You’re probably wondering what profit method I use with my Selling Assistant service, and I’m happy to tell you. However, understand that I’m not telling you to sway you one way or the other but rather because it feels dishonest not to be upfront about exactly what I do, especially since you were likely curious. Your experiences with either fees or commissions may be totally different to mine, so please don’t take this as my recommendation that you go one way or another, that is still entirely up to you.

I exclusively charge a commission of 20% on the final sale price of items I sell for SA clients. I know this rate is lower than average—I’ve seen many who charge 35% or more—but I’m careful about what clients I take on, and 20% works for me. I used to charge a $1 per item in addition to the commission, but clients routinely complained about it, so I dropped it. That extra $1 an item wasn’t worth losing customers over.

The main appeal of a commission to me has always been the trust factor. A client is less likely to argue with me if an item sold for less than they’d hoped for because they understand that I had as much at stake in it selling for more as they did. Obviously, I would have gotten a higher price if it had been possible to increase my own profit. It changes the SA-to-client relationship to more of a partnership where we are in it together, our destinies tied to the same final sale price. But I can tell you from personal experience, it’s very easy to get burned when items that were a lot of work to list don’t sell for much. Research, realism and knowing when to say no to items are your best defense against this.