I suggest checks from any established eBay buyer. MO can also be a problem.
(Any other votes?)
Cheques are a pain in the arse, but I accept them, and postal orders, because if I don’t, I just get people asking me if they can pay that way and I hate to turn down a sale. A fair few of my customers don’t seem to have PayPal accounts.
Postal orders are handy enough, if you’re not named on it you can get them cashed on the spot in a post office or the bank will treat it like an instantly cashable cheque if it is named.
Oh. one thing I forgot to mention above - I think it’s a good idea to notify buyers when their items have been sent.
For most transactions paid by cheque or eBay eCheque, I don’t even bother to wait for the payment to clear before sending the item - I’ve only had a couple of bounced payments and both of these were easily resolved - for larger value transactions, I would, but for my bread-and-butter low price items, it’s just not worth the hassle of monitoring when and whether a payment has cleared.
When I started I only accepted PayPal, and then I got a message from a potential buyer asking if I would accept a MO. Since it was a low-price item and he had a good record, I replied that I would and changed the listing accordingly. He never bid on it, however, and I ended up re-listing it. It sold that round, and after a few days the buyer told me he was having trouble getting PayPal to work for him, and asked if he could send a MO. When it came in I cashed it at my bank without any problem, and from then on I decided to accept MOs and personal checks rather than lose a potential sale. My stuff is all low-price anyway; my biggest sale so far has been $32 (for a computer game with an opening bid of $5) from someone in Greece who paid $24.00 for shipping.
Yes, absolutely. At minimum, make sure the buyer gets some contact from after they’ve paid, even if its just a tracking number or a “thx will ship tomorrow a.m.” I remember 2 times that I’ve received no shipping notification. The first time the woman sent it to the wrong address – she used the address on my Ebay profile, not the shipping address I entered on my PayPal payment (she also didn’t think this was her fault). Second time was a scammer who ran off with the money. So now when I don’t get a shipping notification I become suspicious that the seller may be either deceptive or incompetent. Of course I’ll still give positive feedback once the item arrives, but a heads-up on shipping might be the difference between “Great seller, smooth transaction!” and “Got it, thanks!”
And like others have said, to start out buy a few do-dad’s on ebay to build feedback history, it tells buyers you know how the whole system works.
-sugar and spice, who is eagerly awaiting her ‘like new’ hot rollers.
I’m bumping this thread because it has lots of good advice, and I didn’t want to start a new thread. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed. I’ve been an ebay buyer for years and have a 100% rating, but I’ve never sold anything because the thought terrified me. However, I’d like to start, for the same reason as the OP, to get rid of some extra things. Except for one item, I don’t have anything particularly valuable, just books, DVDs, CDs, albums, knick-knacks, t-shirts, and whatnot. That one item is a specialty DVD that I found out by accident last night is out of print. There aren’t any up for sale now, and the last one sold for $108.00! I’d like to sell it and hope that I get near the same price, but I am wary about using something that could bring so much in as my guinea pig.
A question: I’m assuming you don’t have to have a bank account to sell, right? I have a credit card from an online bank, and a PayPal account, but no bank account. I started to put my credit card on file with ebay, but got worried because it said they would deduct monthy charges. WHAT monthly charges? Is there a monthly selling charge besides the listing fee and the selling fee? It’s a debit card and I’d be afraid there wouldn’t be enough money on the card at the precise time they’d want to make an automatic payment. And what if there is money on the card, but they screw up and try to charge me more? The whole thing just bothers me. Can I choose WHEN they try to deduct charges and be able to double-check both the amount I have on the card and how much they’re going to deduct before the fact?
Speaking of fees, in the Help Center I found this, about final value fees:
Item not sold
No Fee
$0.01 - $25.00
5.25% of the closing value
$25.01 - $1,000.00
5.25% of the initial $25.00 ($1.31), plus 3.25% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00)
This is a very very very embarrassing question, but how do I figure out what that cost is? I’m an absolute dunce when it comes to anything mathematical. If I called up the handy calculator in Windows XP, how would I figure out the cost? Let’s use an example of that DVD. Say I start the bidding at $5.00, so the listing fee would be 40 cents according to the ebay fees page. Say I make it a 7 day auction and I’m really lucky and it sells to someone else for the same cost as the last one sold, $108.00. What do I input on the Windows calulator to get the fee?
