eBay

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eBay

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If you just want to buy items, then the next step is easy for you; look around for what you want. Browse eBay's many categories or use the search box to find it a lot quicker. Pay attention to the seller's feedback. This is a handy tool for you, the buyer, to know how trustworthy the person is that's selling you the item you're bidding on. Personally, I like to buy items by using the "Buy it Now" feature, that way you are definitely getting the item with no way of being outbid. But there's always the chance of you being the winning bid and getting an item a whole lot cheaper.

Find an Item to Sell

If you want to sell items on eBay, your journey has just begun. The most obvious "next step" would be that you need an item to sell. So figure out what you want to sell; either something around your house or something you bought off of eBay at a good price. Yes, that's right, plenty of people resell items that they originally bought off of eBay. You can take advantage of this by looking for great bargains and then marketing the items better when you sell them or buy items in bulk and resell them individually. Or you can go to real auctions, flea markets or garage sales to find bargains.
A handy tool that eBay provides for you is called eBay Pulse. It lets you know what the most popular searches are and what auctions people are watching the most. That means you can figure out what people are REALLY looking for and what's going to sell quick and for a decent price. Once you're on the main page, click the "Buy" tab up top. Then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to the "Other Ways to Browse" section and you'll see the link to eBay Pulse. Plus another handy tool, in the same section, would be the Deal Finder.

Prepare Information for Your Auction

Ok, you've got your item or items, now you need to do some research. You need to get some information on what you're selling for a few reasons:

You'll look like you know what you're talking about.
It saves customers from asking you questions about your auction.
It reassures your customers, that you actually have the item.
A near empty description, usually turns customers away.

So search around the internet to find more information on what you want to sell. Find out how much it's really worth, look on the item's box, packaging or any paperwork that comes with it for more information. You can even search completed auctions to see if anyone else sold the exact item you're selling, just click the "Advanced Search" link next to the search box up top. You can see what how they described the item and see if it was a successful auction: if the item sold or not.

    Next, you're going to want to take a picture of your item. People need the assurance that you actually have what you're selling and they want to see what kind of condition it is in. So grab your digital camera or your film camera and snap a few good pictures of your item. Then load or scan them into your computer for you to use when you put the item on eBay.

    Then you can put the item in the box or packaging you'd use for when you're going to ship it. You might not want to tape it completely shut, you may need to look at the item to answer a question from a customer during the auction. Now I'd suggest you weigh your item, box and all. You're doing this so you can give an accurate estimate on how much shipping is going to be. You can go to a few sites, like FedEx, UPS or USPS, to get a shipping quote.
    What I like to do is to enter a zip code that's pretty far from me and go from that. It'll more than cover shipments that are closer, just in case your weighing & measuring was a little off, and you won't end up eating the difference if the shipment does end up being that far away. I like to put this shipping price for all US shipments and then make a note, if the customer is from a different country, telling them to leave me a message for a shipping quote. International shipping rates are WAY higher than rates to your own country, you don't want to end up paying for the shipping out of your own pocket.
    The reason you want to give your customers a shipping quote, if they've shopped on eBay before, they might want to be sure you won't overcharge them when it comes to shipping. Some sellers have sold items really cheap, but when you go to pay for it they've jacked the shipping price way up and you didn't get a good deal after all. So this step is just to once more reassure the customer.

Get Your Auction Listed on eBay

Now that that's out of the way, let's go over the process of getting your auction listed on eBay. Click the "Sell" tab on top of the main page. First off, you're going to have to select a category you want to sell in. This helps customers find your auction if they're just browsing. eBay groups all auctions together that are selling similar items, kind of like aisles in an actual store. They have a search feature to help you select the right category. All you have to do is type in what you're selling and then click the search button. Then it'll find all the common categories that you could sell your item in, based on the keywords you typed into the search box. If you want, you can list your auction in two categories, for an extra fee, to raise the chance of customers seeing your auction.

