A way to make a fast buck (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: dannybwoii

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	07/01/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Items are easy to sell and a lot of people using the site to buy goods.

Disadvantages: Costs money to advertise, you need a paypal account to use

I first joined ebay in 05 and then never returned to the site until 2008. The changes that have taken place during this time have been pretty dramatic, the first of which is the increase in fees, which i shall get round to later.

Ebay is an online auctioning site where you can buy or sell almost anything (within the rules), the benefit of this is that for something you may have thrown away you could potentially sell it for cash on ebay. Ebay has grown dramatically over the years and so the amount of people who use ebay has increased ten fold. This allows for the item you are selling to be viewed by a massive number of potential buyers.

It is very easy to place an item up for sale on ebay, you simply add a title, brief description, an image of the item you are selling, then a starting price and how long you would like to run the auction for. Everything is clearly outlined on the 'Sell an Item' page. For those people who want a more advanced auction page they can add multiple images, further information and even set a fixed price on the item. For those people who are buying goods from ebay, it is even easier all you need is an ebay account and paypal account and simply click 'Buy it Now' on the item for sale or alternatively be the highest bidding winner, then proceed to pay through Paypal.

Going back to the advantages of using ebay, one of which being that so many users can potentially view your item and bid, this could result in either two outcomnes depending on the popularity of your item, sometimes you can actually get MORE than the RRP or estimated value for an item because 2 or more bidders are in a war to win it. Then other times you could end up selling something for much below it's value (this can be avoided by setting a reserve price) the second option is less likely now as because there is such a large user base it's much harder to find a true bargain as someone is always prepared to pay just a bit more.

Returning to the issue of fees, my only negative thoughts on ebay is that they can charge a fair wack on items that you sell, the advertisement fee can cost from 10p upwards and then they charge from 7% of the final value fee depending on the value and category of sale for example motor, electronics so forth. Then lastly you MUST use paypal to process the payment (who are owned by ebay) and they then take a handling fee and then can hold your money for up to 21 days if you are a new user. So essentially they do hold a monopoly over the sellers and make a handsome sum from your goods. If the idea of paying money to sell your own items does not sit well with you, there are a number of free to use sites across the internet but are much smaller in terms of people using the site.

Summary: Although it costs you a bit to use the site, you may sell your item for slightly more using ebay.