Auction Power Guide

I was just wondering if it was possible to get scammed off eBay. Like you buy an item and never get it? I am clueless about eBay and don’t quite know how to system works. Can’t the seller just not ship the item over? Is there any protection against this? What can be done if such things happen? I’m under the impression that if the item is too cheap, PayPal would not bother about it.

Can anyone explain how it goes?

Absolutely! Here are some tips to avoid being scammed as a buyer:

Study the seller’s feedback page. To see this page, just click on the number in parenthesis beside the seller’s name.

Never, never, never buy from a seller with zero feedback. Although everyone has to start somewhere, a zero feedback rating is a huge red flag. Anyone selling on eBay should at least have some history even as a buyer. Find another seller offering the same item who at least has some history on eBay.

Look at how long the seller has been an eBay member. You will see a notation that says, "eBay member since XYZ." You will be safer to buy from a seller who has been on eBay for several months or years, as opposed to one who just started selling last week. Many scam artists sell legitimately on eBay for a short time to establish a history, then "pull the rug out from under" buyers after they have had a few sales. Look for established sellers with a long history on eBay – it is just the safest route.

Look at the seller’s feedback comments. Not only should you consider whether the comments are positive or negative, but actually read the comments. The comments themselves will provide valuable information about experiences of other buyers. You may see comments like, "Took a long time to arrive, poor communication, item was broken, seller won’t refund."

Look at the sellers DSR (Detailed Seller Rating). DSRs give in-depth ratings of the seller’s performance on shipping time, shipping costs, communication, and item description. For example, if the seller has a low rating on item descriptions, you will know that he is not being honest and forthright about what he is selling.

Read the item description completely. Understand the seller’s policies regarding returns, damages, and lost packages. Look for sellers who are willing to work out problems and accommodate customers. Avoid sellers who make statements like, "not my responsibility, we can’t, we won’t, all sales final." Those kinds of comments are a recipe for disaster.

Read the seller’s About Me page if they have one. The About Me page will give you more information about the seller and may help improve your comfort level in dealing with that person.

Ask questions. Always ask questions and wait for an answer before bidding or buying. If the seller doesn’t answer, don’t deal with him. If he isn’t going to acknowledge your email as a potential customer, he probably won’t follow up or help you later if needed.

Go with your gut. If something doesn’t seem right, trust your intuition. There are plenty of other sellers to buy from!

I am preparing to sell my first item on ebay for about 350 bucks. To list it, it is 40 cents, but how much and when will the final value price and any other fees be charged? Do they automatically take it out of my money?

eBay requires sellers to set up an automatic payment method to pay their selling fee invoice, although eBay does allow you to pay early with a different method. When eBay invoices will be due varies for each seller, if I recall, the cut off is either set up for the 1st or 15th, mine is the 15th of the month, and I receive a bill a few days later and then in a few more days the money is automatically withdrawn from my payment source.

eBay – How do I pay my selling fees:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/seller-fees.html

The eBay listing fees are charged to your account when you list an item, and the final value fees are charged to your account when the item sells, but you pay by your monthly invoice.

As to fee expenses. You have eBay listing fees, eBay final value fees if the item sales, and PayPal fees if you are paid via PayPal. I usually allow about 15% for fees.

Basically the costs are the listing fees for most things to "auction" which are about 10 cents to $2 and the final value fee is about 9% plus PayPal fee if applicable, which is about 3% (see further down).

The fixed price fees really require reading the fees chart, but basically about 7% to 13% plus a 50 cent listing fee unless you have an eBay store. There are add-on options you can add like bold and highlight so as you can see, the fee costs are complicated, depending if it’s an auction or fixed priced listing and any extras. The link to the eBay fee page is below.

The PayPal information is:
There’s no fee to use PayPal to purchase goods or services. However, if you receive money for goods or services (such as from selling an item on eBay), the fee for each transaction is 2.9% plus $0.30 USD of the amount you receive. The link is below.

Here is some additional eBay seller info from their web site:

What are the requirements to sell on eBay? Provide us with a valid credit card, debit card, or bank account information. Let us know how you would like to pay your seller fees. Select the payment methods you’ll accept. Make sure your Feedback Profile is public. We also recommend that you become PayPal verified.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html

https://www.paypal-search.com/socialsearch/query

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/questions/sell-requirements.html

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/pictures.html

http://websellerslunchclub.com/s-sellers-area.html

I’ve just started selling on eBay and have been using the paypal print labels option to print postage. I’ve been using paper and taping it to my packages but would like to use labels but not sure what type to buy etc and would appreciate some guidance. I think it’s four to a page but am not quite sure.

Pooky,

I understand where you are. When I got started on eBay I too used plain paper for labels and taped it to my boxes. I soon learned from fellow eBay sellers that I should be as professional as my wallet would allow.