TITLE

Once you've found the correct category to sell in, click the button at the bottom to continue. Now you'll want to type in a title for your auction. This is what people will see when they're browsing or searching through eBay for things to buy, so you want the title to be very descriptive on exactly what you're selling. You're limited on text space for your title, so choose wisely. If you really want to put in a longer title, then you can add a subtitle for a small fee.

PICTURES

Now you'll want to upload your pictures. Make sure it's a picture of the actual item you have in your possession and not just some random picture you found on the internet. That way people will be able to see the real condition of the item. The first picture is free, no extra charge, and I highly recommend you have at least one picture of the item you're selling. If you want more pictures, it'll cost you a small fee for each one. What I like to do, to save a little money, is to upload one picture and then do one of two things once I get to filling in my description: You can host your pictures at a site like TinyPic and then enter them into your auction description using some basic html. Or if you have a lot of pictures, you can host your pictures at a site like Putfile and then just put a link to your photo album in your auction description. The second option will save your customers a lot of time when they try to look at your auction. If there's too many pictures, it'll take too long to load your page and people might just close your auction without really looking at it. Then you can choose if you want to have a gallery picture, for a small fee, or not, I usually do this on my auctions. When you choose this option, eBay will put a small thumbnail of your main picture next to your title when it's viewed in the list of auctions. This will help catch potential customers' eyes and hopefully get them to check out your auction.

DESCRIPTION

Now you'll want to enter your description. If you followed the steps above to research your item, then you should have a pretty good idea of the information you're going to enter. You can change the fonts, font size, font color and a lot more to make it more eye-catching. Plus, for a small fee, you can use one of eBay's themes to give your auction a more professional, clean-cut look. You can also add a counter to your auction, if you want to be able to see how many people have viewed your auction.

PRICE

Next you'll want to enter in your price, your research will pay off here too. First enter your starting price, the price that will be listed as what you're asking for your item initially. If you don't enter a reserve price, then your starting price is what your item will sell at if you only get one bid. This is why selecting the right starting price is so important:

You don't want it too low (You want to actually sell at a decent price, if you only get one bid, so that it's worth the effort)
You don't want it too high (This may scare off anyone from bidding at all)
You want to find that happy medium (A price that's high enough that if it sells at this price you won't feel like you got ripped off. A price that's low enough that it'll attract buyers to bid, and not just once)

You CAN save yourself a little work, with selecting a starting price, by entering a reserve price. But this can sometimes scare customers from bidding, because they have no idea what your reserve price is. It's handy to use, to ensure that your item will sell at least for your reserve price, but it's a toss up on if you'll get a decent amount of bids or not. There is a fee to use this, but if your items sells then this fee is fully refunded. So usually I'll only enter a starting price, so my potential buyers can be assured of the actual price. You can also enter a "Buy it Now" price. This is a set price, once a customer selects to "Buy it Now" on your auction, the auction is over and they will pay you the price you entered. A lot of people like to use this feature, including myself, because it's a definite that you're going to win that auction. There's a fee to use this feature too.
Then you select how long you want your auction to last, anywhere from 1 - 10 days (small fee if you choose 10 days). If you don't want to have your auction begin the second you finish, for a small fee, you can choose a specific date and time for it to begin.

PAYMENT & SHIPPING

Now you want to enter the payment and shipping information. You need to choose which methods of payment you'd like to accept for you auction. The options are:

PayPal

This is this quickest option; people can send you money over the internet and it's a secure way to be paid.
All your customers need is your email address and they can send you payments.
You can link your PayPal account to your bank account and have your payment wired to your bank account for free.
Also if you want to accept credit cards then you need to have an upgraded PayPal account.
If you chose to require immediate payment if the "Buy it Now" option is used on your auction, then PayPal will have to be used for such required payment methods.
I usually wait until I have the money in my bank account before I ship the item.

Money Order/Cashier's Check

This isn't quite as fast as PayPal; you'll have to wait to receive the money order/cashier's check in the mail.
Make sure to check these for forgeries and fakes. Look on the back to see what security features should be present.

