Auction Power Guide

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 am not planning to open an eBay store. Just wondering if there are tricks to selling on eBay that I don’t know about. Like how to increase traffic to my items, how to advertise, and how to increase bidding. Most useful tips get 10 points.
I have sold a couple of items on eBay but usually not a lot of people bid or put on watch list. I eneded up with just 2 bids and sell for very low price. I wonder how I can get more people to see my ads in the first place.

One great way to attract buyers is to have a low starting bid. I typically start the item at the price I paid for it (I usually rummage through thrift stores and dollar stores for my items – ones that I know could sell for more). For instance, if I find an NFL jersey for $5… I list it for $6, which covers my ebay fees & paypal fees, plus my purchase price. $6 is INCREDIBLY low for a football jersey!

However… you also have to find items that people WANT. Sports items are great… IF the team is doing well or has a strong "die hard" fan base. Children’s clothing also does well (name brands, especially in bigger "lots"), newly released CD’s & movies, some pet items (dog jackets, for example), etc. If you see something you think might sell (that is guaranteed to BE there later)… go look it up on ebay and see if others are getting bids on similar items. I used to just think up as many things to search for as I could and see what did best.

Another big thing is to offer low (or free) shipping. You can either work the shipping into your starting bid price (although that costs more in fees), or just charge people the actual cost to ship. You’ll want to use a shipping calculator through ebay though as most people want to know in advance how much shipping will be, since there’s tons on ebay who will charge $30 to ship a pair of pants or something!

Anyway… other than that… I guess try to have a variety… and if you find something that sells well… buy a BUNCH of it to sell! 🙂 I found Barbie dog jackets on clearance for a dollar one time… bought 35 of them and made several hundred dollars on them! Ya just gotta have an eye for what sells… oh… and make your title catchy and make sure it states what’s being sold.

I want to start selling on ebay. One thing that’s seems to be stopping me is figuring out shipping for my items… I will also take any other tips and cautions about selling stuff on ebay like pricing, and seller’s fees, etc… thanks.

You can go to usps.com or ups.com and use their shipping calculator to estimate the shipping fee for each of your items based on weight and size of the box.

When using ebay, I’d recommend only shipping to the buyer’s confirmed payapl address and always ship with a delivery confirmation so that you can prove it was delivered in case the buyer says it was never received.

You can also set your buyer requirements so that people with negative feedback and or unpaid strikes cannot bid on your items. You don’t want those people buying from you anyway as the chances of collecting payment are not too great.

If you have ever wanted to become a seller on eBay, you may be concerned with all the shipping an eBay store can generate. But shipping your eBay items is as easy as clicking a mouse button to set up. You can track your shipments and print shipping labels all from within eBay. In this article I present eBay seller tips – easy shipping for eBay sellers.

Our eBay seller tips starts by noting eBay has a handy tool called a shipping calculator. You can put this handy button onto your seller’s page so you and your customers can see the exact cost to ship to certain zip codes. This makes it a breeze to sell on eBay as you do not even need to worry about figuring out how much to charge for shipping.

For more information on tips ebay sellers click here