Topic: Buying and Selling on Ebay

[Clonehead]

As some of you might know, I have had an Ebay store going for several years now. As I have had so much experience with the ins and outs of Ebay, It was thought best that I should create a little tutorial, here, that might help you yarders when it comes to buying and selling on Ebay.

Keep in mind that there are alot of bases to cover, here, and I will cover what I can, when I can. Rules and policies have a random habit of changing on ebay so some of my knowledge is not up to date or possibly will not be up to date in the near future.

I will be happy to answer any questions you might have about buying or selling, here. If I don't know the answer, I can find out.


First off, we should talk a little about buying.
    Ebay is a great place to find what you are looking for. It is so vast, chances are, if you are looking for something that you can't find anywhere else, if it exists, it is for sale on Ebay.

Obviously, to get started buying on ebay, you must register with the site. To do so, you must provide a working e-mail address and provide some proof of your physical address either by giving them credit card info or info of a working bank account. They will use the email addy to send you a tag that you must send back to complete the registration process. And, of course, you need to make up a screen name and submit a password.

When you go to buy your first item, you can search for it using the search box twards the top of the page or you can surf through all of the provided categories from the home page.
  When you type in what you are searching for in the search box, ebay will show items from the relevant category whose titles most closely match your search key words.

I will continue to pile info here, as time alots but now, I have to get ready to go to work.

[Clonehead]

Also when you go to shop for an item, It is important to take a look at the seller's feedback. Feedback is a system that ebay uses for buyer's and seller's to rate each others performance throughout the course of a completed transaction.
  If you click on a seller's feedback number, you can see a detailed list of the feedback that seller has gotten. If this seller has had some neutral or bad feedback, you can research what the buyer said about the seller and, based on this, you might want to reconsider a purchase from that person.
    Feedback works both ways in that the seller also has the ability to leave feedback twards the buyer as far as how quickly you paid, what your communication was like ,and whatever else. The only difference is that Ebay no longer allows sellers to leave a buyer bad feedback. Only good or neutral feedback. The seller can, however file an unpaid item dispute if you win an item but do not pay. Generaly, a buyer should pay or mail payment within 3 days of winning an item.
  That brings us to our next subject, how will you pay for your item.
When choosing an item to buy or bid on, in the auction, the seller will list what type of payment is accepted. As part of a new ebay policy, sellers are no longer allowed to post in their listings that they will accept checks or money orders. That is not to say that a seller wouldn't. You would have to ask the seller if they do by clicking the "ask seller a question" link.
  More on paying for an item, later. It's dinner time.

[Clonehead]

Generally, the most common accepted form of payment is Paypal, which is a safe method of online payment. When setting up a Paypal account, one has the option of using a credit card or a personal bank account or both to draw funds from. If you have it set up for both, you can choose which is your primary form of payment and which is backup. Keep in mind that using paypal for things other than on ebay, may cost you money. It just depends on what kind of paypal account you have. When you use it to buy an ebay auction, it is the seller who pays the paypal fees. Since I have a store, mine is a primer account and It doesn't cost me anything to use paypal for anything. They get their money from me from the percentage that they take from my sales. Although I'm not familiar with it, Tamer can tell you that it costs the average person to have a paypal account.
  If your paypal is taking funds from your bank account to pay for an item, this is called an electronic funds transfer and will take 3-4 days to process from your bank to the sellers paypal account. If paypal is taking funds from your credit card, the transfer of funds is instant. That just means that you will get your item more quickly if you use the credit card side of paypal.

Naturally, if the seller takes it, you could pay with a check or money order and if you are going to the sellers house to pick up your item, you could take cash although I wouldn't suggest it. That's a good way to get mugged.

These are the basics about buying. There is alot more to tell but I can answer any questions about buying on ebay.

Next up, How to sell on Ebay.

[Tamer]

I can accpet 5 cash payments per year? I know one thing, international send moneys take a big hit. Except for a recent deal with James, that one didn't take out any fees. I bet it has something to do with transfers from bank accounts or taking a credit card payment as a regular paypal member.

[Clonehead]

I can accpet 5 cash payments per year? I know one thing, international send moneys take a big hit. Except for a recent deal with James, that one didn't take out any fees. I bet it has something to do with transfers from bank accounts or taking a credit card payment as a regular paypal member.

