Is this for Me? How to Make Money Selling on eBay
Ebay, "The World's Online Marketplace," is one of e-commerce's greatest success stories. It's the 12th most visited Web site in the world, with over 50 million registered buyers and sellers, growing daily. According to Publishers Weekly, an object sells on eBay every 1.7 seconds. Someone buys a pair of shoes on the site every 20 seconds and buys a digital camera on the site every 90 seconds.
Everything imaginable, new and used, is available for purchase on eBay from sellers great and small, private and commercial. Recent listings ranged from 5-cent packs of unopened baseball cards to The Isaac Meason Mansion. The 18th century mansion is renowned as one of the nation's most historic places, and is registered by the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark. Boeing 737s and Russian submarines have been among other big-ticket items, along side the collectible Beanie Baby dolls. Not only products, but also wide varieties of services are auctioned on eBay.
The Japanese company Aucnet was the first on the scene with an online auction, putting cars on the block in 1995. This was followed closely by the launches of Onsale (May 1995) and eBay (September 1995). Online auction sales have grown exponentially in each of the last several years, with Ebay the undisputed industry champion, commanding nearly 90% of all online auction business. According to Nielsen NetRatings, eBay was the number one online shopping destination in the US during the past holiday season.
And according to Forrester Research, the online auction industry will grow from $13 billion in 2002 to $54 billion in 2007, a 33 percent compound annual growth rate and accounting for about 25% of all online retail sales in the United States. More than 70,000 Americans make a full-time living selling on eBay-and you can too. But part-time ain't bad either.
Doing eBay Business
Registering with eBay is simple and straightforward. There are just three online steps:
- Go to the main site (www.ebay.com) or a national site, such as http://eBay.ca and provide your basic contact information. As you might expect, eBay has very secure servers and they will also keep your information private.
- Check your e-mail-eBay will send you a message with a link and instructions for confirming your registration.
- For security purposes, you'll choose your own User ID and password for signing in at eBay.
Sellers have a wide variety of options when they decide what payment instruments they will accept. These options include:
- Money Order/Cashier's Check
- Personal Check
- COD (cash on delivery)
- eBay Payments (Credit Card, Electronic Check)
- Credit Card
- PayPal
- Other
While sellers can make their own payment arrangements with buyers using e-mail, Checkout is a new eBay feature that helps provide an easy and consistent way to complete sales and purchases. Checkout is available for any item on eBay, including auction-style listings, Buy-It-Now listings, and Store fixed-price listings.
Checkout does not require eBay Payments. Sellers can choose from any of the payment methods specified above in the previous question. Only the options the seller has chosen will be available to buyers.
Using eBay Payments provides additional benefits when using Checkout. With eBay Payments, sellers can receive payment faster since buyers can pay immediately for their purchases when they go through the Checkout process.
PayPal
Extremely popular among eBay users, and strongly supported there as a payment instrument, PayPal has over 25 million users and processes hundreds of thousands of transactions per day. PayPal basically validates members' credit card and/or bank information, along with their e-mail addresses. Transactions are conducted by e-mail (including wireless devices). To send money, users go to the Paypal site, enter the required information, and the amount to be sent. It's received in the payee's account instantly, and billed to the user's account (tied electronically to their credit card, debit card, or checking account). The payee can ship immediately, and the seller never sees the user's credit card or bank account number-PayPal acts as a secure middle-man. The benefits include:
- Accept credit cards and checking account payments online
- Get paid faster than with a check or money order
- Integrated into eBay
- Protection from fraud
- Online sales management tools
- Ability to require immediate payment for Buy It Now items
- 38 different countries worldwide, in several currencies.
The online sign-up process for a PayPal account is simple and involves only a one-page online form. The following information is collected:
- Your Profile Information
- Your E-mail Address and Password
- Security Questions
- A simple Security Test to prevent automated registration
- Premier Account Option- 2.9% fee plus $.30 on incoming payments.
- Agree to User Agreement and Privacy Policy
Learning More about eBay
There is no shortage of help and advice for eBay buyers and sellers, online and off.
On the eBay site itself, there is a wealth of help, how-to, and strategy information. There are Help and discussion boards on a wide variety of topics and sales categories, live chats and transcripts, current eBay news, a monthly community newsletter, and an online Answer Center. There are also expert member workshops on topics such as:
- What Every New eBay Member Should Know
- So you think you want to start an Ebay business?
- Seller Business Development: Customer friendly listings
- E-mail Etiquette & Communication
- Seller Business Development-Dealing with problems
There is also a formal eBay Learning Center offering online tutorials and audio tours, live chat with customer support, a dedicated Shipping Education Center, plus an offline eBay University series of seminars and workshops.
eBay also offers a range of software tools to help sellers manage their online business and maximize profits while minimizing the time and effort involved. Chief among these are:
eBay Turbo Lister: Easy-to-use software for listing items in bulk and creating attractive HTML item descriptions.
eBay Seller's Assistant: Complete sales management and bulk listing tool to help you sell more and save time.
Outside of eBay, a growing number of independent third-party selling and management tools are also available.
Is This For Me?
Should you make a move from bricks-and-mortar to e-commerce with eBay? Frances Neale (eBay ID: JustOnce) had this to say in a testimonial:
For several years I had a space in a nice, shared antique mall and one day I was in my space when a customer, while buying a number of small items, said to his partner, "I just love whoever has this space because they always have really good stuff and I have made a bundle on it on eBay." Two months after that meaningful eavesdrop I bought a good computer, set it up, got smart about using it (never used one before that), signed up for eBay and made tons more money.
That success story has been mirrored time and time again, accounting for eBay's extraordinary popularity. It can work for you too, so why not give it a shot? Start small and then pull out the stops as you accumulate experience and, most importantly, money. What are you waiting for?
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