Selling on an online marketplace brings more competition than most sellers are used to. Don’t get caught up in the “race to the bottom.” Always make sure you price your cards to make a profit: not to make a sale. To experience prolonged success on TCGplayer, take the following pricing ideas into consideration when listing your inventory.

1. Understand the costs of your inventory and materials.
   
   All of your inventory and materials come at a cost, even what you already owned when you started your online business. Take the time to understand those costs, as well as anticipate what your future costs will be for both inventory and materials. Review our shipping guidelines to get an idea of what shipping materials you’ll need. Price these out and then make sure your pricing covers your costs. To make sure the cost of inventory is covered, determine what percentage of a card’s market price you can pay to acquire it and then still make a profit.
   
   
2. Understand your labor costs.
   
   When you work for yourself, don’t forget to pay yourself. Remember that your time is valuable; you should be paying yourself for the time and energy you put into running your business. Take the time to understand the value of your own labor, and remember to factor that into your pricing decisions. A sale should not only feed your next inventory purchase, but also provide an amount of money for you to take home. Figure out the percentage of each sale that will go to paying yourself, and price accordingly.
   
   
3. Create pricing rules.
   
   Rather than pricing each piece of inventory by itself, create rules that apply to larger parts of your inventory. This lets you price your inventory faster and more consistently. Once you’ve become a Level 4 seller with access to the Pricing tab, use CSV files to easily apply any pricing formulas you’ve written. Or, opt in to Pro Seller by TCGplayer, and use MassPrice to easily apply pricing rules to your whole inventory. Using pricing rules will not only save you time, but a well written set of rules will help ensure that any sale made is making you money.

At the end of the day, each seller will have different costs to take into account. Remember to stick to pricing that makes you money. If this means not always being the best price on the market or letting someone else make the first sale, that’s OK –– making a profit will allow you to find long term success.