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8 responses to “EBay virgin seeks information”

1. 2005/03/30

   laszlo

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   hi there! 🙂

   afai remember, there’s a sort of ‘listing fee’ for every item, even if nobody bids for that

   shipping (and sometimes handling, packing!) is usually extra cost, and is normally stated among the general conditions of the seller (eg: shipping first class USPS and costs $10 extra)

   payment in the US is usually done either via PayPal, or mail order (try *that* from Hungary…;); but for example in Germany wire transfer is pretty standard (and is the sanest method)

   for the excess books, i’d definitely go and give those books to friends… i don’t think that getting $2-$3 for a book is a ‘good business’…

   Reply
2. 2005/03/30

   Katz

   Here’s what I do…

   I’ve bought and sold 3 cars via e-bay among other items… as a seller, here is what I’ve done…

   1) You register with e-bay and setup an account. From there, you can post items for sale. 2) e-bay hosts the webpage with the for-sale item with all the info. When you create a listing there is a fee associated. If you go with nifty features for the listing, you are assessed more fees. If you use ebay for hosting photos of the item, they nickel-and-dime you on that, as well. 3) People bid. If your item has a reserve, they also collect a fee which is a percentage of the highest bid (if it goes over reseve.) 4) Usually I sell items with a set shpiping cost or shipping extra. I also almost always use paypal to receive payment from people. They electronically send me money, I send them the goods.

   I need to calculate shipping for an item I just sold. Yikes.

   Reply
3. 2005/03/30

   Chris Samuel

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   You pay them the fees regardless of whether or not you sell anything..

   Reply
4. 2005/03/31

   Clive

   eBay charges a listing fee regardless, a percentage of the agreed price if a sale is made, and a surcharge if a reserve is set. A “starting bid” may be set for free; only secret reserves cost money to establish. These costs are borne by the seller, not the buyer.

   The seller states an illustrative shipping cost, and limits on where they’ll send the item for that cost. It’s up to a prospective purchaser to contact the seller in advance if they would like some other kind of shipping (abroad, for example).

   Broadly, the buyer must clear funds to the seller before goods are shipped.

   Generally, PayPal is the most popular payment mechanism, but visit http://www.nopaypal.com . It would come as no surprise to a cynic such as you that the majority can be woefully misguided. If you have to pay via PayPal, open an account, pay, then close the account immediately. If you accept money via PayPal, associate the account with a credit card with a limit lower than the largest sum you’re prepared to lose, and also only transact sums you can bear losing.

   Safer is cheques drawn on reputable banks, though those can in theory bounce long after funds are available in your account. Personally, I’ll take that risk for sums less than £1,000 or so. For higher values, a building society counter cheque, banker’s draft, posted cash or a face-to-face transaction may be in order. (Most people don’t realise you can post £2,500 in cash fully insured for a fiver via Special Delivery, incidentally.)

   When shipping, it’s wise to use insured delivery for anything worth a hundreds of pounds. For low-value items like individual books proof of posting is OK, and will get you up to £28 in compensation if the item goes missing.

   You can sell ludicrously commonplace books, or books so esoteric they’re unknown to Amazon, through eBay. For anything in between, I’d use Amazon instead. eBay auctions last a week, and many books won’t find a single buyer that quickly, let alone enough to make the auction anything but a shallow farce; with Amazon, the listing stays there until someone buys the book. Which do you prefer, liquidating your asset eventually for a fair price, or getting as much money as you can – even if that’s only 10p or some equally derisory amount – within the week?

   Reply
5. 2005/03/31

   Stephen Usher

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   Note about using PayPal to receive funds: You’ll need to set up a business account. The standard free account doesn’t allow funds to be transfered to it. I found this out when I was trying to buy a game and the person only had a free PayPal account.. the transaction kept failing at the “taking the funds” stage.

   Dispite what “Clive” wrote above, many people will not bid for things which can’t be paid with PayPal as it’s generally less risky for the buyer to pay that way and they get their goods sooner and this is especially the case for smaller items.

   Reply
6. 2005/03/31

   Aaron K.

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   You might want to consider half.com to list your books. Although they were bought by ebay a while ago, it’s a fairly low-cost way to sell (and buy) books. I’ve done well with it.

   Reply
7. 2005/03/31

   Ian Smith

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   I’m going through this cycle at the moment – eBaying a number of relatively low value old stuff (DVDs, CDs, etc) I don’t want any more. You have to beware of fees, also – especially for lowish value items where the cost percentage can mount up.

   eBay charge when you list items, and also when they are purchased. If you choose to accept the benefits afforded by Paypal, they also take their pound of flesh.

   To give an idea, I sold something early on for £35 + £6 p&p. Paypal charged me £1.59 for the £41 transaction. eBay charged me a total of £1.58 for listing it, and £1.73 in final value fees. This amounts in total to 14% of the amount I sold the item for (the £6 p&p was at cost).

   You can gain control over these costs by (i) not using Paypal (this decision carries certain penalties with it, though) and (ii) being ruthless when it comes to selecting options (eg. larger pictures, bold, sub-titles, and the useless listing designer function) at the listing stage.

   In addition, to contain costs, I bought (on eBay!) a moderate bulk supply of those “mail lite” padded bags – this was a lot cheaper than getting them individually at the post office.

   Despite all the railing against Paypal, I use it anyway. This is because it incorporates £500 of buyer protection, which reassures people, and it also allows you to cater to many people’s desire to get hold of their purchases quickly. I have also provided “Buy It Now” prices for all my items so far in order to cater to this. Quite a number of my items have sold for good prices using “Buy it Now”, so I believe this strategy works. In order to encourage this, I list them for 10 days rather than the default 7.

   In about 15-20 transactions involving Paypal, as both buyer and seller, I have not had any problems with fraud, although I have had problems on the administrative side. Now there is a Paypal UK, it’s probably ok since most of my problems have been switching my account from USD to GBP.

   As soon as I get notification that someone has bought something via Paypal, I dispatch it. Otherwise I send it when payment has cleared by whatever other means. Cheaper and lighter stuff goes by first class post – you get £28 insurance if you get them to give you a free posting certificate.

   Finally, feedback is absolutely key. People on eBay live and die by their feedback. I give buyers good feedback as soon as I receive their money and, so far, have received good feedback within a decent time span from when I expected that the goods would have been received.

   Excuse this brain-dump style of writing – if you want to get a better picture, you have my number 🙂

   Reply
8. 2005/03/31

   alecm

   re: EBay virgin seeks information

   Extremely useful write-up, thanks Ian (and Clive) – I shall put my thoughts in order, clean and make up a pile of stuff, and then stick a toe in the water.

   Reply