Auction Power Guide

I would like to know how to start selling on eBay and if I need to pay any fees how do I get started can some one help me please? Thank you.

Boy, did you ask the right person! I sell on ebay all the time! First you set up an account. You have to give them either a secured email or a credit card to set it up for identification purposes. (they do not charge your card) Once you set up an ebay account you will have to set up a paypal account at paypal.com in order to accept paypal payments. Paypal payments are preferred by most ebayers since they can pay instantly and so there for get their item faster. Once you have a paypal account going and your ebay account set up all you do is click on sell an item at ebay. You can sell items without a paypal account but they will not go for as much and it will take time for the money to get to you by mail which is a drag. Also keep in mind that it does not cost anything to set up a paypal account either. Another note…when auctioning off items it is best to have them end at around 6.00 or 7.00 at night…they go for more during these hours. If you like my answer please vote for it. thanks

when selling on ebay, how do you know when the winning bidder has payed through paypal?
do you get an email?

You will get an email from PayPal. You can also log in to your PayPal account and see the transaction in your history. It should also show up on eBay as paid or payment in process or something along those lines.

Hi there I just wondered is there anyone out there who has any tips and hints on making a living selling on ebay. Ive heard there are people who do this but I wonder how this is possible. When I look at the various products on sale there dont seem to be many people bidding and it looks quite hard to make a profit. Ive started buying a few items to get positive feedback but when i have say about ten of these where do I go from there?

It is difficult to make a living on eBay!

Most things I sell are used items, but its hard to find what the buyer wants – things that you think will sell or get the highest number of bids, often take the longest time to shift and the things that you think are not so good and won’t get any interest often go for a lot more than you think….

For example…. I make handmade cards, which are really lovely, not giddy and totally worth the money I am asking for them, and yet I struggle to sell them, not because of the price I’m asking, its because people go to the local newsagent or card shop to buy them and don’t think to look for things like that on ebay – on the other hand – I just recently sold a pair of curtains that I was embarrassed to get the money I did for them (not that they were shoddy or anything – perfectly nice pair of curtains) but certainly not worth the 25 dollars someone bid for them! AND just in case you were thinking – the buyer absolutely loved them! sent me an email when she’d received them and gave me awesome feedback!

I personally look at ebay as a way to make a little extra money, when the kiddies have outgrown things, and when I find I no longer use something! I usually put money I earn towards their new seasonal wardrobe (I have 2 young kiddies that are growing like crazy at the moment!) and must admit that it helped at christmas this year too!

I think for you to be able to get a really good living on eBay, you have to have a really good product, a niche in the market, or at least a product that you have enough of that you can get to the top of the page so to speak (eg if you have 100 of an item at buy it now, you will be higher up the page than if you have only 1 of an item to sell!)

Sorry if I sound negative, but just trying to be realistic! The more you sell (or buy) the more accustomed you become to what products are selling and what aren’t! And at the same time, what is worth actually putting on ebay and what is better to just chuck in the bin! I have listed some things loads of times and its got to the point now where even if I sell at a decent price (what the items worth) then I already spent that on listing fees!

Do research! Just have a browse at what you think may sell, and do international searches on both open and closed listings! Its very time consuming, but if you have a product in mind, you can at least see where the land lies!

Good luck with your Ebaying – Hope it all works well for you!

How does a seller get paid selling on Ebay?
I have some things that I want to sell on Ebay. I was told by a friend that I would contact Paypal to set up a way to get paid. Is this true? How does it work.

I got an email from Ebay saying that I can list for free Oct 1-6 and it’s easy to list, sell and ship.

go to both websites and sign-up and wait, go read through the help section about shipping and getting paid and how it all works. Fees too. Get familiar real good, then sell one item to get used to how it works in the real world. Go from there. But read read read read.

Can be very rewarding but be informed first, to make the sales go smooth.

You can also get a paypal debit card which is nice because at the post office or whatever method you choose, you can pay the shipping cost with the card directly from your paypal account. And the buyer pays shipping so that makes it very handy as you can see.

I need to know about how to protect my intellectual property rights before I start selling my own original writings via eBay. I know there is a market out there, but I need tips from smart folks!

Any tips please?
Meg..and why not, miss Meg smartypants??

Meg isn’t too far off the mark. 90% of sales on eBay is done through searching for items. If I’m looking to buy a book I put in the search engine what I’m looking for. Usually by author. Look up some books on eBay and see what they are going for. Even big name authors don’t necessarily sell well.

I’ve walked down that path in the past. You may sell three or four copies…. eventually. But the time and money you have to spend hardly makes it worth the effort. Realize that eBay has fees for selling and PayPal also takes a chunk. Price your work high enough to actually make a profit and no one bids.

eBay also has strict rules about digital delivery and how such items can be listed. I take it you will try to sell ebooks? Put them on disk if you plan to list them on eBay. If you offer to email them to the winner then you have to list them as a Classified Add by eBays rules.

Protection? Forget about it. You can put copyright notices all over it and someone will still copy it and put it on the web somewhere.

It’s not IMPOSSIBLE to make money with a story you are selling yourself but it’s hard. I sold around 200 copies of a story I wrote on eBay but in order to sell it I had to change the entire story and list it in the adult section before I got a single sale. After sales began to drop I did a search and found my story had been posted on a dozen adult sites. I didn’t even bother to demand they delete them. I’d sold all I was going to at that point. I only averaged $1.02 per sale after all the fees.

