Selling something on Ebay, is it easy to do? (1 Viewer)

[Travis Hedger]

Heh, how would it be annoying? If you are the seller, you dont mind bidding wars, at least I wouldn't think.

 

[Aurel Savin]

If you are running traditional auctions (not BUY IT NOW) the best times to have an auction end si around "going home time from work" on Fridays.

And yes, Greg was right above, most people bid from work.

Monday is the absolute worst day to end an auction. I rarely make a sale Mondays.

Of course if you are running BUY IT NOW auctions, all these things do not mean anyhting as the lisitng ends as soon as someone buys it with the BUY IT NOW option.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Don't know if this has been mentioned earlier, but be very wary of accepting credit card payments through Paypal.

I had two auctions for hard drives close a couple of weeks ago - £100 each. The guy paid through Paypal (I'd never used it before) and I got lumered with a £7 charge just to get hold of the money and by that time it was too late to turn it down. There's something like a 2.9% surchage on accepting CC payments. Total rip-off, never, ever again will I use Paypal.

 

[Michael*K]

I've found that people gett into bidding wars in the morning/afternoon during the week, which would suggest that they are in work.

I've found just the opposite. The auctions I've had that have provided the biggest flurry of last minute overbidding have always ended on Saturday or Sunday night. In fact, I won't sell anything now that doesn't have a weekend end date. If someone REALLY wants something, they'll either stay home at night or use a sniping service to get it.

As for PayPal, I guess I view it as a necessary evil. :frowning: Yeah, I hate getting raped by the fees, but on big ticket items I figure I might be limiting the number of bidders if I only accept checks or money orders. Heck, I think a lot of people in life have used credit cards to buy something when they were short of cash and if making PayPal available helps potential buyers give into temptation, I'm willing to use it.

 

[DaveGTP]

I do a little buying and selling on Ebay (rating 65, 100% good feedback). Sold a bunch of PS2/Xbox/Gamecube games when the video store my fiancee worked at went out of business. I also sell games that I have reconsidered, or sell stuff to pay the bills =) Timing is important. Think of your market. I sell mostly video games. I try to get my auctions to end on the weekend afternoons, or at night during the week. Remember your timezone, California is normally 3 hours behind me here in Michigan. So I try to get my auctions to end @ 9:00 PM EST (6:00 PM PST).

 

[nolesrule]

I buy and sell on ebay frequently, but I'm not a heavy "user".

Sunday evenings are eBay's busiest times according to some statistics I've seen from a site that helps bidders place bids automatically.

As for Paypal, anyone who knows about merchant account fees would know that the 2.9% surcharge on credit card payments is reasonable for the (small) volume of credit card payments received through Paypal. If they had a higher volume, they could just get a merchant account.

 

[Peter Kim]

Well, thanks to the fantastic advice (albeit, some of it contradictory ) found in this thread (esp. Pat, Aurel, Alan), I just completed selling my first item on eBay. I've also got another sale underway, going well so far.

So thanks to all the participants in this thread,...and thanks to Travis for asking the question in the first place.

 

[Travis Hedger]

Peter, since you just completed your sale, what was it, and how much did you score? As it has sold it would no longer be an active Ebay link and should be able to be posted, right mods?

Oh, and glad to be of service!

 

[Peter Kim]

I just sold my Nintendo Gameboy Advance for $51. I've recently purchased the SP model, and if I would've traded the old one in, it would have only fetched $39. In other words, I'm happy with the sale.

EDIT: I'm a little leery of posting an auction link since I believe that still violates forum rules. However, it should be hard to identify the auction since it closed recently.

I've currently got a 100% positive feedback of '4'. However, this is the first auction that I've handled on my own - several years ago, one of my colleagues was so high on eBay that he tried to convert me as a disciple. As a result, he helped me (translation: he did everything) sell several things (old N64 system, PS2, cannot remember what else).

But once both of us left the company, I found no desire to continue eBaying. Had no one to push me to sell my stuff and was too lazy to figure things out on my own. Fortunate that I was able to recall my old identity in order to show that I was reliable and relatively 'long-lived'.

