eBay Trading without Tears: seller tips (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: nimue

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	20/03/02 (1686 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: risk-free trading, can build business at own rate

Disadvantages: none that I have noticed

I am by no means anywhere near becoming an eBay millionaire, but I am making a couple of hundred pounds profit a month by spending a few hours each week putting up things for sale. I do this in addition to working full time as well as building up a freelance business, so the time I can give to it is limited. There are people who make a living just from selling eBay, and this might possibly be an opportunity for you with time. However, in this op I just want to share a few tips with you on trading, which apply to any volume of sales.

1. Building up your business

Before you start selling, make a few purchases. This will give you the opportunity to get to know the eBay site and how the whole system works. One of the first things you will notice is the feedback process. Each time you complete a trade, either as a buyer or as a seller, you are invited to give feedback on the other person. Each positive comment you receive brings you a point, while negative comments get points taken away. However, only one feedback from each individual user counts as a point, although additional comments for subsequent transactions are also listed. A user?s id shows the number of points they have received as a number in brackets. If you click on the number, you will be taken to a page that lists the comments they have received. This lets you check very easily on a person?s credibility as a buyer and/or seller. Don?t be too harsh on someone who has a few negative comments. I have not received any as yet, but obviously misunderstandings can sometimes happen. If a seller has 100+ positive comments, and only one or two negative ones, do not hold that against them. Your first buying experiences can be fun and bring you some good deals. I bought a much-coveted laptop for a very good price in my first ever transaction on eBay.

Start off selling a few unwanted things you or your family already have lying around the house. Now is your chance to get rid of all those pr
esents you wish you had never received! Again, this gives you a chance to test out whether you like being a seller, and whether you can cope with all this involves: emailing the buyers, packing up the goods, going to the post office, going to the bank to pay in your cheques :) :) , filling in feedback forms. Also, by selling what you already have, you can start to build up a fund to use later for purchasing goods for resale. I have never borrowed cash for my eBay business, but have spent the last few months building up the amounts that I am able to invest in stock and gradually moving to selling higher priced goods. If you want to cut costs to a minimum, build up a stock of things to sell and wait until eBay announces a free listing day. On such days, no listing fees are charged, although a final value fee will be charged on anything that sells. Be aware though that thousands will be doing the same, and so there is the risk that your things will be swamped in the huge number of items on offer and thus attract less or no attention.

Think about what you would like to sell. In my opinion it is important to have some knowledge about what you are selling. If you happen to be interested in and like the things you sell, then gaining that knowledge will be a hobby and a pleasure in itself. One of my lines is crystals and mineral specimens. I place the nicest of my stock around my office at home, and enjoy looking at them while waiting to sell them. Have a look through the different categories on eBay. This will give you an idea of what goods are in demand and the sort of prices they fetch.

Find suppliers for your stock purchases. Eventually, you will want to identify some wholesalers, but there are other ways to get your first supplies for very little or no money. If you look carefully at what is offered on eBay, you will see items that are currently on sale in the ?all for a pound? shops going for much more than that in auction. So if you have a sh
op like that near you, have a look for potential stock. Charity shops, jumble sales and similar are another wonderful source. I spend a hour or so once a month on a Saturday morning trawling the local charity shops, and can always count on getting back 5-10 times my investment in profits, often even more. Yes, this is a specific line of goods which is my own little trade secret - sorry! Finding stock in this way will develop your sense of intuition about what will sell and what will not, which will be very useful when start investing larger sums of money.

Once you have gained confidence, start to identify wholesalers from which to buy goods. I was surprised to find that many have relatively low minimum purchase requirements of £60-100. You will notice people on eBay selling CDs that list wholesalers. These might or might not be useful. Some of these can be scams, supplying out of date information about wholesalers in the US, although some do appear to be above board, judging by the feedback comments the sellers receive. You can actually find a lot of wholesalers by searching on the Internet. The way I do this is to search on Google, putting the names of what I want to buy, the word ?wholesale? and the word ?UK? (Which reduces having to wade through pages of search results that list American web sites).

2. The rules of selling.

No matter whether it is your first sale or your millionth, a few rules always apply.

Describe your article accurately. If something you are selling is a bit worn or damaged in places, say so. It is far better to give the buyer a proper description from the start than to make him feel that you have cheated him. If you can possibly provide a picture, do so. Items without pictures do not tend to sell so well. Ideally, you should beg, borrow or buy a digital camera. I have seen some auction pictures taken with webcams; they are usually dire! Some things can be scanned successfully in a scanner: books, c
oins, small items of jewellery, etc. You might prefer to start with this, and then use some of your profits to buy a camera.

