eBay is the most popular internet marketplace for buying and selling products. It’s a marketplace where individuals and companies can buy and sell new or used products ranging from books and clothes to vehicles and virtually anything else.
Here’s how eBay works:
- A seller lists an item on eBay, almost anything from antiques to mobile phones, books to sporting goods.
- The seller chooses whether to sell the item at a fixed price or accept only bids (auction-type listing).
- In an auction-type listing, the bidding opens at a price the seller specifies and remains on eBay for a certain number of days.
- Buyers then place bids on the item. When the listing ends, the buyer with the highest bid wins.
- In a fixed price listing, the first buyer willing to pay the seller’s price gets the item.
Suitable For –
People who are self-motivated and know how to spread the word – to friends, family members, acquaintances and strangers using online or offline mediums.
Skills Required –
Some experience of selling goods online or offline is welcome, along with a business-savvy mind.
Time Required To Start Selling On eBay –
To start selling you first need an eBay account and a PayPal account.
After that, you need to enlist your product for which you’ll need to upload some product pictures and write an appealing description.
Even if you are a beginner you can do all the above tasks within a day or two.
Tips –
1. If you are completely new to eBay and your account does not have any feedback, then getting some feedback before starting to sell anything is a good practice.
People are very wary of buying anything online nowadays, so if your account has 0 feedback then no one’s is going to buy anything from you.
It’s recommended that you should get at least 10-15 feedback before selling anything.
The simplest way to get feedback is to buy 10-15 $0.99 items with free shipping.
Many sellers leave positive feedback to you straight away when you’ll make a payment.
2. Start small – Most eBay resellers buy a bulk wholesale stock of any particular product then sell it on eBay at a retail price.
If you don’t have money to buy a wholesale stock then find out unwanted items present in your house which are in good condition and make a list of them.
3. Research – Now as you have a list of fa ew ready to sell items you must ensure that there is a market for them.
Take 10 minutes to Google your item and uncover its true market value on eBay and another bunch of e-commerce sites.
This will help you to sell the right items more competitively because you’ll have the knowledge of your item’s market and its pricing strategies.
Also, dig out relevant targeted keywords which will help people to find your items via the Google search engine.
4. Craft the title – Title is the single most important factor for grabbing the attention of your potential buyer.
Make sure your title is appealing, complete and you’ve included targeted keywords.
You don’t have to be a tech wizard for this. Just ask yourself, what would a potential buyer for this item type into the search box?
5. Write the item’s description – Fill out all the fields in your listing, and make sure your textual description is providing all the information that your potential buyer might look for.
Most of the lazy sellers ignore this and fail badly at selling anything on eBay.
6. Upload item’s pictures – Upload only high-quality pictures. Ensure that item’s pictures are new, clear (not blurry) and cover the product from all angles.
Also, don’t restrict yourselves to 2-3 pictures upload at least 6 pictures.
7. Timing – Most of the expert sellers a use 10-day listing starting on Thursday, you should use it too, it will give you two full weekends of eyeballs. You’ll usually receive the highest traffic on weekends.”
How To Monetize –
Monetization is very simple. The more people place orders with you more money you make.
Your item quality and delivery influence your user feedback which directly affects your order placement.
So make sure you are delivering items of good quality.
eBay handles all your transactions securely, so you don’t need to worry about any payment processing issues.
Once you are in a profit-making stage, buy your most selling products in bulk at a wholesale price and sell them at retail price to increase your profits.
This is a very informative and detailed post on how to sell things on ebay, in case someone isn’t familiar with the site.
Full of good advice on getting feedback and how to get things started, as most people just think they create and account and things will happen by themselves.
If I didn’t have an ebay account already, I would definitely sign up for it!
Thank you for the post!
you are highly welcome Reka Vass. thanks for your time to comment on this wonderful knowledge packed comment. just the way you said it, all one need is oped an eBay account, and when you don’t know how to trade, you can take an eBay course. thanks and goodluck.
This was a very good read. I always wonder how to go about starting something like this but never took the time to actually learn. Do you think selling something such as services is something that can be done through ebay? I don’t really have an interest in selling items mostly just services.
hi Alyssa, and welcome today. like I said in the article, eBay is a marketing platform for selling many things that you can imagine. talking about service, depending on which you can offer, I advise you to visit fiver, Upwork or Udemy and check out what service you can give. good luck on this service hunt.