That meant proper boxes to ship items in, instead of the dumpster diving I would do behind every Dollar store I could find or bothering the Fed-Ex Kinko’s people for extra boxes.

And of course proper labels. So to answer your question, I started using Avery labels and have ever since. Avery supplies printer paper for many different purposes, from business cards to name tags. They also provide an array of papers that customers can use to print out their own labels. Avery offers these labels in various sizes and types (such as peel and stick ones.) But to use these labels properly, you will want to go to the Avery website to get the template you need for the particular label you are using.

Hope this helps!

I just joined ebay, and I got my first bid on a ticket I am selling. What do I do now???? What do I click now to give it to that person? Begin shipping?? All that?

Please no BS as answers, no time and patience for that. Please help if you are willing. thanks!

Press end this listening on the drop down menu on your right hand side of your listing. done.

when you end a sale this means anyone that was the winning bidder is now void so you cant ship the product the safe way. you then have to send him an invioce in paypal then when payment recieved then send the product to the address he provides. this is very unsafe.

but good luck.

I am sure that i am going to keep selling on EBaY so therefore i am also sure that i will make more money. How do i report this income at the end of the year? and the deductions for certain purchases? is there a form to help me with all of this?

If you are buying items for resale and are being successful at it, then you file a 1040 schedule C and a schedule SE.

Look at the forms–you need detailed records to show your cost of goods sold, money spent on postage, listing fees, paypal fees, etc.

I was wondering to start selling on eBay and I want to know how much it costs and how do you get your money off of there? Thanks! I would appreciate it 🙂

Your money is put into your paypal acct. Charges are about 10% of the item selling price.

To any longtime Ebayers out there- what policies should Ebay change? My only complaint is the feedback change- where only buyers can leave negative feedback.

Also, sniping on auctions should be prohibited.

Do you have any complaints about Ebay, or are you happy with it?

It’s the only game in town, there is no alternative online auction site with the same traffic..seems we have no choice but to take the good with the bad…

You’ll get different answers from registered business sellers but from an occasional seller/buyer perspective the biggest gripe I have is the requirement to offer PayPal on all sales. PayPal is owned by eBay so between the two of them they rake in a good percentage of any sales. The fact that PayPal also includes your postage cost in its % cut is simply obscene. (The Australian courts ruled the link as anti competitive in that country). There is a lot of trouble with feedback, as you’ve implied, such that many sellers do not bother to leave any anymore. A positive only for any buyer is one of the most stupid things eBay have ever done (apart from appointing its last but one chief executive who managed to preside over a massive decline in sales and confidence). Many buyers are using alternative sites such as Amazon and unless eBay gets its act together and gets back to realising that its business depends on both buyers and sellers it will become an also ran site.

I sold a phone on ebay and clearly stated no international shipping on my auction. I sold the phone and just received the payment through paypal and found out the person that won my auction is located in the Ukraine. Is there a way I can cancel the auction and relist it for free since ebay let this guy bid on my phone even though I said I wouldnt ship it overseas?

Did you actually specify in the P&P section of your auction which parts of the world you would post to and which you wouldn’t?

Even if you type "no international shipping" in the text of the auction if you offered shipping to Europe or "worldwide" shipping in the postage section then he was entitled to bid. He may not have good English and may not have understood the words you typed in the auction but by seeing a postage rate for his country he assumed he could bid and quite rightly so.

The only way of excluding overseas bidders is specify domestic postage rate only in the P&P section. You can also limit who is allowed to bid on your auctions, ie automatically block bidders from countries to which you don’t ship, new Ebayers with feedback of <5 etc.

He has paid so post him the phone, what have you got to lose? I can’t see what the problem is really?

If you don’t want to ship internationally another time then simply do not offer international postage you can specify "no international postage" quite easily. You must have filled the boxes in for the postage cost to Europe otherwise he would have had to have contacted you to find out how much postage to pay? How did he know how much to pay?

Are there any fees? And how does the shipping work, how do you ship it out.

Yes you do. There’s a list of ebay listing charges at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html

PayPal does not charge for personal accounts – https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside

You need to set a realistic price for shipping and ebay has a shipping calculator based on yours and buyers zip code. http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/shipping-costs.html

However some people advise to use a fixed shipping fee – http://www.auction-tips-and-techniques.com/fixed-shipping.html

USPS has a cost calculator – http://postcalc.usps.gov/ so does UPS – http://www.theupsstore.com/qcc/qcc.asp Remember when using these you need the total weight of the package including packaging.

Many people have been using ebay for a long time and know roughly how much shipping should be so don’t go over the top when adding items like the packing materials and your time. Apart from losing sales – I, for one, won’t buy from people who are over the top on their handling fees – it is against ebay policy – http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-shipping.html

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.