Beginners Guide to Selling on eBay

Times are tough for a lot of people right now and many are looking for ways to supplement their income during this challenging time. One of the ways I have supplemented mine over the years is by selling items on eBay. It can be daunting learning the ins and outs of successfully making money on eBay and there are hundreds of articles on how to do it with many conflicting opinions and processes.

I ran a successful eBay store for many years, and it was my primary income for a long time. I have put together a comprehensive guide to making money on eBay.

What is the first step to selling on eBay?

The very first thing you need to do is establish what it is you will be selling. The top-selling items feature is an excellent resource that will show you where buyers are spending most of their money on the platform. If you already know what items you will be selling, this tool will help you understand how your offerings will fit in. It will also give you information on how top sellers are marketing their inventory to the millions of eBay customers.

The next thing you need to do is set up an eBay account. There are two types of accounts, personal and business. Unless you have an established brick and mortar or online business already, I would opt to start with a personal account. You can always upgrade to a business account as your business grows. Personal accounts are for casual buying and selling and business accounts tend to be for sellers that have either bought or made items exclusively for resale or sale and that sell a large number of items on a regular basis. I started as a personal seller and once I had established a clientele, I switched to an eBay business account. The benefit to that is that the fees on a personal account are less. They are transactional as opposed to monthly. It is a good idea to read up on the fees eBay charges before you begin. This will give you some clear insight into what your items should be priced at and how much profit you will make.

Once you transition to an eBay store, there are monthly store subscription fees. There are four tiers to choose from. The benefit to having a store, is you get more listings with zero insertion fees and pay a lower final value fee than sellers that don’t have a store. The subscription fees for a store vary greatly. From my own experience, it is a good idea to start with the lowest tier and work your way up as your selling and profits increase.

How do I choose an eBay name and how do customers pay me?

The next most important factor to selling on eBay is to choose an eBay username. It is important that the name reflect the items you are selling. For example, a top-selling eBay store that sells books is called thrift.books. You want people looking for your items to be able to find you easily.

The next thing to consider is how you will pay the eBay fees and get paid by eBay when your items sell. The easiest way to do this is to set up a PayPal account. PayPal has two types of accounts, business and personal. If you do not have an official business, I would personally suggest against opening a business account. The potential downside to that is that with a personal account you will be showing your buyers your legal name as opposed to a business name. If that is a concern for you, then you will want to set up business accounts for both PayPal and eBay.

When you are the seller with PayPal, you incur fees for using it. The buyer does not incur any fees. The current fee is 2.9% plus 0.30 per transaction. Yes, this might seem high but remember that every store pays fees for payment methods, even the credit and debit cards that we have known and grown to love. It is a cost to doing business and something to consider when you are pricing items for sale.

Now I have a store and payment method, what now?

Next, it is time to do some research on the pricing. Before you list any items for sale, it is a good idea to do some market research. I always check eBay for current listings of a similar item before I decide on a price. You can set something up to sell as either an auction-style listing or a fixed price sale. An auction allows buyers to bid on items and the price goes up incrementally on every bid. Fixed price is exactly what it sounds like. You pick a price and the item will sell for that price only.

The benefit to fixed price is that it gets indexed and therefore searched on Google. The other benefit to buying it now (or fixed price) is that it has unlimited visibility until the perfect buyer sees it. Auctions come and go on either a 3, 7- or 10-day schedule and that may not be enough time to reach enough buyers to sell the product.

I personally think that auctions are great for a quick sale of a high demand item but to have a thriving eBay business, fixed price auctions are the way to go.

Now it is time to list your item.

The eBay platform will prompt you through the selling process. It has a quick listing tool which allows sellers to type in the title of the article for sale and it finds a list of categories to list under. Always be specific for the item sold, for example, if you are selling a brand-new, with tag pair of Nike shoes, an effective title would be “NWT Men’s Size 10 Nike Air Galaxy S10 Shoes, white”. You want to make sure that whatever the product is, you list the name, size, model number and condition in the title. If there is room, you can list the color as well.

In the description of the product, be as detailed as possible. Are there flaws with the product? Is the tag attached or missing? Are they worn or new? What are the dimensions and size? Does it need batteries or are they included? Is it packaged? What accessories are included? What model, year, make is it? And so on. The more details you list, the better the chance that it will sell.

Pictures are a particularly important aspect to selling on eBay and it is imperative that you have clear, bright, high-resolution pictures of the item to add to the listing. Take a picture from every angle, including identifying features such as tags and identifying markings. Each listing should have 12 pictures that are taken of the item with a white or neutral backdrop and soft and gentle lighting. Your pictures should be uncluttered, and the item should fill as much of the frame as possible. Don’t try to hide or lie about imperfections, this will just result in poor customer feedback scores and that will result in fewer sales.

You will need to decide shipping fees or use the automatic shipping calculator provided by eBay on each listing. I personally have mixed listings some of them is free shipping, also I have listings where buyers need to pay for shipping. I am trying different strategies before to decide should I have free or paid shipping for a particular item. Always consider overall profit before making that offer. You will need to decide if you will offer returns or not as well. I personally have 30 days return policy on all of my products, and I made sure to show as many pictures and list as much as I could about each item. I also answered every question from every potential buyer in a timely fashion. Remember, customer trust is what creates sales. Take the time to answer someone’s questions and to send additional pictures if they require it.

You’ve sold your first item, now what?

As soon as an item has sold and has been paid for, you need to make sure to get it packaged and shipped out. Time is of the essence for this as the customer feedback score will, in part, be based on shipping times. You want to make sure that you communicate to your customer the day it was shipped and if there is a tracking number or not. I also liked to add a personal thank you card in each package along with a business card once I had an established business.

eBay trust is developed through customer feedback scores and I found that going the extra mile for customer service made all the difference in a 5-star rating. A little attention goes a long way in the long run.

Some other things to consider as you venture into the world of online eBay sales is how you can maximize marketing for your eBay store. Posting items to your social media or blog, for example, can widen your audience. You also want to consider the time of year that you are selling items, for example, January might not be the time to start listing all those Christmas items you have available.

One last thing to consider is the return address on the parcel. It might benefit you to have a PO box as the return address that way if something does get lost in the mail, it will still get returned and will also keep your home address a secret from your clients.

In Conclusion

Selling on eBay can seem overwhelming and intimidating at first but with the proper research and steps, you can have a successful eBay business. It may take a little bit of time and patience to build momentum, but there is nothing quite like eBay in online marketing. In other words, taking the time to find an effective strategy for your business will likely pay off in the end.