Learn to Sell with eBay: Our Checklist to Successfully Sell on eBay

In this post you’ll learn to sell with eBay. eBay is a fun and easy to use platform to sell used products and new merchandise.

eBay also sees a ton of traffic, so you have a great advantage of getting exposure to sell your products.

Now obviously, the hotter the product that you have, the faster it will sell. But in general, you’re going to have greater success selling on eBay verses selling on Craigslist or at your own garage sale.

And the coolest thing about eBay, is that you don’t have to do any selling, that’s one of the great advantages about selling online.

You don’t have to convince anybody to buy a thing. You list your price or go auction style, and eBay sells the item for you.

Check out my easy to use guide to learn to sell with eBay, it’s a simple and painless process.

Learn To Sell with eBay – Here We Go!

1. Create Your Account on eBay:

You can do that right now: start an eBay Account here.

2. Create a PayPal Account:

At the same time, you will need to get a PayPal account set up to get paid once your item sells, you can do this right now: Click here to start a PayPal Account.

3. Hit the Sell Link:

Once registered, you will see the SELL link on the top left side of your home page, click this link.

4. Choose How to Manage Your eBay Listings:

eBay has a new feature that allows you to choose to sell it yourself or have eBay manage the listing.

This could be convenient but will cut your profit margins down to 70%.

I would recommend listing it yourself, it’s easy to do and will save you money if you follow this simple step-by-step guide.

Normally if you are listing under 50 items per month, eBay charges 10% per auction style or fixed style sale.

But, they charge 10% of the whole transaction including the shipping fees.

So it may be as high as 15% of the transaction depending on your shipping charges.

Make sure you go check out the cost to ship something before listing your merchandise with eBay.

That way you won’t cut into your profit margins once you sell your item.

There’s nothing worse than selling an item for say $15 and charging a 3 dollar shipping fee only to realize that your shipping charges are $9 dollars.

You would only end up with a $9 dollar profit. Which would most likely be a waste of time and energy.

Do your homework first on you shipping charges before listing an item on eBay.

PayPal also charges an additional 2.9% per transaction. Kind of a pain, but PayPal is the preferred manner of payment from eBay.

For further explanation of eBay fees, see this link.

5. Create a Title for Your Listing:

Next you need an attractive title for your listing.

When creating a title, ask yourself how you would describe this item. Then add any important details.

Here is a listing that I recently sold on eBay.

6. Fill in the Product Details:

Now to create your listing, fill in the relevant product details such as:

• condition
• photos
• brand name
• model
• material
• listing price
• shipping
• and a description of the product.

With my example above, I was selling a generic case for iPhone 4/4S. Here’s my description below:

• Solid Metal Case with Industrial Strength Glass. Made for iPhone 4/4S
• 100% brand new, high quality, great price NON BRAND NAME Case
• Sleek Fashionable case, perfectly fit your phone
• Durable design protects your phone from scratched, damages, shock, bumps and dust
• This case is NOT waterproof and You CAN NOT submerge this case in water with an iPhone.

Latest Greatest Customer Review: I have already bounced this off the wall a few times and rolled 210 pounds over the face and not a problem. Love the size and weight. It’s heavy duty and perfect for me.

7. Use Quality Images with Your eBay Listings:

Make sure you take nice photos of whatever you are selling. Try to have a clear, transparent background and shoot your photo with the light behind you.

Make sure you have a good and accurate description and photos to improve your chances of selling your product.

Here are some quality photos from leather products I sold on eBay. Nice white backgrounds and high resolution photos.

8. Consider Selling Auction Style:

You can list your products as a set price or use eBay’s auction. The auction style is more fun, but higher risk for profit or loss. My personal experience with the auction style is to be patient.

Most all the sales come in during the last 30 minutes of the auction.

– Here’s an a good example of a iPhone 4s that I bought from a friend.

My friend wanted $100 dollars for it, I check out other listings on eBay and saw that it was selling in the 200 to 300 dollar price range. Sounded like a pretty good deal for me to make a decent profit. So I bought the phone from my friend for $100.

I listed it for $175 on a 7 day auction. After a few days I had 5 bidders and the top bid was $187.50.

In the last 30 minutes of the auction, I ended up selling for $241 dollars, including shipping charges. My net income after eBay and PayPal fees was $209.91 or 87.1% of the total transaction.

– So my total profit was $109.91 dollars. Not too bad for 20 minutes worth of work. Now I just need another 1000 or so iPhone’s and I’d have a pretty good eBay business.

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Final Points When Selling on eBay:

Make sure you put up a quality listing with good descriptions and clear photos. It just makes your job easier and will improve your buyer’s experience.

Also, make sure you provide prompt communication and always ask for, and leave, good feedback for those transactions that are positive.

You want to have a high seller rating and the more positive rating you have, the more buyers will trust and buy from you as a seller.

Now What?

If you learn to sell with eBay, it can be a lot of fun and a fairly positive experience.

But if you want to make a full time job out of it, this can be quite a challenge.

Why’s that?

There’s always the issue of where to find new product to sell.

Unless you have access to tons of hot products on a regular basis, you’ll never make a full time job out of selling on eBay.

Once you sell off your own stuff, you have to bargain hunt to find new products to sell or import products which can be a risky business.

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When you learn to sell with eBay, you’ve always got a good skill that you can use to make some extra cash online.

If you would like to leave a comment or have any questions about selling on eBay, please comment below.