Your Ebay business/hobby

Culture | July 20th, 2016

By Chuck Solly

There are many opinions about Ebay. If you talk to 100 people about buying or selling on Ebay you will get 100 different stories.

Trustpilot.com is a web site that allows everyone to express their opinions about any web site. They have most of those stories. Since Ebay is all over the world, many of these stories are from Europe with the USA stories mixed in.

Most of the questions I get from others are whether or not they should use Ebay. Some folks want to buy, others want to sell.

About the only thing it takes to buy on Ebay is a credit card. The system will lead you to Paypal which will get all of your information,charge your card and the item will ship from the seller. Easy. In fact, there are many good deals to be had on Ebay.

On the selling side things can be a lot different. There are many rules to follow when listing your items. Months ago Ebay changed its rules about sizing pictures for your listings. I hadn't listed anything for a while and when I did upload them the system said: “Your pictures are too small!” and my listing process stopped. What! Too Small!

There are many other rules to follow and it does take some time to learn. If you are serious about selling on Ebay you can certainly learn these rules but you will make some mistakes. I call it the cost of doing business.

The other widely held complaint about selling is the commission. Between the listing fees, the final value fee and Paypal fees the seller will be charged about 10%. Many people complain bitterly about this but can you do anything about it? Ebay still remains the 900 pound gorilla in the room. There are many other selling sites ( Etsy, Amazon, Bonanza, Craigslist, ebid, etc.) but the fact remains that Ebay attracts the most eyes to your items.

Another question I get from friends is “How long does it take to list an item?” My answer, of course, is “It depends”. Some of the factors are: size of the item, number of pictures necessary, value of the item, description size.

So what do you want to do? Do you want to sell your products online? Do you want to open an online business with Ebay? Do you have a bunch of junk in the basement you want to get rid of? How much information do you have about the basement junk? Do you have ten or twenty hours to spend on the computer learning how to sell and promote your products? These are questions you must ask yourself.

Some things to remember when formulating your opinion:

1.Ebay sells about $181 million dollars PER DAY! Balance that against the several hundred complaints on Trustpilot. Can you sell your items there?

2. You have to follow Ebay's rules when selling.

3. Buying on Ebay may be easier and safer than selling.

4. According to many of my Ebay seller friends, Ebay admin seems to favor the buyer over the seller.

5. There will always be scammers. Ebay polices this as well as any large company but bad things do happen.

I am glad to hear your comments about Ebay. Email works well for me: rcsolly@gmail.com