Does offering free shipping on ebay sell more?

I'm lucky enough to have other ebay people in my town to bounce ides off of. In fact I belong to a meet-up ebay group here in San Diego.  That's where I met Joe, a fellow ebayer who mostly sells anything worth his time.  He started Free Shipping in October and a few months later he informed me he sells more with Free Shipping.

I had been using the ebay promotional shipping specials with my buyers such as "Spend $49 on 2 or more items get Free Shipping" and the reason why is because when I shop on line I tend to go for deals like that. If it works for Victoria's Secret it can work for Diva Monk.  LOL But I decided to test Joe's experience and try Free Shipping for a few months. So far I think it's working but it could just be a "buying week."

There are two other reasons though that I wanted to try Free Shipping and I think they are important to mention.  First, Pay Pal reports shipping as income.  Paypal is required to report sales to the IRS that are over 20K, this includes your shipping.  When you do your taxes you can later write off the shipping but it's important to know that it is considered income.  Second, I use the Global Shipping program through ebay.  When I charge shipping it's added on to a priority mail flat rate which really ends up being quite expensive for international buyers. If shipping is free to my domestic buyers it also lowers the shipping for my international buyers.  Are these two reasons enough to get me to keep Free Shipping in a few months? We will see.

With all this said, I will be truthful and say Free Shipping scares me for the simple fact that I feel less able to lower prices the longer an item sits in my store.  Make an Offer is also compromised as most people don't factor in the free shipping and make insanely low offers.  Hopefully with Free Shipping things sell quicker. and I don't have to use these two tactics to sell items.  It also scares me in that I am making less, yes I can mark up the retail price but to be competitive there's only so high I can go. If however things sell faster it would be worth it.  So here we go! I will touch on this again in March.