Be reasonable in your pricing, but do remember to add on the listing and final value fees you will have to pay to eBay! As a small-scale trader, I don?t think too much about how much I make per hour, but instead think of how much return I?m getting on my investments compared to having the money sitting in the bank. Usually, I can get an average return of about 30-40%, which beats the bank base rate and even the stock market in its present state! I tend to set my starting price at about 25% more than I am paying. If an item attracts a large number of bidders and reaches a silly price, that is a plus. As well as setting a starting price, I do frequently list a ?buy it now? price as well. A buyer selecting B-I-N will get the item for that price and the auction will finish immediately. I set my B-I-N prices to give me a very good return. It is up to buyers to choose whether to risk bidding and maybe losing the auction, or to use B-I-N and be sure of getting the item. In order to use B-I-N, you need to have a minimum feedback rating of 10, but remember that all your purchases on eBay will also count towards this. Also, you need to register a credit card with eBay.

Postage and packing is added on to the final bid price. It is helpful to buyers if you say what it will be in your item description, although you do not need to do so. Some sellers try to boost their profits by not mentioning what p+p will be and then charging an extortionate sum. I?ve been caught that way a few times. It will work once, but that buyer will probably never buy from you again. My experience as a seller is that I used to cheat myself on p+p because I was weighing things on my ancient kitchen scales which tended to underestimate the weight. I have now invested in some accurate digital scales to avoid this.

Be courteous and friendly to your buy
ers even when they email you with a stupid question on a bad day. Most eBayers are very nice people, and treating them like human beings adds to making the cyberworld a better place. If you intend to use a template for emailing buyers, it is good to add a few personal words specific to that particular transaction as well. I also slip a handwritten note into my parcels, thanking the buyer for bidding on my auction.

Be ultra careful with packing your goods for posting. Well-packed items will get you good feedback, and you will not have to worry about replacing breakages. If you intend to sell on a slightly larger scale on eBay, you?ll find yourself paying a fortune for bubble wrap and jiffy bags in high street stationers. However, the office supplies section on eBay can have some good deals. I?ve started buying my supplies from Viking Online who offer very good discounts and free delivery with orders over £30. I?ve also invested in a small paper shredder. My other home business generates quite a bit of paper, and this, combined with the junk mail receive, will provide a further good supply of packing material.

Sell internationally if you can. Obviously this will depend on what you sell, since it is really not economic to send cast iron cookware to the States! However, I do find that a significant portion of my sales do go to buyers from the US and Canada. There is no extra effort to sell internationally. You simply check the box on the item listing to say you are willing to post internationally. The item then appears in all the various national eBay sites.

Offer buyers as many ways to pay as you can. In addition to accepting cash, POs and cheques, I have set up accounts with Nochex (UK only) and Paypal (international), and also registered with eBay?s own Billpoint system for online payments. Paypal and Billpoint are especially useful if you do agree to sell internationally. Occasionally, you will get American buyers asking if they can
send you a cheque. Remember that bank charges for paying in dollar cheques can be high. Ask if they can send a cheque made out in sterling instead, or if they are willing to add on extra to cover the bank charge. My own bank, First Direct, charges £5 for accepting foreign cheques. However, you can pay in any number of cheques up to a total value of £250 and pay just one fee. For this reason, I do sometimes agree to accept dollar cheques for higher priced items. Failing all, ask if they are willing to send you the cash, since a number of places will now change money free of commission.

Do not be discouraged if an item does not sell. eBay can be a very fickle place. Try listing it a few more times and maybe in different categories if applicable (on free listing days perhaps). Eventually, you may have to sell it off at a lower price than you wanted. Comfort yourself by thinking about all the other times when you made a killing, and put it down to the rules of the game.

Technically, any profit you make on eBay is taxable :( Obviously, this is something between you and the taxman! I actually registered myself as self-employed, since I am running another business as well (you can be registered as self-employed even if you are working in full-time employment as well). By doing this, I can claim back the cost of my stock, postage, office supplies, travel to wholesalers, percentage of heating, light, Internet access costs, etc, which lessens the blow significantly.

Finally, remember that you will probably not become rich on eBay, although who knows? However, being an eBay trader is most definitely a fun activity in my opinion. There is nothing better than logging on and seeing that there has been a mad battle between bidders for an item that you doubted you would sell at all. Have a try. If you follow the steps I outlined at the start, you will not be risking much money, and you might find trading an enjoyable way to fund some of the litt
le pleasures in life, as well as being a pleasure in itself. Good luck!

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