Yes, I realize I’m too stupid to be posting on this message board, let alone trying to sell something on ebay, but, oh well.
Also, where does one get packaging for weird-shaped items? For instance, I have several coffee table-type books, and single Time-Life books, too big for bubble packs. Albums are weird to package too. Where’s a good place to buy boxes that will handle oversized books and LPs?
If I pay, say, $2.50 for a mailer box can I add that to the S&H? Can I choose the “Calculate” option and then add that $2.50 (or whatever) on top of it? The whole shipping area is very confusing to me. I started working on the listing last night but gave up when I couldn’t figure that part out.
Thanks for the help so far and for reading this.
According to my rough calculations, the final value fee for a $108.00 sale would be about $4.00.
($108.00 - $25.00) x 3.25% + $1.31 would be the formula, but eBay will automatically calculate it for you when the auction closes.
Regarding the “monthly charges”, unless you open an eBay store account there are no monthly charges. What eBay does is bill you monthly for all the listing and selling fees. If you have an PayPal account, you can have this paid automatically from your PayPal account. I use PayPal as my preferred payment method, so most of the money from my sales goes into my PayPal account, and then I just make sure I leave enough in it to pay eBay.
Regarding shipping boxes, I’ve bought them at Staples; IIRC the one near me sells 3-packs of what they call “document boxes” in various sizes suitable for large books for $8.00 - $10.00. I’ve also been known to recycle boxes I get from Amazon. You can also get free boxes from the Post Office if you’re shipping things Priority Mail (which I always offer as an option as some people like to get their items ASAP.
When you’re writing your listings, there should be a place to add “shipping costs” to the calculated PO rates. You might have to click a button to get to it. (I use free eBay’s “TurboList” program to prepare my listings, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen the actual eBay listing pages.)
Paypal is nice, since it adds a (debatable) layer of protection for me as a buyer, but I’ve heard some cough interesting stories about what it does for the seller in case of things going south. I hang out in BPAL fora, and we tend to trade perfume like it’s a commodities market on Wall Street, see. So a bunch of people gain experience as sellers, etc.
This post is written from the perspective of a buyer who evaluates sellers on ebay before deciding whether to shell out.
I think it helps reputation with people looking to buy from you if the seller has a verified Paypal account, but it’s up to you if you want to go through the rigamarole of that.
Also, there’s the question of whether you want to accept CC Paypal or not. Some sellers will, some won’t. I believe that the ‘not’ means that it’s tied to a bank account and therefore slightly more reliable than CC; others may correct me like whoa, but that’s my recollection.
And I TOTALLY back up Lynne on the cutesy pie headings. OOAK, LQQK, whatever-the-hell. They drive me batshit and betray a severe lack of professionalism.
Communication is beyond awesome. Communicate like whoa; otherwise you get that sheriff from ‘Cool Hand Luke’ going, “What we have here… is a failure to communicate…”
Simply, as a buyer: an honest, straightforward, textual description (some tout and sell included.), several pictures (including macro details), a reasonable reserve for the item, and multi-options for payment (check, money order, paypal.) clinch my sell. I sometimes find Buy It Now auctions most appealing, saves me (and you) the haggle.
Another piece of advice for anyone starting out on eBay; Read up on - and guard yourself against - some of the common scams and tricks.
Sunglasses are bad? I thought they meant you were cool.
Seriously though, I didn’t know they meant you were a new user.
Thanks for the responses LurkMeister (great great response!), lizardling, devilsknew and Mangetout. Sorry I didn’t get back here sooner to thank you all.
I’ve decided that I’m too chickenshit to start selling at the moment. Right now as a buyer I have a 100% rating (630 Postive Feedback, with 422 of those unique sellers) and I don’t want to chance messing that up. If I sell something and something goes wrong because I’m a clueless newbie at it, there could be my first negative feedback and that would suck. And besides, Christmas is too close and I doubt anyone wants to buy anything immediately before or for a while after Christmas. Either I should have started a few weeks ago, or should probably wait for a couple of months. I can see myself losing money because I’m paying listing fees for things that don’t sell.
But, it’s nice to have the information when/if I grow a spine and take the plunge.
I have PayPal. That’s how I buy everything. I’ve never had money put on it through selling something though. It is nice to know that ebay can take their charges from the PayPal account instead of my credit card. That would be a good system for me since I wouldn’t have to worry about the balance on the card. It’s also good to know that there’s no monthly fee unless I open a store.