Personal Check

This will take about the same amount of time for you to receive your payment as it would with the money order/cashier's check.
But, to be assured the funds are available in the customer's account, I always wait until the check clears before I send the item.
I'd also check to be sure this check is real. There are too many online scams out there these days. Look on the back of the check to see what security features should be present.

Personally, I like to make all payment options available on my auctions. That way people aren't discouraged if you don't accept a certain payment method. Not everyone has PayPal and some people don't like paying that extra dollar or so to get a money order, so you never know which payment method your customer may prefer.
Now you'll want to enter your shipping information. I'd recommend you come up with at least a domestic shipping price, possibly by using the methods I talked about above. You can even use eBay to help you figure a good estimate on shipping costs by clicking "Research Rates". I don't know how accurate this tool is, but it may help. People need to know what you're going to charge them overall and which shipping services you offer. You can also add buyer requirements, sales tax, a return policy and additional checkout instructions. In the "additional checkout instructions" section I usually tell my potential buyers to send me a message for an international shipping quote or if they live in Alaska or Hawaii.

PROMOTE & REVIEW

In this last section you'll want to look over your auction as a whole and maybe use some promotional tools. Some of the extras you could add are:

Gallery Picture (As mentioned above)
Gallery Plus (This just makes a larger gallery image available for your auction)
Subtitle (As mentioned above)
Gift Icon (You can add this icon to your auction if you think your item would make a good gift)
Bold (This will make your auction title bold when viewed in the list of auctions)
Border (This puts a border around your listing which will, like the bold text, make your auction stand out in the long list)
Highlight (This highlights your listing with a color)
Featured Plus! (This will show your auction at the top of the list when you show up in the search results)
Gallery Featured (This will give your auction a large gallery picture and close up views of your picture)
Home Page Featured (With this you will get the same features as you do with "Featured Plus!" but you'll also appear on eBay's main page - This could increase traffic to your auction a lot!)

Another great way to get your auction noticed is to use eBay's "Want it Now" ads. Scroll down on the main page and you'll see a link to it on the left at the bottom of the "categories" section. These are just like want ads in a newspaper; people post these ads to show what kinds of things they're looking for. What you can do, as a seller, is browse the categories or use the search box to find potential customers that are looking for exactly what you're selling. Sometimes people won't even notice your auction or be paying attention to eBay at all and in reality they DO want what you have. So this raises your chances of selling your items by giving customers a heads-up. Once you find someone that wants what you're selling, all you have to do is enter your auction's item number and the customer will be notified to go look at your auction.
Now eBay will help you review your auction. First it'll show you exactly how your listing is going to appear to everyone. Then they'll give you recommendations on how to make your auction more efficient and they usually give some good advice in this section. And lastly they show you how much it's going to cost you to list your auction. It's usually not that much at all depending on how many extras you added and how much you're asking for your item. When the item sells a small percentage fee will be added onto this amount. Once you're ready, just click the "List Your Item" button and you're done. Now you can sit back and wait for the bidding and buying to begin.

I like to click the "My eBay" tab up top and watch the progress of my auctions. Once you're in that, just click the "All Selling" link on the left side. It will show you:

How long until your auction is over
How many people are watching your auction
If you have any bids
If anyone has questions about your auction.

I hope you've learned a lot and will be more efficient and confident when buying and selling on eBay. If you want to check out the items I'm selling at the moment or just want to read my feedback:

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So you're interested in eBay huh? Want to make a business for yourself, find great deals or maybe both? Let me give you some tips to get you started with using eBay. First, you're going to want to sign up for an account, don't worry it's free! You'll need to register for an account whether you want to buy or sell on eBay. You just need to enter in some basic information:

Name, Address, Phone Number, Email Address & Birthday
Choose a User ID, Password & Secret Question (Just in case you forget your password)
Read & Accept their User Agreement and Privacy Policy

And that's it, go check your email. You should get an email soon with all your registration details in it. Don't forget to check your junk mail folder, just in case.