Did I make a little money? Yeah, but just a little. And I had to completely rewrite the story and ruin it just so I could sell it. It also took about seven months to sell that many. I listened to my greedy side and pretty much destroyed a good story with unneeded sex just for money. I won’t be doing that again. I had to do a lot of work and lower my standards considerably for very little profit.

I know you think you can do it so give it a try. Just don’t be too disappointed if you don’t sell any copies. I have included a link to eBay’s listing policy for digital media.

I haven’t had a traditional job for several years and the only "job" if I could call it that during this time has been selling various merchandise on Ebay. I would like to list this under the "work experience" category of a resume but I don’t know how to do it in order for it to look credible. First of all I would like to know – does selling on ebay count as work? Whether it does or doesn’t, I would really appreciate some tips on how to write it in my resume. Is there a way to phrase it so that prospective employers will see this as a real job?

Sounds to me that you were a small business owner selling items on eBay. You could also be called a broker if you got your items from other sources and then sold them.

You are part of the Internet Commerce Community, which is becoming a growing part of our economy. Just because you did it in the comfort of your own home doesn’t mean you weren’t working.

How many items did you sell, and what profit did you make? The answers to these questions can look very good on a resume, especially if you are looking for work with a company that has an Internet presence, and now days what company doesn’t.

You have had to handle issues like self-employment tax, handling credit card transactions, shipping material to customers and dealing with the public via email. If you are looking for a job in sales then that sounds like some good experience to me.

What is your performance rating; did you have any customers file a complaint against you? If you have a good rating, and that is easy to check on, then that is a good indication of your work performance and your history in dealing with the public, as well as a measure of your honesty and sense of fair play. The longer your history the better an indication that will be.

How did you handle customer complaints? What actions did you have to take to satisfy them? What were their responses afterwards? Did you have any customers that you did a lot of business with, or any companies? Could you ask these people to give you a reference for a future employer? Could they give you a contact number or email so that future employers may ask them questions about you?

Part of making a good resume is being creative enough to make what experience you have look valid, without being caught in a lie. You simply need to think outside of the box and come up with some good ideas. Doing this is a mark of creativity and original thinking and reflects well upon you. You don’t have to tell your employer that you were fired and couldn’t find a job, you only have to say that you needed some time to be at home so you temporarily left the work force. This eBay business you had was only a side line, you always intended to return to the work force and you are interested in working with this company. You still have this business running (or you can easily restart it) the fact that you want to re-enter the work force and obtain a conventional job is just proof that you are eager to work. You have had some time to rest and now you want to get back to work. You are fresh and ready to go. Donald Trump will be the first one to tell you that in business you need to turn your liabilities into strengths. His producers will be the first to tell you that a lot of what you do is in your appearance, your show. What the public (or a future employer) sees should be the best and you want to make anything you did like it was worthy of doing.

We offer a variety of services, including auction assistance on eBay and craigslist – today we were denied a business license because they said we cannot sell items on eBay out of our home – we must have a retail location. There must be a way around this – as MANY have this type business.

Skip the license? That’s actually what one of my business professors advised. Don’t get a license until your level of sales proves you can sustain a business profitably. A state (or city) business license is really just a formality anyway. Yes, you can get fined or even shut down for not having one, and I am not advocating you break the law. And some form of licensing is required in most areas. You will need a reseller number to purchase items at wholesale from some wholesalers. But a reseller number is also the same number as your EIN. I offer this service for $75, email me if you need it.

First, reapply, explain that you are not selling products from your home. You’re not. You are selling products on the internet and all customers arrive soley from the internet, no one ever shows up at your home.

If that doesn’t work you can try a third party – someone who already has a license and offer to share theirs for a percentage of your income.

Next, try a third party provider – a business that supplies city, state and federal registration and licenses. You can find them with an online search.

If all the above doesn’t work, email me, I may be able to help further.

I’m on an auction site that gives me more credits if I auction something off to a buyer, but I don’t really wanna go through all the business with mailing it, or having the buyer pick it up at my house. What are some good things to sell that can be transferred through email? Like Coke Rewards codes, because those are just numbers with no actual objects. Thanks to everyone!

Dirty pictures of yourself?
hard to make money auctioning items if you don’t want to go through the business.

I want to sell an Wallabies Jersey on eBay with a reserve price of $20,000 but i dont want people to see that the reserve is this much. Is there any way i can do this?

Bidders will see that there is reserve pricem but will never see what that price is. Sometimes you will get an email from a potential buyer asking what the reserve price is. It is completely up to you if you want to reveal that info. I have been in this situation both as a buyer and seller.

As you are making your way through listing your item for sale, you will get to the pricing details about 2/3 of the way down the first page. You will be asked about what opening bid you want to set, whether you want to use Buy It Now or an open auction, etc.

Where you are asked set the opening bid, you will see an option to type in your Reserve Price. Just type $20,000 in that box.

I have never sold anything so expensive (unfortunately). Please have a great photo and item description with all info that applies, eg, brand new, excellent condition, etc.

It might be easier to follow the link that the other answerer gave you:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/reserve.html

I bided on a item on ebay I won, but I no longer want it can I decline it ? they sent me an email telling me to pay for it.. but I don’t want it no more?

In this kind of situation the best thing to do is to contact the seller asap and let them know you no longer want the item and apologise profusely and ask them to cancel the sale. This works most of the time.

The worst things to do is to be rude or to simply ignore them and not explain.

Nothing of real consequence will happen even if they report you to ebay. However, if you keep doing this your account will ultimately be banned.