What You Need to Know BEFORE You Get Started on eBay.
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Are you thinking about selling on eBay?
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Have you already decided to sell on eBay, but are not sure what to sell?
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Do you want to supplement your current income by selling on eBay?
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Do you want to quit your current job and work from home?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, keep reading to find out a few things you really need to know about selling on eBay successfully.
What to Sell on eBay?
Ask yourself the following questions. What do I know best? What is my specialty? Do I have any special skills? You will be better served as a seller on eBay if you can become a trusted source for particular products. Just the other day, I found an eBay seller that specialized in model boats. Not the cheap, plastic models that get glued together. Each model was in excess of $150 and required time and special tools to complete the assembly.
The biggest advantage of focusing your eBay business into a niche is to develop a customer base that turns in to repeat business. People that buy from you will be more apt to buy from you again. Especially if the your service and product were of high quality. You do not want to focus on selling random rubbish all the time. You can sell
consignment items, but again, you would want to focus in a particular category or niche.
When deciding on what to sell on eBay, the main point to consider is to sell what you know best. For example, it would be very difficult to write a description of a product that you have NEVER SEEN! Imagine, trying to write a description of a baseball trading card without ever seeing it. You could not even discuss the condition or who was even on the card! Who would buy that?
If you are having a difficult time deciding on what to sell on eBay you should thing about where you go online; what websites do you visit? Why do you visit these websites? What kind of advertising is on these websites? This should help you decide where you intersts lie and ultimately help you decide what to sell on eBay.
When the above strategy does not help you, try asking friend and family. They will probably answer with, “Oh, you should sell…” and you will be like, “Duh, why didn’t I think of that!”
Don’t worry if you think the thing you’re selling is too obscure – it isn’t. There’s a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that wouldn’t sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop. You’ll probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common.
Shipping on eBay
Currently, eBay gives sellers listing items with free shipping preferential treatment in search results. So, if you can find items that you can obtain at a good enough price that you can offer free shipping. If your niche does not allow for free shipping of the item
because of the size or the price you get the item for, that is okay. There are plenty of sellers charging for shipping on eBay.
You should always be able to track the order and give your customer access to the tracking information. eBay has recently integrated the tracking information into the buyer’s account. In my experience as a seller with the newly integrated tracking, it does not work. The correct tracking number is there, but it needs to be copied and pasted
into usps.com website. Though, this is an improvement over being only able to access the tracking number through paypal.
Tax and Legal Matters
First off, let me be clear, I am not an lawyer and the advice I give here is not legally binding. I am just making you aware, you will be responsible for reporting your income in accordance with the income laws of your city, state and country of residence.
You are going to have to pay tax. It will not be done for you. If you are selling on eBay
full time, you will want to register as a business and probably talk to a tax professional. You will need to be track how much you are making and how much you are spending on eBay fees, shipping fees, shipping supplies along with any other costs you have to run your business.
eBay Is Like the Stock Market
Much like the stock market has it ups and downs, selling on eBay will have its ups and downs. The best sellers on eBay are the ones that learn to deal with flow of the market. If you learn how to market your eBay business and give your customers great service, you will be able to make it through the downs times.
Anyone can sell on eBay, if they believe in themselves – and if you do decide it’s not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you won’t really have lost anything.
Related Posts
Comments
2 Comments on What You Need to Know BEFORE You Get Started on eBay.
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The #1 Way To Discover Exactly What To Sell On eBay For Profit « Make Money With David John on
Sun, 26th Jul 2009 12:35 am
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What to Sell on Ebay? « Make Money With David John on
Thu, 13th Aug 2009 7:37 am
[...] you need to decide what to sell on eBay. There are plenty of categories so take a look through and see what’s currently selling well. [...]
[...] best way to decide what to sell on eBay is to do eBay market research and find out what the buyers are looking for: what are they searching to buy? There are several [...]
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