I sell reguarly. Ebay rocks. My tip is to be honest about what your selling and don't not post the stuff for ages cos sellers get annoyed.

I love ebay. When our first child was born I sold my childhood collection of star wars figures on ebay. They did so well that my wife set up a business and is now a star wars dealer with her own ebay shop! As a result she only went back to her previous job part time and can spend more time with the children.

As for tips - check peoples feedback before bidding. If they have negative feedback look at the reasons for it. Unless the item is of a small value I would post it recorded delivery so you know it has arrived. it then stops people claiming it has got lost in the post. I'd also recommend buying/selling small value items to start with to get used to it.

I've never sold anything, but bought plenty of bits on eBay.

From the experience of a colleague of mine, while it is in your interest to get the best possible price, try not to set an unrealistic reserve price. Buyers are obviously on the hunt for a bargain and if they see something priced in this way they'll probably give it a wide berth (unless, of course, if it's a fantastic collectable which is going to be popular). This colleague had an item to sell and he set up the auction with a reserve price which while it was still a bargain, he considered a fair amount to let it go for. The auction passed and he had barely a sniff (and nothing near the reserve).

A few weeks later he tried again and chanced his arm. With the identical description, he re-submitted the auction with no reserve and a starting bid of £1. At the end of the week not only had he sold it, but the winning price was nearly twice that of the original reserve!

(Edited by gobstopper 19/02/2005 16:12)

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by gobstopper
I've never sold anything, but bought plenty of bits on eBay.

From the experience of a colleague of mine, while it is in your interest to get the best possible price, try not to set an unrealistic reserve price. Buyers are obviously on the hunt for a bargain and if they see something priced in this way they'll probably give it a wide berth (unless, of course, if it's a fantastic collectable which is going to be popular). This colleague had an item to sell and he set up the auction with a reserve price which while it was still a bargain, he considered a fair amount to let it go for. The auction passed and he had barely a sniff (and nothing near the reserve).

A few weeks later he tried again and chanced his arm. With the identical description, he re-submitted the auction with no reserve and a starting bid of £1. At the end of the week not only had he sold it, but the winning price was nearly twice that of the original reserve!

(Edited by gobstopper 19/02/2005 16:12)

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This depends what you have to sell. I have sold lots of things for just £1 doing this and have been very disappointed.

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by Wobag
I think Im about to take the plunge selling something on Ebay, so whos done this already, and what tips can you give?

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Only started selling last year after buying for way too long

I like to try and wait for free listing days as it doesn't matter then if the item sells or not as you aren't wasting more money trying. Although some of these have clauses like restricting to starting bids of 99p or buy it nows only.

You need to take into account what you hope to get back after ebay (and paypal if you use that) take their cut of fees. Be careful about starting your auction too low, unless you don't care what you get for it as many people have come unstuck by starting a £1.00 and not getting any other bids on it.

The best thing to do is browse ebay and see if other things like yours are selling. Bookmark those auctions, and when they are finished take a peek at the bids and see what the runners-up were willing to pay. This can give you a benchmark to start your item at.

Make sure you take a look at both the EBAY FEES page first. You will be charged a starter fee regardless of if it sells and a final value fee on top when it sells. There are many extra costs along the way like if you want to do a reserve price, or add extra pictures (you get one picture free per listing)

Your ebay fees can be paid by card, cheque or even paypal on a monthly basis. The account listings for this are straight forward. If you haven't already done so you'll need to set up a sellers account where they keep credit card or banking info on file for you to authorise the use of sellers fees.

There's an interactive tutorial on ebay that you might find helpful

Based on this if you have an item that you hope will sell for £50 it would be £1.50 to list and then when it sells you'll "lose" another £2.22 (these final fees are only against the final cost of the item NOT the carriage)

Further "losses" are if you have a paypal account and the buyer pays through that. Paypal takes 3.4% on each transaction (so this bit includes the carriage charge) You can no longer advertise on ebay that a buyer pays paypal fees so take account of this when you set your price. Of course if a buyer pays by cheque or postal order, you won't get this charge.

So again based on your £50 item if it was a £5.00 special delivery carriage charge, you'd "lose" a further £1.87

So far you've lost £ 5.59 of your £50.00 so you've bought home £ 44.41 - a rough 10% loss


Decide whether you are going to sell UK only or abroad. This is important for your wording as you can estimate UK carriage by recorded (for items up to £28.00 in case the postie misplaces them ) or special for anything more expensive. If it's not too expensive and you can get away with stamps, I would still personally use a proof of delivery note.

Make the title eyecatching as that's the basis of what people search on. Try and pick a relevant category too

I'm sure someone has made a simpler "how to use ebay" somewhere, if I find it I'll post it up


(Edited by Samphirette 20/02/2005 13:10)

Great help thanks, now if you realllly want to help you can all bid on my first item to push the price up!

This is my first attempt, what do you think?

cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8171914670

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by Wobag
This is my first attempt, what do you think?

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I think I may have a bid on that.....

(Edited by Teresa 20/02/2005 20:41)

Got an email saying there's going to be a 5p listing day on ebay on Thursday. So a good time to sell

Just had a look how the bidding was going and thought almost £30 was a lot of money. Then I looked at the highest bidders history and see that a similar one he won went for £172! Look at all his feedback over the past few days. He's spent a bloody fortune on them!!!!!

Im really glad its finally taking off. Actually I have another one to sell which I hope will get close to that expensive one he bought!

At least you made a decent sale there Wo, of all the stuff I put up on the 5p listing day all I managed to sell was a £1 trading card and it's going to Australia

Not exactly going to make millions at that rate