How to start selling on eBay 101: Understanding the basics
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If you’re an established business looking for extensive growth, by now, you would have wondered “How To Sell Stuff on eBay.” However, If you’re a budding entrepreneur, thoughts like “How To sell on eBay for Beginners” would have been on your mind quite often. Well, you can put these thoughts to rest now that you’ve found your way to the guide to help sellers precisely like you. It covers everything you need to know when you start selling on eBay, like the fees, seller accounts, and the entire process from start to finish.
We all know that eBay is one of the most dominant online marketplaces globally, catering to the needs of over 183 million customers. We get to see over $15,000 of sales every minute for collectibles and art. The user base keeps on expanding with every passing year making eBay a preferred choice amidst sellers like you.
How to sell on eBay for beginners?
The first step to selling on any marketplace is to get an account. eBay is no different. Here, all you need is an email address to get started.
But, before you begin, it is of utmost importance that you know the terms and conditions that you need to be abided by when selling on eBay. For instance, using drop shipping or product sourcing is not allowed on eBay. It may lead to a temporary ban and even cancellation of your listings, which may result in a decreased seller rating.
Create eBay seller account
There are two ways you can create an account on eBay.
- Personal Account: Useful if you’re a casual seller with small products in lower quantities to sell, or
- Business Account: If you’re registering on eBay to get your business a push and experience better growth and exposure, this is the option you should choose.
Personal Account
To register a personal account, you get three options to opt for by using either of these.
- An email address
- A Gmail Account
- Facebook Account, or
- An Apple ID
Business Account
It’s the account you need to go for if your main reason behind creating an account is to sell and compete amongst other sellers. On eBay, you can create a business account after providing information related to your business. Getting a business account on eBay gives you access to promotions, professional tools, and imposes some seller limits.
You need to enter your details shown in the image below and then select the payment method to complete the registration process.
List products to sell on eBay
Once you’ve successfully registered yourself on eBay, you are ready to sell products instantly. You can always research What are the top-selling products on eBay and choose to list the products that can bring incremental profits even at the start. All you need to do is select your niche and start selling on eBay.
eBay makes things easy for you. It gives you two simple options to create listings, namely through:
Quick Listing Tool
The quick listing tool helps you create your listing using previously used products that match your product details.
How Quick Listing Tool works?
eBay sees to it that person selling casually does not have to go through intricate listing procedures. The Quick Listing Tool helps them create a listing from a previously existing listing for an item that matches the seller’s keywords in the search bar.
Suppose you need to sell your ASUS RoG Phone 3. Instead of adding every detail for the product, you can search and select one from the result that matches your product.
Once you’ve selected the details that match your product, eBay gives you the option to edit the products’ details and images. You can edit or use the same information that has been pre-filled from the existing listing.
Advanced Listing form
This is the listing type one needs to go for if they have a huge inventory with multiple products they are willing to list on eBay.
How Advanced Listing works?
You can search for your product or select the product by searching through the categories. Once you find and choose the products, eBay gives you a form to fill. This form contains details for each product that needs to be listed manually.
Title, Descriptions, and Product Images
To successfully create an impressive and complete listing that stands out, you need to get the trio of TITLE, PRODUCT DESCRIPTION, and IMAGES perfect.
#1. Title
Be Honest, Clear, and say exactly what you’re selling. It will make people click on your product more often as they can identify the most gripping information about the product through its Product Title. eBay gives you 80 characters to fill the Title and 55 characters to fill the subtitle. Make sure you make optimum use.
#2. Product Description
Once the product is in front of your buyer, a glance at the product description is what it takes to confirm the sale. Be sure your product description answers essential questions that anyone can have (size, quality, specification, condition).
#3. Product Image
When Selling on eBay, you can add up to 12 images for each product on eBay. eBay gives you the option to select pictures having a minimum resolution of 500*500. Yet, it would help if you focus on getting a better image resolution. A minimum of 1600*1600 is what most eBay sellers recommend. Also, you can get in detailed information about how to optimize your product images for eBay.
Selecting the right categories to sell on eBay
eBay gives you a free hand to list their products under more than one specific category. It is a great way to find more eyes to your product and, in the process, finding buyers. But you need to be very careful when selecting categories to list your products.
Listing a product under the wrong category will start giving you diminishing returns in the long run. It happens as your product starts appearing in search results that are irrelevant to the product you’re selling.
Instead, take your time, find a category and its sub-category that define your product, and create a listing under it.
Types of eBay listing
eBay, as we know, came into existence in 1995, which was initially an auction site. Although with time, eBay has evolved, it still gives you an option to select between either of the two when listing your product,
- Auction Style
- Fixed Price
Auction style
Auction is what sets eBay apart from all the other competitor marketplaces. It has comfortably kept the good old fashioned product auction alive through this option. To arrange an auction-style listing on eBay, you need to set the selling format to auction-style. Moving ahead, you get to choose the duration of your auction-style from a range of 3-5-7 or ten days. Once done with it, set the starting date, price, and other details related to the auction.
