eBay gives you two options essentially you can put your items up for auction. You get to choose from auction durations such as 3 day, 5day or 7day auctions. If you think your item will sell for a great price in a small time frame auctions rule. In 7 days you can have some nice PayPal Cash.
Different opinions exist about the best time to post an auction. I like Sunday night but Friday and Saturday work well too. You can make your auction ahead of time and for ten cents schedule it to start at a time of your choosing.
If your item may or may not sell within 7 days then eBay has a store option. eBay has some nice store features to help run the shop including some downloadable software. eBay charges fees on the store and the items monthly. If you have a lot of items that do not sell this can be very costly.
Ebay and PayPal fees are hefty. Those "small" percentages they take for this that and the other really add up.
Get good at shipping
Shipping items well is a must. USPS has a wide variety of boxes that are free (until you ship them - and then it's one low priority rate). It's handy to have them around. Also some shipping materials like envelopes etc. can be picked up on eBay for a low rate. Try and never buy any packing materials at a retail store if you can help it.
Invest in a good digital scale and print out the shipping rates from USPS. Weighing your item ahead of time and making a good guess at postage can save you a lot of money from, "oops that does cost a lot...." Always use a tracking number on anything related to your business. When you print postage from eBay using their system (which ties into PayPal and PitneyBowes) it automatically charges you the .70 for tracking.
Even if manually shipping an item be sure to have a tracking number put on the package and then type the number into ebay...here is how.
When I log into eBay I first go to my summary which is at the top in the right hand corner. It gives me access to everything that is going on with my account.
From Sold you just need to select MORE ACTIONS to insert a tracking number. The options are really handy, be sure to explore those.
eBay's Carrot and Stick Policies
eBay has as much stick as carrot. It counts neutral feedback the same as it does negative. It asks for feedback in four areas, so if your customer is really happy and gives you four stars - great, but then it asks him or her to rank you in three other areas. Maybe they thought it took a little long to get to them so they hastily give you two stars and move on. Those two stars count big time against you. Yeah, really. Even though the customer isn't complaining it doesn't matter. Another two star count in that area and you get penalized.
What do penalties mean? $
eBay can knock a merchants search results down to the very bottom so that customers no longer see your merchandise at the top. They remove "top rated seller" status. Top Rated Seller and other status goodies give big discounts to merchants are a number of things - that goes away. Sellers have to work three times as hard and pay a lot more when they get bad star ratings.
That 99.7% to eBay means you're not doing good enough. Every seller worries and strives for 100% and prays that they don't get a bad customer. At 99.7% you're in trouble with eBay, here is how little that has to happen for that disaster to occure...
Why sell on eBay?
If you have a niche market that is hard to reach in your community or city like we do, then eBay is a necessary evil and there are no real other choices out there for our business so we have to pay remarkably large fees to do business online, but it's the best way for us to reach customers.
Like a lot of people I have a hobby eBay account where I post odd items here and there for sale and enjoy seeing if they sale or not. Sometimes I lose out big time and end up in the hole, and sometimes I make some money. I keep it around for fun and almost every week find something worthy of throwing up on eBay to sale (apart from our business, which is business!)
Like fishing - eBay gets a little addictive when you make a good sale and everyone leaves happy. The customer has a great deal, you made an unexpected bit of cash. Lots of times after a bad deal I've said never again, only to find myself back.
Finallly....
Always take good photos of your items, and always use your own photos. Stock images don't portray what you are really selling. Definitely don't pull an image from the net.
Also....even if it's garbage, make sure it's not worth a lot.
My husband and I were moving and in the bottom of a pile was a mangled game guide from the early 90's looking pretty bad off. I put it in the toss pile. He came in and luckily saw it laying there. It was worth well over $100 and was quite rare.
A lot of cellphones now will let you scan a barcode and tell you how much an item is worth on eBay. Take advantage and research the technology so you can maximize your profits.
I always think it's funner making money then spending it, and it makes shipping a lot more interesting when you keep an eye out for treasures.
