I am thinking of trying to clear some stuff through eBay.

I will be selling anything from household ornaments, electrical goods, games and jig saws and possibly even a car.

Having never used it before to buy or sell I would like hints and tips please. If your hint is a joke then please follow it with a smiley or something as I am not terribly bright.

Cheers

Start everything with a low starting price. Be prepared for some stuff to go for less than you wanted, but other stuff to go for way more.

* Take decent photos
* Make sure you work out the correct postage including packaging so you can get an accurate postage cost.
* Send everything recorded delivery or similar

Aim to have the auctions end on a friday or sunday evening between 8 and 10pm

I got a Conran armchair for £15 as the guy had the auction ending at 7am on a Monday – should have been about £200.

Rate my first attempt: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110627430892#ht_500wt_1156

I seem to have managed to get the time out by 12 hours but the rest seems correct.

Comments, criticisms and changes I should make (if any)?

Note to Mods : Not trying to sell this via STW, just trying to work out HOW to sell on eBay.

2 add to the above

Budget 10-15% for ebay’s fees, and get your Paypal account set up before doing anything, if you don’t already have one.

Have a look at completed listing to get an idea of what you things will go for.

Make sure that you pack stuff well when sending, and don’t be excessive with what you add to the P&P costs for this, I look at between 50-75p for packaging materials

For finishing times, evenings are the best, I avoid Friday & Saturday nights, between Sun – Thur, I find it varies every week to what goes well on those.

Wouldn’t use reserves either, as the fees on them are very high.

funny, i was looking for one of those.

Yours looks fine, only other thing to think about, is how long you want it to be listed for.

I used to do everything on 7 & 10 days, but now list most things on 3 or 5 days, I’ve not seen any less interest in shorter listing, and if you are having a big clearance, it gets stuff gone quicker.

Also, if you are selling lots, best to check when your local Post Office is quiet, unless you like waiting / creating queues.

bear in mind charges
see also preloved.co.uk
and freecycle

BigButSlimmer – There is one on eBay right now!

What happens if no-one buys it? Do I just post it up again and hope?

I assume that I have to accept what ever the highest bid is, even if it is really low unless I put a reserve on it.

Can I pull an item from the auction if someone buys it direct or I sell it some other way before the end of the auction?

What happens if no-one buys it? Do I just post it up again and hope?

You’ll just get charged your listing fee. Relist it again, if it’s up on auction currently then people are probably a) not buying as it’s too late to get for Christmas or b) skint because of Xmas.

Relist after Christmas/New Year when people have their Xmas money burning a hole in their pockets.

I assume that I have to accept what ever the highest bid is, even if it is really low unless I put a reserve on it.

Technically it is a legally binding obligation to sell regardless of price. Though there are a number of threads on here discussing either to cancel the item or just ‘lose’ it in the post. Either way you’ll be charged final fees so you’ll lose 10% of final value regardless.

Can I pull an item from the auction if someone buys it direct or I sell it some other way before the end of the auction?

Can cancel an auction at any time, though you’ll lose the listing fee. If anyone contacts you outside eBay with an offer they’re normally trying to get it cheap, often get better price holding nerve.

Always been pretty successful putitng stuff up ending Sun between 20:00 and 21:00 – bairns in bed, had tea, no pub etc.

Bike stuff always sells well, other stuff sometimes a bit dodgy.

Do check postage. Selling something for 99p then finding postage is 80p more than you though is annoying (certainly once listing fee makes you in negative profit!).

What is this listing fee?

So far everything has been 0p. I assumed they (eBay) just took a cut of the selling price.

I have included the cost of postage based on Recorded Delivery. I assume that the buyer pays that on top of what ever they bought the thing for so if they pay £1 and I have posted listed at £1.70 they pay £2.70 and eBay take a cut of the £1.

I am not too worried about selling this particular item, I just wanted to try eBay on something simple before investing much tiome and effort.

Looks good (the ad I mean, not the product). Only food for thought I would add, some people, some times incl. me, don’t want to wait 7-10 days. You could also add a ‘buy it now’ to the auction which I think disappears once someone makes the first bid, but the option would be there initially for some impatient soul to snap it up. I usually set the ‘buy it now’ at a premium price. Obviously, this might only be worth doing on certain items and you would need to have the item ready to post, as they will probably be as impatient to recieve it as they were to buy it.

They usually charge a listing fee, normally pence if you use one photo and start at 99p, but occasionally do free listing days, maybe you got lucky.

Photobucket makes it simple if you want to add more pics (obviously not needed in your example auction) – include them in your description rather than paying extra for Ebay to host them.

Listing at 99p with 1 photo is always free…listing at £1 to £4.99 is one rate and above that there are more listing bands.

I’m pretty sure Ebay tells you all this in nice easy help pages…they even put the help next to the fields when you’re listing too.

Beware that it will become addictive, you’ll be logging in over and over at random times to see if any of those “watchers” have lost their nerve and made an early bid. People will get your stuff off you for a ridiculously low price sometimes and it will make you angry having to walk to the post office and send it to them. Other times things will sell for more than you could ever have hoped for and you will be on cloud nine.

Then all of a sudden you realise that the chief topic of conversation you have with people is your recent ebay activity, and before you know it you will be selling things you probably still need just to recapture the selling buzz…..Good times

Can I tell who the watchers are?

Is it just someone who has looked at it (ie you lot) or is there more to it?

the number of watchers is not the number of people who have viewed your ad, it’s the number of people who have viewed your ad and then saved the ad to their watch list in ‘My eBay’.

IME and IMO, Watchers tend to have the same product and are curious what you’ll get for yours before putting theirs on Ebay. Number of watchers doesn’t equate to ££££’s

its why I watch items on Ebay for anyway….

So when do I know if someone has bid/bought it? Do I just wait until the auction is up and look at the result?

I assume someone will email me or something if they actually buy it.

You’ll get an automated email from Ebay when the auction ends.

Go to My Ebay -> Selling to see details of the auctions, watchers etc

WCA – if you go to your eBay summary page, there is a link for “selling” down the left side – click on that at any time and it’ll give you a list of all your auction items, those with a red price haven’t any bids, those in greet have bids.

You’ll get an email when the thing sells. You might find the winner pays straight away so you’ll get a notification from paypal that you’re being paid for an item – that’ll have their address in it. If they don’t then you can ‘send invoice’ to the winner.

And re postage, yes, they’ll pay the postage on top, eBay takes their fee only off the actual price of the auction, not the p&p, though paypal stings you again for the combined amount.

Don’t rip people off by guessing the postage and then adding some. Too many do that, it looks lazy and money grabbing and is a real piss-off.

Get secondhand bubble wrap or used jiffy bags. Weigh the stuff, look it up on Post Office and charge exactly that.

WCA – if you go to your eBay summary page, there is a link for “selling” down the left side – click on that at any time and it’ll give you a list of all your auction items, those with a red price haven’t any bids, those in greet have bids.

You’ll get an email when the thing sells. You might find the winner pays straight away so you’ll get a notification from paypal that you’re being paid for an item – that’ll have their address in it. If they don’t then you can ‘send invoice’ to the winner.

Gosh, what a long-winded way of repeating exactly what the post before your’s said …