EBay Selling Tips

Ebay is a worldwide used online auction site. Sometimes to start to sell on a site like this is quite daunting, so I have put together some EBay selling tips to help you get started and hopefully to help you make some money.

If you are still thinking of ideas of what you could sell to make money, just stop, look around your home and see what you think you don't need or want anymore. Clothes, books, media, shoes, plates, china, ornaments, paper, pens, picture frames, toys. Look around to see what you think you could sell. If you are not sure if it would sell, search for it and see if anyone else is selling it, if they are then you can too!

EBay selling tips would not be complete with out payment advice. Buyers can pay by various methods, check, postal order or PayPal. By far the easiest way is PayPal so I would highly recommend setting up a PayPal account for this. It is the safest way to buy and sell for both the buyer and the seller.

There are costs involved in eBay and you need to keep track of what you are spending out so that you know what profit you are making, here is a list of the costs involved:

Item cost
Listing and reserve fees
Feature fees
Final Value fee (if the item sells).
Auction Management Service (if you use one).
Credit card or PayPal service fees
Internet service or DSL fees
Shipping costs and materials

Think carefully about the title of your item. If someone is searching for a particular, item you have to think what they may type into search for. For instance "blue jumper" Is a very vague description, but "Perfect condition ladies blue jumper size 12" would attract a lot more visitors. Also try to include the brand name and people often search for brands.

One of the most important one of the eBay selling tips is to ALWAYS include a picture of what you are selling. Most buyers will not buy an item with no picture. Also, you will almost double the money you make if you list the picture in the gallery view, this is only 15p but many buyers will only look at auctions with a gallery picture. Items with no gallery picture are often deemed invisible.

Books, CDs and DVDs and other media have ISBN or UPC numbers, if you add this into your item description then eBay will put a picture in for you of the cover of the item and also a lot of the other information about the item.

Do some research on the item you are selling, find out the retail value and include that in the information about your item. If the buyer knows the retail value you are more likely to get a better price for it. Look up other eBay auctions selling the same items as you, see how much they are going for and what they sell for, you can gauge interest that way.

You need to find out which category to put your item in, you can do this by eBay's recommended or you can choose your own. For an extra free you can put it in a sub category also. Make sure you think carefully about the category and search other items similar to yours to see what category they are listed in.

If you are still unsure about how much to list your item for then you can always start it at a low auction price and put a reserve price on it so that it can't go for under that price. The buyer will not know what the reserve is until they get to it, but for your peace of mind you will know that you will get the price you want. If you start bidding higher you are much less likely to get any bids at all.

Make sure you weigh your item and work out the shipping costs, don't forget to add the weight for the packaging. You can charge a flat rate for shipping so make sure this is clear in your listing. Make sure you don't put your postage costs too high as this can scare off potential buyers. If there are two items both going for the same amount, the one with the cheaper postage will be more likely to get more bids.