on the arrow next to the word Overstock Fees to see a breakdown of your fees. You can see how the calculator arrived at that amount by viewing your individual Insertion Fees, Reserve Fees, Listing Upgrade Fees, and Closing Fees. There's also a checkbox next to your Closing Fees in case you don't want to include them in your total fee amounts (for example if your item didn't sell).

Below that you can see your Payment fees (from PayPal or any other payment processor you may be using), and below that your total profit from the auction. Your total profit is what you have left over after everything is said and done. It starts first with the total amount your buyer sent you, then it subtracts all of your Overstock fees, all of your PayPal fees, and finally your actual cost of postage (if any). By knowing your total profit ahead of time you can decide whether or not it's worth it to list your item.

In addition to calculating your fees in the normal way I've also included a way for you to calculate your fees in reverse. This works similarly to my Reverse PayPal Calculator. Here, instead of the calculator telling you what your fees are, you tell the calcuator how much you want to receive after fees and the calculator tells you what price you would need to set your item at to receive that amount. Alternatively, it can tell you what to set your shipping & handling amount to so that after all your fees have been deducted you can actually receive the amount you want.

Here's a simple example, if I sold an item on Overstock Auctions for $20 and I accepted PayPal, I would pay $1.00 in Overstock fees and $0.88 in PayPal fees, leaving me with $18.12 in profit. But what if I wanted to receive $20 in profit? By entering $20 into the reverse calculator it tells me I would need to set my item's price to $22. Just to verify that, we can use our normal Overstock fee calculator. On a $22 auction you would pay $1.06 in Overstock fees and $0.94 in PayPal fees leaving you with exactly $20 after fees.

But let's say we didn't want to change the price of our item. Let's say we wanted our item's price to stay at $20 and we knew our actual cost of postage was $4.50. Now if we enter $20 into the reverse calculator, it says all we have to do is set our shipping & handling amount to exactly $6.57. If we plug those amounts into the calculator ($20 opening/closing price, $6.57 Shipping & Handling, and $4.50 Cost of Postage) we can see our Overstock fees are $1.00 and our PayPal fees are $1.07 leaving us with exactly $20 in profit. Just remember when using the reverse calculator that to receive the amount you want you can either increase the price of your item or increase the amount you charge for shipping & handling, just don't do both.

As of the time of this writing, January 27 2009, the calculator has been updated with the latest, most up-to-date Overstock Auctions fee rates, but it's always a good idea to check out the official Overstock Auctions fee pages every now and then just to make sure you're using the latest rates.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas for the calculator I would love to hear them. Just leave a comment on this page or e-mail me directly and let me know!

Previous Versions

Version 1.0 (March 21, 2008)