 

[Aurel Savin]

Guys, do not forget that Ebay fees add up to as much as 7% of the selling price (this includes the initial listing fee plus the final value fee) + if you accept Paypal they also take another 3%

So always be aware that on the average you will be paying about 10% of the item price in fees ...

 

[Peter Kim]

Unfortunately, this is true. I was a little surprised by the fees, but that's the price of business? Saw that eBay owns PayPal, so they must be raking in the cash.

Interesting note...as I was watching my sale last night, I noticed a furious flurry of activity within the last minute. Pretty exciting, as I was clicking my browser's 'refresh' constantly.

 

[Travis Hedger]

Well, my first Ebay Auction is now complete. Final price $525.1 Plus $25 for shipping.

In the last minute of the auction, someone came in and bid $75 above the amount that it was at for the last few hours.

Needless to say, I am happy and got more than I had expected. I am hoping to buy some new computer parts soon.

Now it has been around 12 hours since the auction ended. About how long does it take for the seller to contact you with his shipping info and all that?

 

[Darren Lewis]

I usually send an email to the winning bidder saying something like, "congratulations, the final price including shipping is ... I can accept these payment methods...", or something similar.

With that amount, wait until the payment has cleared and you have the funds before shipping. Send the goods using a reputable insured shipping method. Might even be a good idea to take some photos of the goods in and out of the packaging in case there are any problems (hopefully there won't be, but best to be prepared).

Darren.

 

[Patrick Sun]

As the seller, you have got to be proactive and start inundating the buyer with all of the information needed to complete the transaction. Don't sit on your hands and hope the buyer is going to do all the heavy lifting.

 

[James T]

I've seen paypalsucks.com before. I also know of a few people that lost a few hundred dollars from Paypal because of "suspicous reasons". I still use people because I don't buy items that are worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars and it's still cheaper than the cost to create a Money Order and to send it out.

Why aren't Money Orders guarenteed? Aren't they like cheques except they've already been cleared?

At my bank anyway, it takes 10 days to clear a domestic cheque and about 14 busness days to clear a cheque from the US. It might be similar, except reversed in the States.

 

[Peter Kim]

Travis,

About how long does it take for the seller to contact you with his shipping info and all that?

Weren't you the seller? Anyway, I contacted buyers of both my recent auctions within several minutes of the end of the sale. I received PayPal payments within 15 minutes of the end of the sale.

The PayPal payments went smoothly, and I shipped both items - I added Delivery Confirmation (only 45 cents) for my own benefit. It provides inexpensive proof of delivery. At last check, both items were delivered in 2 days using USPS Priority Mail.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with my recent eBay experience. Hopefully, the two buyers feel the same and leave positive feedback.

Which brings me to this question...how and when do you tactfully inform/remind the buyer to leave feedback? It's been several days since the buyers received their items according to delivery confirmation and I haven't seen any feedback yet. I've already left positive feedback for both parties.

 

[Travis Hedger]

Well, about 15 minutes after the auction had ended, I invoiced him with the Ebay tool, and congratulated him, went over the price/shipping and confirmation of my information and all that. So hopefully I will hear something by Monday night, 48 hours should be enough time right?

This guy has a pretty good positive feedback record. His last purchase was in December for a 55inch HDTV for $1200, and the person that sold it gave him a good review.

 

[Matthew_V]

.

 

[Eric Kahn]

For you Ebay sellers, if you take USPS money orders, you can go to a post office with it, they get a list at least weekly listing all the money order numbers that are missing or stolen, so you can check if yours is good.

I always use USPS money orders to pay, when I don't use a credit card, I do not use the paypal pay out of your checking account feature because my credit union decided that those were electronic money transfers and charges some pretty hefty fees, higher than the Paypal credit card fees

 

[Travis Hedger]

w00t!

I got a response from my buyer last night around 12AM, almost exactly 48 hours after the auction ended. All should be well now, he will be paying by Wednesday.

To the question above about pictures, I was able to let Ebay host 6 pictures for only a buck, and they had a gallery feature, so when someone clicked on it, it would enlarge.

I don't know html, but if you do, you should be able to reference the pictures with some simple html code using the img source tag I believe.

Anyway, good luck all. I believe that my first Ebay sale will soon be a total success!!!!