The worlds largest marketplace (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: wxcat

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	25/09/09 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Huge visibility, Bargains, Worldwide

Disadvantages: High fees, scammers,

EBay, the world's largest marketplace...or so they say! I have been using eBay since I joined in June 2000 so considered a decent term member, I haven't used it constantly since I joined, but do have phases where I do it quite alot. I have just gone 2000 individual feedback this year, with over 99.5% of that being positive. I have also been a bronze powerseller twice during the time I have been on eBay. I've been an approved seller and like a category lead and was poached by eBay to bring in new members in my time. I'll talk about the early years as well as some of my more recent experiences. From everything I've done on eBay I still use it to buy and sell, although sometimes I do think it's getting a little large for itself.

When I joined in 2000 I choose my username emblazoning my website, which I've found out recently is no longer allowed so no intentions to change it as it's pretty unique these days. I started on ebay just before I came to university to buy odds and ends, it wasn't for a couple of years before I agreed to become a seller and I used to sell odds and ends on eBay.

It wasn't without incident in those early days, but I do feel people were generally alot more trustworthy then than nowadays. Back in 2000-2003 you used to just send cash and cheques/postal orders to people. It's only now looking back you realise how open to being scammed you were, but I think I only had about 3 problems in the first five years I was on eBay, only one ended up in me being out of pocket. But then there was no recourse for your money, no Paypal safeguards, no seller protection, no need to send items by track able means. Looking at things more recently, as a buyer paying by Paypal you have every protection as long as you confirmed your address to your bank account or card being used. As a seller you can get hung out to dry nowadays, but you get Paypal seller protection where you use track able delivery to send items to buyers with confirmed UK addresses you can protect from being scammed.

In those early days I used to buy and sell phonecards on eBay and had my own website, and now I realise I because an early part of their affiliate marketing campaigns to sign up all the new members to make it so large. I was being paid £2 for referring new members to eBay at the time, although not a fortune it was nice getting a few extra pounds, and I got lots of visuals for my website from eBay. They've ended they affiliate marketing for signups now and only offer affiliate commission when you buy items off eBay based on the sellers fees. Check any reputable cashback site!

More recently I've sold two items in bulk on eBay, I feel these do give you a real experience of the site, as you have large numbers of transactions to rate you're experience on. Both these times I obtained Bronze Powerseller status which I held for three month. I even received the Powerseller pack from eBay with the certificate telling me I'm a trusted seller. The first items I sold were clothes from an American factory closure (some of you might remember Alien Workshop clothing), they found me through eBay and I bought six huge boxes of clothing, imported it from the USA and sold it on eBay UK through my account. I made a good margin on this, didn't have one problem then (this was 2002) selling over 100 pieces of clothing, but I remember lots of cheques and postal orders, and post offices weren't used to handling eBay posters in those days like they are now. The second time I had powerseller status was through selling projectors, these were pretty nice projectors a few years back when they were still fairly expensive. I did find it more painful trying to sort out secure payment and delivery for expensive items than for anything else I had done before on eBay, and I remember having a long protracted problem with a buyer who had it delivered to the wrong address and tried to blame me.

I also used to have an eBay shop, when they were originally free and later when they were £5.99 a month. I do honestly feel it did really direct more sales to my listings and make people make more than one purchase at a time, as it really pushes people to look through your other listings available at the time. When I had my shop the emphasis was on lots of auctions and less fixed price items, whereas I feel more obliged now to list fixed price items that are instantly buyable rather than making people wait up to 7 days before winning an auction. I definitely feel eBay are pushing this option more and neglecting auctions, I do prefer this is buying though myself at times. Two features which have come out of this push which are really good are Second Chance winners if you have multiple items to sell or if the winning bidder doesn't pay up. And Fixed Price auctions with Best offer choice, giving people the opportunity to offer a fixed price below the asking price and see whether the seller will take the lower offer or wait for a higher offer or the asking price. I have secured discounts up to 30-40% myself by bidding like this, and I got a holiday home this year in Cornwall by doing this, what should have been £1200 for the week came down to £600 in the end.

