Becoming an eBay Trader

Selling on eBay is incredibly simple; all you have to do is upgrade your existing account to a seller s account and away you go. If you sell just a few items you ll find it easy to upload and edit individual listings and keep an eye on them yourself, but if you sell in bulk this becomes unmanageable. Luckily eBay offers some useful tools to make power selling easier; this article outlines a few of them. eBay s turbo lister allow you to upload your items in bulk by working offline first to put all the details in. Once you ve finished editing, it uploads everything for you. You can even save templates to use for future listings, which is great as it means you don t have to create each listing individually. The selling manager allows you to manage all of your auctions quickly and easily. You can do everything in bulk such as relisting items and sending out invoices. There are templates to use for your emails to buyers so you don t have to write each email yourself. The pro selling manager allows you to automate a lot of these operations, meaning that you don t have to check your account as often. You can automatically email someone when they win your item, and automatically relist items if they go unsold the first time. The basic selling manager is free but the pro manager costs five pounds per month. To list an item on eBay there s a small fee which you pay just to put your item up. If it sells you pay a percentage of the sales value. You can add a picture to your listing for free, but if you want this picture to show up on your item listing in the search results you have to pay for this upgrade. You calculate your own postage costs, so make sure you cover the cost of your packaging. Some sellers start off their auctions with a very low opening bid to attract buyers, but their postage costs are very high to make up their money if the item sells cheaply. It s best to be honest about your postage however, as eBay guidelines say that you shouldn t overcharge. To become a merchant you have to accept Paypal payments. This is what a lot of buyers use to make their purchases, and it also gives you a measure of protection as no bank details are ever shared. To protect you further you can put controls on the type of buyer you accept for your items. This includes things like specifying that the buyer must have a Paypal account, or that they must be resident in the UK. Generally, buyers with Paypal accounts have a higher trust rate than those without. If you have an eBay shop you can add your company logo and branding. If you have a brand, people are more likely to remember you and use you again. Once you build up a lot of good feedback you ll find that people trust you more too. Also whatever you want to sell, from diamond jewelery to garden furniture, having a shop page gives you an extra platform to make buyers aware of you and the great service you provide. Sylvia Kittens lives in Harrogate, England