eBay is the leader among online auction sites. They generate millions of traffic worldwide. In addition to their U.S. site, they have localized eBay in 30 countries. eBay owns Paypal and Skype as well.

The genius behind eBay was Pierre Omidyar. It was started back on September 3, 1995 and the very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. To his surprise, Pierre contacted the buyer to make sure that he understood that the laser pointer is broken. The response, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.” Big AHA moment!! The well-publicized start of eBay selling PEZ dispensers is really a fabrication. The site was supposed to be named Echobay.com as a part of the Echo Bay Technology group of companies. However, the name Echobay was already taken by a mining company so Pierre decided to shorten it and thus, the famous online auction came to be known as eBay.

Getting started on eBay is fairly easy. They made the site user-friendly that anyone who knows how to read email can list an item and sell. There are general rules that you must follow and some are fairly spelled-out, and others that are vague. I am only going to speak about my experience and therefore will be limited to the knowledge of what I gained while selling on eBay. I think these are basic enough to ensure that you are not going to be in violation of eBay’s terms of service.

Read eBay’s Terms of Service

One thing that I didn’t do was to read eBay’s TOS. I was so excited in selling my DVDs and CDs that I just listed them and was successful in doing so. Not so many dangers in selling my mint CDs and DVDs until I started expanding my niche. There were a couple of listings that I had that was taken down by eBay because the content of the DVD was inappropriate for the category. Other DVDs were taken down because of the violent nature of the film. Another item was taken down because I included a name of a copyrighted brand in my listing to describe my item. Things like these give out a negative image of yourself as a seller so I would rather have you read the TOS early on so you don’t go through what I went through. Read it over a couple of times to make sure you pick up what’s cool and uncool in listing items on eBay. Repeated violations could ban you from using eBay forever and you wouldn’t want to be banned by eBay. Believe me, I know.

Assign the proper category to your items

There is a sense of community on eBay that buyers and sellers do lookout for each other (mostly). There are sellers and buyers that browse through listings and if they find that your item was listed in the wrong category, they could report your listing and eBay will investigate or remove your listing without warning. Listing adult material under the general category is a major violation.

Do not violate Trademark, Brand or Copyright

I was selling jewelries that were designed similar to that of Tiffany’s bracelets and necklaces. Since I didn’t read the TOS fully, I listed the items as “of Tiffany design” and apparently, due to the fraud and copyright violations that eBay got so much in trouble with during their early days, they have become very strict in this regard. You must not list items that would violate trademarks, branding, or copyright unless you are selling the real thing. If you are selling an authentic Tiffany necklace, you are more than welcome to list it and you must agree that what you are selling is authentic before you can list it. If you receive a complain from a buyer that what you sold them is fake, you can get in serious trouble. So be sure to verify your item’s authenticity and list them as such.

Do not overprice shipping & handling

There are sellers that would list an item for .01 cent and charge you shipping and handling for 99.00USD. Now, is that unfair or what?! Come on. I would stay away from those sellers. What they are trying to avoid is the fee that you are charged as a seller once your auction ends. It is called a Final Value fee. It is a percentage of the total amount of the item sold. So, if your auction of .01 ended up to be 1,000.00USD - you will be charged a certain percentage of the 1,0000.00USD as your final value fee. Some sellers are trying to avoid this by selling their items for a penny and charging an exorbitant amount in shipping & handling to avoid paying the FVF. I wouldn’t advice that you do that. You may be reported by any of the concerned eBay users and again, multiple violations gives eBay the right to ban you from using their service.

Host your image some place else.

One of the fees that I tried avoiding to pay is the storage of pictures for your auctions through eBay. They charge you an arm and a leg for hosting your pictures. They do allow you to host your pictures somewhere else (if you have a hosting service for your blog, you can store you pictures there and just link to it). In order to maximize my profits, I hosted my pictures through my Comcast account. When you subscribe to cable service, you are automatically given a limited amount of webspace you may use to store files, photos, and many other things that is included in the service without any extra fees. So, why not use it. If you’re a blogger, and you host your site through a hosting company - you may use that space as well. Although I try to avoid paying extra for hosting my photos on eBay for my auctions, I do pay for the Gallery Fee. Why? Because this gives my product visibility to anyone who’s browsing for items without seeing the details of my auction. It is cliche, but a picture does paint a thousand words.

• Pay for Gallery Fee (.40 cents)
• Avoid paying for additional photos for your auctions and host it somewhere else.

It’s all in the Description!

When listing your items on eBay, describe the item as accurate as possible. Highlight the quality of the item and point out the flaws if there’s any. This would give your audience a feeling that you are ‘trustworthy’ and you are not out there to dupe them. Let’s see how the description creates a line between two listings of the same item.

• Listing one - White House Postcard
  • White House Postcard found in the attic. In good condition.
• Listing two - Vintage postcard of the White House
  • A nostalgic reminder of the way it was. A vintage postcard of the White House possibly dating back to the 1940s as the postcard was found in the attic of a 90 year old home in Massachusetts. It was found stored together with newspaper clippings dating back to July 1945. Truly a collector’s item. The post card does have some yellowish color on the edges as a sign of age, however it is in mint condition as far as the image is concerned.

Are you going to be enticed with listing one or listing two? Believe me, listing two would get your viewer’s attention that listing one would. As long as your description is accurate and that you are not providing false information to the best of you knowledge, you will generate more buyers and bidders in the process.

We will be talking about “How to price your items.” on our Part 4 of our Ebay and Paypal series.

Until then…

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