OK, folks: tell me everything you can about eBay-- the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've been tasked by the parents with eBaying a lot of old items in the house to help defray the cost of renovation. I'm also going to receive a portion of the eBay proceeds for doing the legwork. Anything you can tell me re: procedures, must-dos, must-don'ts, etc., will be helpful. I've been receiving eBay spam for years ("Your eBay account is in danger of being hacked!"), but have never actually subscribed to eBay. Any and all advice appreciated, but there are no guarantees that I'll follow it.
Thanks.
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Marathon
12 years ago
3 comments:
I had an e-bay business selling American coins, Star wars stuff, legos sell great, some watches. The trick is to mail the product right after you receive the money, and clearly describe the item.
The tricky part is paypal, I would use a totally separate checking account that is not linked to anything just for paypal and not keep any money in that account. I would withdraw the money from paypal and then transfer or withdraw the money from the checking account.
I would get a lot of scam e-mails saying they are from paypal, it is really important to not log in through an e-mail to paypal. If you mess paypal up then everything can get mess up, 90% of people pay through paypal.
Basically, e-bay and paypal changes fee's most people will try to charge high postage to recover the fee's.
Other than that e-bay is a great way to sell things. I also sold a lot of things on Craigs list before I left on my travels.
For e-bay it is really important to get good ratings from your customers, don't sit on the product, mail it fast after the money comes in.
I would load all the ads up on a power turbo program, I used iSale for a Mac. Then I would load them up on the weekend and have the ad go seven days, Saturday is a good day to have them end, then the money rolls in on paypal and most of the stuff you can send on Monday. Money orders take longer and if you get a personal check I would hold the item for at least 12 working days. Put that in your ad, or don't except personal checks.
Half.com is good for selling anything with an ISBN - they just take a commission from the proceeds instead of making you pay a fee up front - they only get paid if you get paid. Ebay is good for other small things, but I would check out the market before listing it - it sucks to spend money listing things that don't sell. Otherwise use Craigslist and possibly offer things in exchange for services - (de)construction services, perhaps? This can also be done on Freecycle. Freecycle requires you to sign up for a Yahoo account and then wait to be approved by a moderator which can take less than a day to more than a week depending on how active the community is. Also don't forget the good old clasifieds section of the newspaper or pennysave/nickelad. Enjoy!
Enlight,
Thanks, especially for the warning.
Amanda,
I've got a few extra copies of my first and second book lying around. Half.com might be the place to sell them. If not, there's always Criagslist.
Thanks,
Kevin
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