The Auction style is the best when you’re unsure how much a given commodity can add to your bank balance. Also, you get to set a reserve price. It acts like a Minimum selling price that you are willing to accept for the product on sale. However, it would be best if you remember that your “Buy It Now Price” should always be 30% greater than the Starting price you set for the auction.
Get the complete detail about how you can get the Action style listing in your favor before actually trying it.
Fixed price
The fixed price listing is similar to any other listing that other marketplaces have to offer. You can sell your products by setting a fixed price that you want for them. It can be done by entering an amount under the “Buy It Now” option.
To help you make a sale, eBay makes it a compulsion that your Fixed Price listing gets listed with a “Good ‘Til Canceled” duration. Under the good til canceled listing, your listing renews each month automatically. You get charged when you make a sale, or the listing gets renewed automatically.
eBay also lets you decide if you wish to make a sale or decline one through the best offers option. Here, a buyer can make you an offer for the product that can get negotiated as per your will before confirming the deal.
A quick price research
Although you have already priced your products, it’s never a bad idea to do the price research before you list them. Until your product is so unique that no one else’s selling it. Search for the products that appear on the search result with the most “sold” lists. Scan through this list and decide accordingly for the price that’ll suit your product resulting in higher chances of making confirmed sales.
Select shipping services
Selecting the shipping services that you’ll be providing to your buyers comes next. Here you need to set up your shipping details based on
- Domestic Shipping
- International Shipping
For either of them, you have to specify the Handling time, package dimensions, and weight. Although you can also opt to calculate the shipping cost using eBay shipping Calculator by entering package-specific data as shown below,
The shipping option gives you the option to select the locations you are willing to ship your product. It also allows you to filter out the regions you wish to exclude from your shipping services.
eBay seller fees
eBay charges you several fees every time you list your products. However, these charges come into play once you’ve crossed a certain fixed amount of free listing that you have got from eBay.
Since 1st Aug 2020, eBay has increased the amount of free listings limit for each seller by manifolds. The fee deduction is negligible and doesn’t put a more significant dent in your pockets, unlike other marketplaces. Here’s a revised zero insertion limits that you get before you get charged for making other listings.
You can read more about the insertion fees charged on eBay as it can help you know about the various expenses you’ll pay when selling on eBay.
Integrate your store with eBay
When you decide to dive into the world of multi-channel sales, you get ready to welcome many changes in your selling style. The entire inventory, order, and product management system receives a new life blown to it.
Going multi-channel must bring you the joy of collecting leads from several places, handling multiple orders, and enjoying incremental profits. But along with the perks, it also brings the tedious tasks, long selling process, and undivided attention to inventory and orders. What you need to do here is integrate your stores with eBay to reduce this work pressure and make selling hassle-free. When managing the multi-channel selling through the app, it minimizes your workload, makes inventory, and orders management simple, and automates the entire selling process.
How does eBay integration help?
The application helps you simplify the complications of multichannel operations. It lets you create templates that you’ll use to list your products on eBay, allowing you to manage orders and products. The eBay Marketplace Integration also enables you to control the Profiles. You can set different policies (Business, Return, and Shipping) with ease. The app happens to be an addition to your tools that can make selling products on eBay simple, easy, and efficient.
Start your Multi-channel operation with eBay through Different Frameworks. The eBay Integration is available for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento. Try it Now!
Create an eCommerce calendar for the year
Once you’ve created an eBay account and have successfully integrated it with your Store, you need to focus on creating a plan. It will help you sail smoothly through the tougher tides of Seasonal and Holiday sales when the time comes.
Your eCommerce calendar should cover all the important dates to make things comfortable and prepared for the year-round holiday season. It should include plans for promotion, sales, and discounts, inventory levels required, and the given festival’s target audience.
Promote the listings
eBay gives you ample opportunities to stand out from the rest of the sellers. These opportunities include the sponsored advertisement or the promoted listing types.
The promoted listing allows your product to be seen by the millions of active buyers when they are buying or browsing through eBay. It increases the chances of you making a sale. Although eBay’s promoted listing services come with a selling fee, the positive aspect of the price is that you pay it only when you make the sale through the ads.
eBay promotion manager
eBay, as we know, leaves no stone unturned to keep you happy and satisfied. The introduction of eBay’s Promotion Manager was one such move. Through the Promotion Manager tool, one can quickly sell on eBay by creating various Sales and Discounts when selling on eBay while controlling the entire process through eBay.
Find more about the eBay Promotion Manager so that you know how to use it to maximize your benefit.
Conclusion
Expanding your business beyond your eCommerce store is the first step towards growth. Selecting eBay as the marketplace becomes the second step to it. Registering an account and getting started with eBay’s listings comprises elementary steps that you’re familiar with now.
However, getting your products on eBay can be a task for you as listing and managing inventory and orders in two different places become a nightmare. It will be a great idea to integrate two or more platforms you are selling on, to save the whole day and make the operations smooth as they should be. The integration app facilitates you to manage the entire selling process from a centralized location and get you across the line of effortless multichannel selling experience.