Commissions can really eat up into your profits. I should have looked at this much before I started trading actively. But, looks like Etrade is not the best place to do active trading (or at least buy-write) with the amount I am trying to trade. I looked up at the commission of other traders and looks like Interactive Brokers is the most competitive out there.

On etrade, I ended up paying about $41-$42 while doing buy-write if the options were assigned. While for the same amount, IB offers commission of about $4. Thats substantially less.

But, as always, there is a catch. The catch is that minimum balance is $10,000 and there is a monthly fee of $10 which is charged in an interesting way. If the total commission paid is greater than $10 in a month, there is no fee. Else, the fee is $10 - total commission paid. So, Even if I do 3 buy-writes in a year, I will be even with what I am paying right now.

I will be maintaining some long term investments in etrade but I guess once I have the account open with IB that allows me to write options, I will start using this for all active trades.

If you want to evaluate brokers I would recommend comparing how much you will end up spending on trading commission + fees one month on every broker you evaluate and pick the best one.