This is a quick guide on selling items on eBay in the u.s. I've been selling on eBay for over 20 years and learned a thing or two. This is not a comprehensive guide, and by all means I am not an expert.
If you don't already have an eBay account go ahead and create one. New sellers will have limits on the amount of listings they can create and total dollar amount of sales.
Find a few items that you would like to sell.
We'll start by looking up each item on ebay and possibly other places such as Amazon to see what other sellers are asking. After that we will filter the search results by "sold" this will tell you how much people are actually paying for the items. You should consider the price plus shipping as a total price.
You should also check the sell through rate. You can see how many are currently listed and how many have sold in the past 90 days. If there are 1000 listed and only 2 have sold, then that is probably not worth listing. If there are 100 listed and 100 sold then there is a very good chance your item will sell in the next 90 days.
This is just a rule of thumb and seasonal items can be tricky to comp this way.
At first you should consider items in the $20-$30 range that don’t weigh too much. Shipping cost is a big factor in how much you will net from the sale. Ebay takes a small fee plus a percentage of the total sale which includes the shipping amount you charge (if any) so you don’t want to sell items under around $10 or the shipping and fees could cost you more than you make.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4822#section2
Once you find a comparable item "comp" click on it to make sure that the listing matches what you're trying to sell, including condition.
Once you've decided what a good price is, pick a sold listing that has a good sounding title and click "sell one like this." That will open up a listing page and copy over a lot of information and the listing title.
Now you can create your listing. First, be 100% sure that your title is correct and that you're utilizing all 80 characters. You can do some seo here. Eliminate duplicate words and try to think of different words people might use to search for the item.
Photos: Photos are the most important part of listing, if your photos suck, then nobody is going to buy from you. They don't have to be ultra professional, but you should take some time to make them look good. Find some natural lighting and a clean surface with a nice background. You can buy a piece of white poster board and curve it up from the floor to the wall to make a semi professional background avoid using the background removal tool, it looks really bad.
This process is going to vary quite a bit depending on your preferences. I like to take photos before I start listing. You can also take photos from the app. If you start your listing from desktop you can click "upload from mobile" which will give you a notification on your phone where you can continue the listing and take photos if you haven't already. You can upload short videos up to one minute, the option is only on desktop and is burried. Very useful if you want to show item condition of a collectible figurine you can put it on a lazy susan and spin it around.
Item specifics, condition, and description: These just need to be accurate. Avoid using the AI description, it's terrible. Even just "in good condition" for item description is fine. People don't read item descriptions as ebay hides them pretty far down in the app listing. Your title, photos, and condition sections should tell the whole story as much as possible. If there's something important you need to say in the description you should put READ in the item title.
Pricing and shipping: As far as buying format, I always use buy it now, sometimes with offers turned on. I would avoid allowing offers for now. If you do allow offers, be sure to set a minimum offer amount. My shipping rule of thumb has always been that if it’s under one lb it’s ok to offer free shipping. If it’s over one lb I do calculated shipping. Shipping rates are determined by distance. If you offer free shipping on a heavy item, someone in Hawaii or Puerto Rico will buy it and you will lose money on the sale. Enter in your packed weight and dimensions. You don’t have to box it up now, but it’s a good idea to have a shipping box ready. Set the handling time to at least 2 days. If you set one day then someone will buy the item at 10 at night and you will need to ship it the next day.
At the very bottom there is an option to promote your listing. Ebay allows you to decide a percentage of the final sale. You can use this if you want, it only gets charged if the buyer clicks through a promoted listing. Generally I don’t use the recommended amount and only use it on rare items where someone outside of ebay might be interested in it.
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