eBaying lessons/hints

The first thing we did, Molly, was to open an eBay account. We started back in 1999 just to browse eBay for fun since it was kind of new for us. At that time, I was just interested in possibly buying stuff. Also, at that time, DH set it up so that I could use PayPal which I think is very helpful. You certainly don't have to use PayPal, but I personally think it makes it much easier as both a seller AND a buyer. To use PayPal, you do have to register your bank information and other statistics that often make me nervous, but I've not had any problems (knocking on wood). Also, since PayPal was recently bought by eBay, I think that helps prove its worth & trust (IMHO).

PayPal it is still its own site right now (www.paypal.com). So, when you create an eBay user id, you'd likely have to create a PayPal id, too, unless they've been able to merge it into their system since PayPal was bought by eBay. The nice part about PayPal is the ability to send or receive instant money payments. That's it in a nutshell. No snail mail.

So back to the beginning... Creating an eBay id is the first step. It's like creating your DGs alias name and doesn't have to be the same as your email address.

Second, if you think you'd like to manage the monetary exchange online, you should visit PayPal. When I just decided to sell on eBay, I just used a "Personal" PayPal account. BUT, I found with selling that some customers want to pay with credit cards so I decided to face the additional surcharge per transaction only and upgrade our PayPal account to a "Premier" account. The biggest advantage was being able to accept credit card payments and like I said, you lose a little more money due to the cost added for a credit card purchase. Mostly, though, my customers have been using straight PayPal direct payments from their bank account to ours.

Let's see... eBay has also offered a month of free use of their "Selling Manager" tool. After the first month, it's $4.99 per month. I think it is incredibly useful as you use it to manage each of your auction items along the way. If your item sells, you can update the record and send a scripted "Winning Bidder" notification to the buyer. You can also send a scripted "Payment Invoice" and you can keep track of what you've done with each of the items you've put up for auction. It's truly worth it in my opinion.

I could go on and on, but I'm not sure what else is of interest to you. Maybe someone else will jump into this, too, and offer their experiences.

One more thing. Feedback is a big deal on eBay since that is how sellers & buyers are ultimately rated in the system. If someone doesn't fulfill their obligation on either side, feedback can be left indicating such. On the other side, it's very helpful to your business exchange if you leave positive feedback if you've had a good experience since that helps both parties when doing future transactions.

Hope this helps :) It's just something I've learned over the past month and I know there's tons more that I can still learn.