i never used ebay before and i have some questions.
Does the seller have to sell the item to the winning bid? (like if only one person bid and won and the starting was 1.00, can the seller refuse to sell it.)
Is there any fees besides the probably 1.00 fee from paypal?
Any other things about ebay i should know about? Thanks for the help.
Yes (technically).
There's an insertation fee (varies depending on type of item, starting price, auction features - highlights picture etc...), a final value fee (5.25% - 10% of end price) (
link about ebay fees), and if the seller pays by paypal and you have a premier or business paypal account paypal will take 1.9% to 2.9% + 30 cents (
link) of the total amount paid into your account (note fees vary between countries so if you're not in the US they will be slightly different).
Erm... a few general selling tips:
- Build up your feedback a bit before you sell anything, buy a few things and get say 20+ feedback if you can. If you are desperate to start selling flog some junk/low value items. Buyers are pretty cautious of new sellers and won't risk buying something of high value from someone with little to no feedback.
- If you want to put more than one picture in an auction use an image hosting service like photobucket and link to the picture in the auction instead of paying for additional pictures.
- Don't bother with the additional features such as highlights, bold etc... generally they're a waste of money only recommended one is the gallery picture (i.e. put picture of item into search results).
- Always provide a shipping cost, if you don't it puts off bidders - if you don't know how much to charge look at similar items and see what other sellers are charging or just have a guess.
- Offer international shipping if you can - obviously not on expensive or heavy things but everything else then go for it. I probably sell 10-20% of my stuff to people abroad.
- If selling games or DVDs state in your auction that they will only work in your country - I've forgotten to do that a couple of times and I've had quite a few stupid people from other countries purchase them thinking they'll work.
- If you want to find out the value of something you want to sell use the completed items search feature - it will show you what items have sold for.
- Always offer insured postage options (in addition to regular postage options), that way if the seller doesn't receive the item you can say you at least offered them insurance so it's their fault if they didn't take it.
- Check out Turbo Lister: it's a free program (by ebay) to create listings offline (you can then upload them online). It's a great timesaver.
