I've known about ebay for years but have only been using it since Summer 2011.
Prior to using ebay, I had very low opinions of the website. I wouldn't be caught dead purchasing something off ebay, nor would I consider selling on there because of the seller fees regardless of sale.

But during summer, I'd had enough of so many unwanted Christmas presents building up in my house, and loads of impulse purchases that have never left their boxes. Going to a car boot sale meant travelling and then paying a £10 fee to set up.

Setting up an ebay account was a very quick and easy process. I also needed to set up a paypal account for transactions over ebay. I found out that each month I would get 100 free "99p or less" auction listings. I thought this was great. Obviously it's not ideal for selling off expensive items though. Despite putting up several listings for free, I still wasn't convinced by it all. Auction listings can be put up between 1 to 10 days. The longer your listing is up, the better chance you have of getting a higher price.

I opted to have my listings up for 10 days. When creating listings, you can create basic ones or more advanced ones with more details etc. Basic ones are easier to create, but advanced ones give potential buyers more information to go on.

Within a few hours of my listings being up, quite a few of them had 'watchers'. These are people who haven't made a bid but are interested in it. Usually they'll wait till there's only a few days left before they place a bid, or wait to see if anyone else bids on it first. I find that watchers are always a good sign as most of the time, they will place a bid.

I'm pleased to say that the majority of my items did end up selling, and for more than the 99p starting price. Paypal take a small fee for every sale, as do ebay, but overall I made about £40 over summer just from selling off unwanted stuff in my house.

I now really like ebay and regularly sell on it whenever I find something that I really don't need anymore.

I have only bought from ebay once or twice and I do recommend it. Obviously you can get some real 2nd hand bargains, but there are so many brand new products on there too. Ebay has now become a haven for many entrepreneurs who want a taste of the buying and selling trade. So if you're looking for perfume, sports gear, cosmetics etc, the chances are you can get it for a very good price from an ebay seller! They tend to buy in bulk and then sell it off, hence why they can offer it to you at a much lower price than some other distributors.

Ebay is definitely a great community to be a part of!