The flat charge is the argument
Percentage fees do not care whether you sell one lot or fourteen items, because a percentage of the same total is the same number either way. Everything that is charged per transaction does care, and that is where the difference comes from: a fixed processing component, a label, a box, and the minutes spent listing.
On the default figures a flat charge of thirty cents a sale is 2.1 per cent of a $14 item and is paid ten times over rather than once. The page prints what that one line alone contributes to the gap, because it is usually the single largest reason a lot of cheap items is worth bundling and a lot of expensive ones is not.
Listing separately does not mean selling everything
The comparison people run in their heads is fourteen times fourteen against the lot offer, which is $196 against $95 and looks decisive. It assumes every item sells. On a seventy per cent sell-through it is ten sales, not fourteen, and the four that did not sell still consumed their listing time and still have to leave the house somehow. Once the labels, the fees and the time are taken off, the ten sales leave $29.60 and the single $95 listing leaves $50.12.
The table at the bottom holds the lot column still and moves only the sell-through, and it moves the answer a long way. A bundle either happens or it does not; there is no partial version of it, which is precisely the certainty you are being paid less for.
The hours are a real number, not a feeling
Fourteen listings at nine minutes is 126 minutes; the bundle is thirty-five. The page prints the difference — an hour and a half — and what that extra time produced before your own labour is charged on either side, which on the defaults is $8.47 an hour against the $22 you said your hour was worth. That single line usually settles it. Nobody sits down intending to spend an evening photographing kitchen utensils, but that is the shape of the decision, and it is worth seeing the rate before rather than after.
One thing the arithmetic cannot capture is that the separate route pays out over months while the lot pays out at once. If the cash matters sooner, the holding cost of the slower route belongs in the comparison too.
Related pages
Online store profit takes a single order apart properly, including who pays the shipping. Dimensional weight is where the bundle label figure should come from, since one large box is frequently priced on its size rather than its weight. Holding cost prices the months the slower route takes, and the buy price ceiling works backwards to what the lot was worth buying for in the first place.
Questions people ask
Why does the fixed per-sale charge matter so much?
Because it is charged once per transaction rather than once per dollar, so it scales with the number of sales instead of with the money. Ten sales pay it ten times and one bundle pays it once. On a $14 item that flat component is a visible percentage of the sale; on a $200 item it disappears. This is the whole reason lots of small cheap things and lots of large expensive things behave like different businesses even on identical percentage terms.
What sell-through should I assume for the separate route?
Your own, and lower than you think. The comparison that talks people into listing everything separately is the one that quietly assumes all of it sells. In practice a proportion sits, and those items cost their listing time regardless and then cost something again to get out of the house. Run the table at the bottom rather than fixing on one figure, because it shows exactly how much of the separate route advantage depends on the assumption.
Should I count the same minutes per item for a big lot as a small one?
Usually a little less per item on a large lot, because the photographs get set up once and the description gets copied. The field takes a single figure so use a realistic average for a batch of this size rather than the time the first item took. If the items differ a lot from each other, the average is doing more work than it should and the honest move is to split the lot into two groups and run the page twice.
Is one big box always cheaper to ship than several small ones?
Not always, which is why the bundle label has its own field instead of being calculated from the single-item figure. A large light box can be priced on its dimensions rather than its weight, and a heavy lot can cross into a different handling category entirely. Get the actual figure for the actual box from your own carrier account and put that in. The dimensional weight calculator on this site works out billable weight from dimensions and a divisor you supply.
Does the page account for getting the money sooner?
Not directly, and it is a real difference. A bundle pays out once, now; fourteen separate listings pay out over whatever period they take to clear, and the last ones may never pay out at all. If that timing matters — because the cash is going straight into the next buy — the holding cost calculator on this site prices the months, and the figure it produces belongs on the separate side of this comparison. The arithmetic here treats both routes as if they finished on the same day.