Making Money with eBay

 eBay is one of the largest online stores. It’s fun and exciting, yet it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to grow your online business. 

There are many options to choose from when selling on eBay. But basically there are two methods; you can list your items in the auction format, or you can open an eBay Store. Both are good, and both come with advantages and disadvantages, but when you use them together they can generate a lot of sales for you.

Some of the disadvantages of the auction format are that the listing only last for up to 3, 7 or 10 days and is more expensive to list. But the advantage is that you get a lot of traffic, because your items get listed in the main eBay directories and your items most likely will get sold.

The disadvantage of having a store is that you don’t get a lot of traffic to your store items; because your items do not get listed in the main eBay directories; leaving it up to you to generate traffic. But the good thing about the store is that you pay a monthly fee and after that it’s very cheap to list your items; making it perfect for when you have an inventory of a hundred items or so. Plus you can categorize your store making it easy for customers to find the items they are looking for.

If you are new to selling online, you should start with an item you have on hand and list it in the auction format. I don’t recommend opening an eBay Store until you have some positive feedback, repeat customers and an inventory to make it worthwhile.

After you open a store you should still continue to list in the auction format to help drive traffic to your store items. When listing in the auction format you simply remind your potential customers to check out your store for other items and offer them a discount on shipping when they buy more than one item.

Another thing to keep in mind is all the fees associated with eBay; first you pay a listing fee, then when your item sells you are charged a Final Value Fee. Pay Pal also charges you a small fee of 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 for every transaction. I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the fees, to help you decide what to price your items at, so you don’t end up losing money.

In order to sell on eBay you need to have Pay Pal account in good standing. It’s free and easy to sign up and you can connect it directly to your credit card or bank account, making it easy to transfer money.

There’s a lot to learn about eBay, but these are the basics you need to know in order to get started. Just remember to make this a fun experiment, if your first item doesn’t sell, simply try another, and if you don’t give up, you will succeed over time.