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The nightmare that is selling on eBay

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Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#11
I gave up on selling on eBay years ago when I listed an iPad, and twice in a row the auction was won by a scammer using a stolen eBay/PayPal account.

My recollection of how the scam worked was that they messaged me after the sale to say the iPad was a gift and could they send it to some other address than the PayPal confirmed address, and also not include any receipt info in the package that could spoil it as a gift.

It looked like the classic drop shipping eBay scam where I’d find out from PayPal that a stolen card was used, the charges would be reversed, and I’d be out the iPad and the money.

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#13

1) For those who never put an ad on eBay before, when you finalizing your listing, you have this "FREE" word floating around the submit button, making you think that listing on eBay is free and how do they get money you say? well thats when you want to purchase addons or bump your add (or so the naive person inside me thought). The laptop was sold within hours of the listing, and the usual payment went through Paypal…

Yep, everyone wants a cut. 30% is a decent rule of thumb.

    eBay: 10%
    PayPal: 4%
    Shipping 5%      

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#16
post #6

Lol... you got off easy! Many buyers will claim that you shipped them a brick and get a full refund leaving you with no item and no money! I rarely sell on eBay but I demand that people have 100 feedback, no negatives, and more than 10 years on eBay. Probably costs me some money on the prices but I’ve never had a problem.

Im curious how this works, if they have negatives, do you just cancel the sale once they've won?

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#17

1) For those who never put an ad on eBay before, when you finalizing your listing, you have this "FREE" word floating around the submit button, making you think that listing on eBay is free and how do they get money you say? well thats when you want to purchase addons or bump your add (or so the naive person inside me thought). The laptop was sold within hours of the listing, and the usual payment went through Paypal…

Both these things are listed pretty clearly up front.

Not remotely. eBay goes to great lengths to emphasize tiny listing fees and hide their enormous final value / transaction fees.

Source: I've since sold tens of thousands of dollars of goods on ebay, but I still remember my first time.

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#18
I sell 10-20 things a week. 95% are great and hassle free. The other 5% are eventually fine as well although it takes a bit of work. Run it like a store. Back your stuff, accept it if people want to return.

It's about getting rid of junk, not about making money. You'll come out ahead, not by a lot, but ahead.

Some tips:

Amazon boxes are lighter than "normal" cardboard boxes.

Buy padded envelopes in bulk.

Obo is usually a waste of time. "It's marked as "let buyers make offers" --- you get mostly lowballing hacks looking for over 50% off the market rate

Given that, counter-intuitively, pricing things too cheap can scare people away. Raising prices can sometimes lead to faster sales

"Buy it now" usually has better customers than auctions. I can't explain the psychology but I've sold a couple hundred of each, it's clear.

Don't worry about the limits if you're putting on high quality stuff, they are to prevent someone from posting for example, 10,000 nearly identical phone case variations and flooding the site with crap. You'll get constant "promotions" if you push enough volume

Sometimes your pictures work better, sometimes the white background professional ones you just lift from Google images does. I can't explain this one yet but some things sit idle for weeks and then I switch out the image (going either way) and they sell out in a few hours. It's weird.

Usps is pretty lenient within a margin of error. If you accidentally send, say, a $7.87 package as a Regional Box A that costs $7.49, they seem to not care. A 12.1 oz package sent as a 12oz? They also don't care. I've caught a few mistakes I made and waited and watched the package, everything went smoothly. Also, FedEx can be cheaper for larger items, don't forget to check that tab. They're open pretty late and it's pretty easy

For calculations roughly take .87 * sale - shipping cost - $.50 for packaging.

You may find out you only make $5 from that PCI ATA controller you had in that box but now it's finally gone, going to a good home, and hey, look at that, you just got $5.

Is it a waste of time? Well that's entirely up to you to decide. I looked at it as a hobby like gardening or crafts. As far as hobbies go, profitable ones are rare. Also I really have too much stuff.

Also, if you ever wanted to try marketing and sales, the business side of tech, this is a nice soft introduction, a very low cost, low risk way to gain an intuition on pricing, place, product, pitch, etc.

Ebay: A++++ highly recommended, would sell again.

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#19

I sell 10-20 things a week. 95% are great and hassle free. The other 5% are eventually fine as well although it takes a bit of work. Run it like a store. Back your stuff, accept it if people want to return. It's about getting rid of junk, not about making money. You'll come out ahead, not by a lot, but ahead. Some tips: Amazon boxes are lighter than "normal" cardboard boxes. Buy padded envelopes in bulk. Obo is usual…

I agree you with on this .. its not about making money at all and would accept a return within reason. It seems that eventually I'd have to, and I wonder what the laptop would look like when its back

Re: The nightmare that is selling on eBay

#20
Why are you so adamant about not accepting the return?

Is it because eBay will charge you anyway? Well, in that case your problem here is not the buyer, but eBay.

I personally don't trust sellers that don't accept returns. More frequent that not, they bend the truth in their description. (I understand that's not what happened in your case)

Having said that, I never ever buy, or sell, anything that I cannot write off on eBay. Not worth the stress.

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