Selling on eBay - A look Into the Sellers World

It seems like you can find anything and everything on eBay these days. I suppose you pretty much can. People around the world are using this amazing buy/sell tool to find what they're looking for. While others are using it to put a little $$ in their pockets.

That's how it started for me. I was doing all this as a side gig to cover expenses on a family of 5 since I was the only one working. I became a flipper. Check out my store at jennhi-75 on eBay

When you become a seller on eBay there's a lot things to consider. First, your dealing with people and people aren't always nice so you have to have a level of customer experience to be successful at it. Second, in todays world you really have to watch for scammers. They are everywhere and I've had to deal with my share. They will claim they didn't get it, it didn't work, or it was used just to try to get it and their money back and sometimes you suffer unnecessary negative feedback. I try to take it with a grain of salt. I also try to ship responsibly and I'm getting away from breakables because you can't always trust it to get delivered in one piece and somehow that ends up being my fault. Anyway...

The things you want to be mindful of if you're going to sell something on eBay is 1 - is it worth the time which means you've got to know your market. You've got to know what the item is selling for, what the shipping expense is going to be, are you going to charge for shipping or not, what are other sellers doing etc. So, with anything you've got to do your research. 2 - How much do you have in the item because you acquired it somewhere, somehow. Even if you got it free, unless someone brought it to you and put it in your hand then you have fuel costs which today aren't cheap. I say that because people don't often think about that part. If you wrap something in bubble wrap, you had to get the bubbles from somewhere. Everything has a cost and you need to know your expenses. Once you start selling enough stuff regularly the shipping and packing expenses will divide out among all your items and your profit will go up, so keep that in mind too. You definitely get a good ROI (return on investment) if you put the time in and do it right.

As a buyer you have more benefits than as a seller. There are seller protections in place but buyers have things like money back guarantees that work against the seller especially when they sell items 'as is' with 'no returns' which is how all of mine are marked. I do that to try to eliminate scammers. If you buy something from me that says 'parts only' and you don't read that in the description and then you try to send it back to me because it doesn't work I'm going to deny the return because I told you it was for parts only. Some people will try anything though. Which can be a real drag but it typically works out.

The good part as a seller is if you have trouble with a buyer you can block them. I'm not afraid to block a bad buyer either because it's not worth the headache there are too many other folks out there to sell to.

So what are the pros and cons to buying and selling on eBay.

Pro's

Buyer protection

Tons of stuff out there, can literally find anything that's not illegal.

Sellers all over the world.

Buyers all over the world, if you chose to sell out of the country.

Out of country shipping program through eBay is cost efficient for sellers.

List more, sell more.

Con's

Buyer protection

Tons of stuff out there - competition is fierce.

Scammers

List regularly, sell regularly. It's all the in algorithms, if you list more, you'll sell more, is endless because of the algorithms and whose stuff is getting to the top of the list first.

So while I sit over here and try to make a name for myself to develop my own algorithm and bring people to my blog, my stores, my online presence itself. I'm learning as I go and I hope I can help each and everyone of you along the way.

Don't forget to check out my store on your way out....

jennhi-75 on eBay