eBay is one of the worst and biggest online marketplaces out there with more than 150 million users buying, selling and bidding every day. From books and clothes to vintage film cameras and baseball gloves— it is like a cave of wonders where you can get anything on sale.
However, you might probably think:
Is selling on eBay worth your time?
The answer? A big, fat YES!
Successful entrepreneurs in eBay started small stores and generate a steady income flow in order to replace their full-time jobs. And if you do not plan on quitting your job, selling items on eBay can provide you with additional incomes, plus it helps de-clutter your home!
And that is not even the best part yet!
You do not need to invest money or have an upfront inventory before you start earning. You only need a strong Internet connection and your laptop!
So, are you ready to give eBay a selling chance?
Here’s how you can start selling on eBay today!
1. Pick Your Marketplace
Choose whether you would like to have a localized version with payments made in your country’s currency or go global and use international ebay.com with payments made in US dollars. Do not forget that you will have to cover the shipping fees as well, so you might want to start selling locally first.
2. Set Your Business Account
Brainstorms an easy to remember, yet catchy business name. Then, include your contact phone number, email, and address details. Next, add your PayPal account in order to receive payments.
3. Get Verified
Complete the ID verification process of eBay which only takes less than 5 minutes in order to pass through various restrictions imposed to new sellers.
4. Create Your First eBay Listing
Good news for beginners like you, eBay has a simplified and east listing process. Nowadays, new sellers do not need to know certain details about a particular product or its price. They can just look up products using the item’s ISBN or UPC, then eBay will be the one to fetch the detailed information, provide a stock photo as well as suggesting a price. However, you will have less help if you are selling unique products or used clothing.
5. Add More Photos
Forgetting to add more photos is an amateur mistake. By having multiple pictures, your listing will be more distinguished from the rest and increase your chances of getting a sale. Even though eBay can provide stock photos. Buyers would love to see the real product.
Keep in mind that eBay can host up to 12 images without charge cans stores the picture for 3 months which allows the seller to easily reuse them for similar products.
6. Set A Reasonable Shipping Price
There are some eBay categories which have maximum shipping costs. For instance, DVDs are capped at $3 and textbooks have a maximum shipping fee of $4. These prices will reflect what the sellers are willing to pay. If you are listing a product in a category which does not have a specified shipping cost, then you need to provide a reasonable price base on what it actually cost in order to ship the product.
It would be better if you can offer free shopping. Buyers are very much drawn to free shipping. As a matter of fact, eBay even allows filter searcher in order to show products without any shipping costs.
7. Manage Your First eBay Listing
For the most part, if you submitted a listing on eBay, the product will sell itself. Sometimes, however, the potential buyer asks questions about the product. You need to answer questions— either publicly or privately— in order to push a sale. I recommend that you reply to question publicly it can help other buyers with the same question and prevent repetitive answers.
8. Shipping Your First eBay Product
Yey! You made sale!
Now, you need to send it to your customer. Ship the product as soon as possible after the payment is made.
Just remember, you can win an auction, however, it does not mean that you are already paid. You need to wait for eBay to confirm the payment then you can proceed with shipping.
New seller of eBay usually waits within 3 weeks for payment sot be released y PayPal. However, this wait is shortened when a buyer submits positive feedback or confirmed item delivery. You should know that payments will not be held after there are 20 positive ratings in a 12-month period.