Another bonus of eBay growing in size has been the selling tools, and especially I've been using the "Selling Manager Pro" with the "Turbo Lister" program on my PC. This gives you the advantage of being able to prepare listings and list at a later date, and of using templates for all you're auctions and just edit the bits you need to rather than rewriting the whole listing. Granted if you used "Sell Similar" when listing an item it keeps all you're formatting from the previous item and makes it easy to create a new listing. I've found saving my listings all up, after creating during the day and listing during the busier evening period does have an impact on the number of sales and value of sales. What you hear about the best time to end items on Thursday and Sunday evenings is correct, and you should look to times between 7-10pm in the evening as most people are online then. Same as if you want to grab bargains log on after midnight or very early morning up to 10/11am and you won't find many bidders about.

What you don't find now in your eBay search unless you specifically ask for them are international items, in the last few years you now need to specifically ask if you want items that are listed on eBay sites outside the UK. I've bought dozens of items from the USA and Hawaii in my earlier years on eBay, but in recent times you have to really look to find the different things you can buy from around the world. There are more items listed now on the UK site and you can find more of what you want from the UK, but what you can find now is lots more items listed in the UK that are from companies based in Asia and China. These are a mixture of items from their native countries, and electrical and clothing from abroad which to be honest is more often dodgy than not, fake or copied items.

The whole eBay trust is based on the feedback model, good buyers and sellers have high levels of feedback. The current system says that buyers can give positive and negative feedback on a transaction, whereas a seller can only leave positive feedback for the buyer. If a buyer doesn't pay up the seller can only open a dispute but can't leave negative feedback about the buyer. This changed last year from the system which has pretty much worked fine for the last 10 years where both sides could leave positive, neutral, or negative feedback about each other. The only pitfall of the old system was after one side left negative feedback you would often get a "revenge" negative feedback, which could be devastating for someone without much feedback already.

Another system of trust for eBay sellers was the Squaretrade link and partnership with eBay, this really boomed in the 2003-2005. Squaretrade required you to have a good feedback and a lack of complaints to be able to join the program, it return you got a Squaretrade seal on your eBay auctions, which would let the buyer engage in a dispute if they had a problem with the transaction and they would ensure the seller was reputable. I do feel that it gave my bidders more trust in buying from me. For the cost of about £60 a year I didn't do too bad with it, I had Squaretrade for 3 or 4 years on my eBay account, they now sell warranties for electrical goods and don't seem interested in helping eBay sellers more reputable.

Getting on the meaty stuff, eBay's fees are still growing and every 6 months they tend to review the rates and fairly often edit them to get more money out of sellers. I have found recently that you need to allow up to 15% of the final price to pay for fees if you use eBay and Paypal for small value items and 10% for larger value items. Paypal charges a standard 3.4% and 20p per transaction. Ebay's fees are more variable, they are separated into tiers, a higher rate up to the first 30% of the final price, the next tier goes up to £750 where the rate lowers, and it lowers again over £750. EBay charges a fee to list your item, put a buy it now on it, sell your item, and then Paypal will charge you to receive your money. Realistically its scandalous how much they charge, but there aren't any other online auction sites that have the amount of users that eBay has.

I briefly mentioned Paypal in the fees section above, Paypal is eBay's preferred payment partner. Now owned by eBay and based in Luxembourg, you even need to accept Paypal to be able to list items in certain categories! EBay don't promote the use of other payment schemes such as Google Checkout even though lots of people can accept it. If you want to read about Paypal I suggest you visit paypalsucks.com, some very informative views on the company. For me Paypal works very well, its an instant payment system, it verifies buyers addresses to bank accounts or bank cards, and lets me withdraw my money straight to my bank account. It was a huge jump from accepting cheques and postal orders that it used to be. You just need to be savvy when using it, the same as anything really.

I'm not going to go into details about some of the things that can happen to you on eBay, I've had a few of them tried on me before (without success!), but there are some very interesting posts and some great advice in the eBay forum on MoneySavingExpert.com and if you ever have a weird or suspicious transaction its worth asking they're advice over there. Beware when selling or buying high value electrical items, mobile phones are a nightmare to sell. Beware buying clothes from abroad, if it looks fake it probably is. And avoid the Nigerian scammers!

Otherwise enjoy eBay, I've bought some wonderful and unique items off there, I don't like to follow the crowd I like to be seen in clothing that hasn't got 2 million copies of it around the world, pick something that was only ever sold halfway round the world that no one else has discovered yet! It's a buyer's marketplace especially these days!

Summary: Grab a bargain