Should I try for a top seller account?

Hey guys I have been selling a few products on Ebay averaging about $3 profit per sale after all my various fees. The items are really cheap (selling for $5) but require about 30 minutes of manual labor to assemble. (I basically have to build various things from parts I ordered wholesale). I have some competition in the niche my current rating is about 50 and my largest competitor is over 1,000. He has a top rated sellers account (all sales from niche) and I was wondering if it will be worth it to target one. My profit margin is already low considering how long it takes to assemble the product, its basically working for minimum wage if not lower. If I want to achieve a top sellers account I will need to add tracking numbers to each product I sell and at only $3 profit I don't know how much more I can afford to cut into my profit considering each sale requires manual labor. I wanted to ask people who are top sellers here if the TSA would be worth it. I am leaning towards yes because my competition already has one but I just don't know. Will I see a dramatic increase in sales? I want to squeeze as much monthly profit out of this niche as I can.

The nice thing about being a top rated seller on ebay is your not so restricted and limited.

You can have higher selling limits and not the lousy $1,000 dollars or 10 items a month.

You dont have the 21 day holding policy.

You can list 1 day auctions if you want too.

I would go for it!

Best Wishes.

At the moment I can list either $5,000 worth or 100 items per month, I will be opening my Ebay store soon which I believe raises this number. Also I use the buy now feature instead of doing auctions. Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, there are a lot of benefits to being top rated seller. You should really strive for it. Good luck!

The main benefit to being top rated seller is the ability to purchase featured first to advertise your products. You could continue what you're doing now and scale it up a bit more to qualify for top rated seller status. Once you're there you can branch out and sell other products that are in demand but have the added advantage of being able to purchase featured first and almost guaranteeing a good level of exposure.

I list digital stuff that has to be sent through email. Ebay has made me a top rated seller yet in another account I hold (that they are aware of) they constantly create restrictions on me so I dropped this account. I think top rated seller status puts you in the light, but thats not always good.

Im sorry....But why in the hell would you pick something to sell that you only make $3 profit on, but costs you 30 minutes of your time to assemble? Power seller or no power seller, you will never make any money. If you are lucky enough to get 16 orders a day, you have wasted your entire day putting this stuff together to make $48.00? Thats $6.00 an hour? I dont care who you are, or what your capacity is....thats a complete waste of your time.
Slash the price a buck, make 2 bucks profit and say assembly required and let them spend 30 minutes assembling there own damn product and get other stuff to sell. If you are in USA and need stuff to sell...I will send you a manifest and you can help me out....I'll pay you more than $3.00 on a sale and drop it from my location.

^ as a top seller, $3 profit an item is quite a bit, ebay is all about volume and not profit per item. You can only gain high profit per item for high value goods, which usually means less sales. While if you sell many items and gain a low profit each it is much more profit overall, typically speaking.