What, only 5? That's kind of silly.That's one of the percs being a store owner, Shawn, no papal fees other than when an ebay buyer sends you money.. I will have to look up their fee structure, again and see what I would get charged for money received when it isnt an ebay transaction, or if I get charged.

[Clonehead]

I found some info on the paypal fees.
for a personal account like Shawn's: opening an account is free, sending money is free,withdrawing funds is free,adding funds is free.
when someone pays you using paypal, using funds from their paypal balance, an e-check, or instant money transfer, it's free? When they use a credit card, however, you get charged 4.9% =$0.30 usd per transaction limited to 5 per year. If it's from another country, add another 2%

If there is a currency exchange during that transaction, add another 2.5%. They are racking it up, on those, arn't they?

For a primeir account like mine: opening an account is free, sending money is free,withdrawing funds is free,adding funds is free.

When I recieve money, i'm charged 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 for any and every transaction. Reguardless of source of paypal funds. No limit to the number of credit card paypal transactions.
If a currency exchange happens, I also get charged the 2.5% for that.

That's the difference in account fees, Shawn.  Now do you still wonder why ebay had their sellers take checks and money orders accepted off of their auctions?

[Tamer]

thats a good bit of news. I always wondered about that.

One thing I was also wondering about is shipping prices. Do you have your own postal scale to wiegh your packages Clint? I have been thinking about purchasing one so I can get accurate shipping rates. You can pretty much do everything online if you have an accurate wieght with dimensions I think.

[Clonehead]

I do have a postal scale but don't use it except when the PO changes their rates. After a while you get used to knowing what it costs to ship what where. I did just pick up an updated list of international rates that you can figure that way and yes, if you know weight and dimensions, you can calculate about any postage on usps. com.
  Keep in mind that there are some restrictions on size as far as what you can ship, internationally.

[Clonehead]

There's nothing like dealing with a dishonest or unintelligent buyer. I have got one who's parcel has been returned to me twice because she insists that her zip is right when in fact it is two digits off. I can't believe that I have to do the research to right her on this. I have another, with a feedback of 1, who is trying to pull a fast one on a used videogame deal. He claims that it locks up in a certain part of the game and wants to return it when it was a flawless copy that always worked for me. I suspect that he wants to pull a switcheroo with his scratched up and unplayable or even worse, bootleg copy. It's almost always the yanks in the states that pull stuff like this.

[Tamer]

that is the only thing that makes me a little leary of ebay. There are always bad folks galore there who try to pull fast ones by threatening bad feedback.

[narceron]

And as I understand it, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback, lol.

So its really going in a different direction these days.

[Clonehead]

And as I understand it, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback, lol.

So its really going in a different direction these days.

You are correct about that and I'm not sure if buyers can either. You can always leave a colorful comment on the old feedback though. I think that it was kind of silly to take that away as the buyers need to be kept in check as much as the sellers. I have had well over 1000 seller transactions and have seen my share of bad buyers.
  My feedback number is 956 or something like that. Keep in mind that there are plenty of buyers who are too lazy to even leave feedback so by my estimation, my feedback number would be 200 or more higher, had those buyers actually left me one.

[Clonehead]

Got this email from Ebay, last night about a new fee structure that those money grubbers are implementing this spring.
  While they like to try to make it sound like the average seller is going to save money with these new fees, it isn't so.
The ones really getting hurt by this change are the Ebay store owners like me. I have been paying a basic store subscription fee of $10 a month and can list fixed price items in my store for 3cents per auction per month. With their new structure, they will want $15 a month for the store subscription and 20cents per fixed price auction per month. They claim that the store auctions will get greater exposure than they used to get but is it 17 cents worth. What all this means to me is either I will have to gut and restructure my store to keep those jonesers from getting any more money out of me or I will have to drop my store subscription all together. It sure tees me off, though. Why can't people just leave stuff alone?

Here is the email with the announcment.
http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/FeeUpdate2010.html

[Tamer]

Hmmm...guess I won't be setting up a store. I got an email stating that if you list an auction and start the price off at 99 cents it will let you list em, whatever the number, for free.  Like they weren't getting enough money out of us already.

[Reconsgt]

That's one reason I gave up on Ebay alltogether,  they are pricks and add the fact they own paypal, they basically screw you twice on many types of transactions.

  Maybe a ISY storefront is in order