The Agony of PayPal Fees
Let me start off by saying that I think the world of PayPal. If it were not for this service, my freelance writing career would never have taken off. But with that being said, PayPal frustrates the heck out of me each and everyday. How so, you may ask? Simply put, I am tired of getting hit with fees each time that I receive a payment. While I know that this is there way of making money, it costs me hundreds of dollars each month.
PayPal charges several levels of fees, but most of us fall into the “PayPal Standard Rate†category. If this is the type of account that you have, you will be charged 2.9% plus $.30 on each transaction. For example, if you receive a $100 payment you will net $96.80; assuming that there are no cross border fees.
My biggest problem is when I receive large payments such as those close to $1,000. For these, I am docked with a fee of nearly $30! Sure, this is still better than waiting for a check, but that is a lot of money for a transaction that is done the same way as a lesser one.
Just as my freelance writing income fluctuates, so do the amount of PayPal fees that I incur monthly. But for the most part, I lose approximately $200/month. When looked at on a yearly basis, these fees total $2,400 or so; which is not a small chunk of change by any means.
It would be nice to have an online service similar to PayPal that buyers and sellers could use free of charge. But when it comes down to it, PayPal has always been the top dog in this industry, and probably always will be. Unless you want to wait around for checks to arrive in the mail, PayPal is your best option. It is no fun to find out that they are taking hundreds of dollars from you each month, but in the end, it is a service that online entrepreneurs have come to use on a regular basis.
