eBay Selling for Beginners — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how to get started selling on eBay. Hello, my name is Margaret. I'm a full-time reseller. I'll be covering all the things you need to know to get started selling on eBay. I'm covering signing up for an eBay account,

[00:12] how to list an item, types of items to sell on eBay, how to price your items, where to get items to sell, shipping your sold items, and eBay fees and stores. Again, I am Margaret, and with my partner Juan, we sell full-time on eBay and other platforms,

[00:27] and have been combined for about 10 years, we make videos helping resellers like yourself become more successful. If you're a new reseller or just wanting to increase your income, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss anything to help you reach that goal.

[00:40] The first thing that you're going to need to do is to sign up for an eBay account. Let me walk you through that. The first thing you're going to need to do is to create an account. You can create it with Google, Facebook, or Apple, or you can create your own account just starting off on the side over here.

[00:55] So once you've created your account, you're going to come up to the top right to the slide to you, and you're going to select Account Settings. Here you're going to enter in some of your contact info. So once you have that done, you're going to go over to Payment Options so that eBay can pay you

[01:10] and that you can also pay your fees whenever you're selling items on eBay. Once you have your account set up, you can start listing items. So you can come over here, click List an Item,

[01:22] and eBay will walk you through how to create a listing. So first you'll tell them what you're selling, type in the title here. And the first item that I'm going to list is this fossil wallet. So I'll start my listing by creating a title.

[01:35] I want to make sure that I put what the item is close to the beginning of it. So the brand, what it is and all of that closer to the front and then add on some of the details closer to the end.

[01:47] Now, once I've gotten here, it's going to start finding categories for me. and I want to make sure that I have it in the correct category. So it is clothing, shoes, accessories, and wallet. So then you select the condition of your item. Make sure that you are

[02:01] underselling and over delivering. So don't say that it's fantastic when it's really, you know, mine is missing the zipper pull on it. So I want to be honest and say that it is pre-owned. And here you're going to fill in your item specifics. They filled in some of these for me already.

[02:15] Then there are recommendations. You do not have to add these in, but you can if you know what they are and then you going to add in your photos I recommend making sure that you take pictures of any flaws that your item might have Also when you taking your photos show all aspects of it including measurements

[02:33] This will take you a lot of time down the line when people are asking what the size of your item is. After you've gotten your photos uploaded, you'll want to create a description. So I keep my descriptions meat and potatoes.

[02:45] Very, very simple. I put the title in there. I put the condition. make sure that you put all the flaws that you can possibly find there. Then I will also put the measurements. If you're selling something that has a style code or say a pair of shoes that has

[02:59] a style code, I'll make sure that I put the style code in there as well. Just the things that the person might need to find this item or to answer any questions that they might have when they're looking at it. The next thing you have to decide is if you're going to do an auction or if you're

[03:13] going to do buy it now. I use the buy it now feature. And lastly is shipping. You need to there what your item weighs and how you're going to ship it. And then finally, you get to decide on your handling time. This means if a person buys an item today, are you going to ship it the same

[03:29] day? Are you going to ship it tomorrow? Are you going to give yourself two or three days to get these things ready to ship out? And once you have all of that filled out, you can preview this or you can go ahead and list your item. I'm linking a playlist here that goes into more detail about

[03:43] listings and taking product photos. The next thing you have to decide is what you're going to sell on eBay. There are lots of different types of sellers on eBay. There are dropshippers, there are sellers that do retail arbitrage, which means they go to big box type stores and buy new products,

[03:59] say on clearance, or maybe they get them on Palace and they sell them that way. And then there are resellers that sell both new and used items. So you have to decide what kinds of items you want to start selling on eBay. Now there are some items that are banned on eBay, so you want to make sure

[04:14] you familiarize yourself with that. And there is a zero list, which I will link down below that eBay puts out to let you know the kinds of items and brands that you cannot sell on eBay. The next thing you have to decide is how you're going to price your item. So let's say you found that

[04:28] fossil wallet, but you just don't know what price to put on it. You'll come to eBay and you will type in the name of your item in the search bar. When you search for your item, all of these different options will pull up. You may or may not find the exact item that you're selling,

[04:42] depending on what it is but this will give you a good cross section of the different types of items that are up for sale with that title These may be pre items or they may be new These are listings that are still for sale currently You can get a good idea about what

[04:57] kind of prices people are putting on their items by looking at this, but you will get a better idea looking at sold items. What you want to do to find out what has already sold with your title is to scroll down and select sold items. Now you will see what has sold in the last 90 days on eBay

[05:14] with your title or keywords. So now I get an even better idea of what these items are selling for. The example wallet that I'm using in this video has already sold. This is a good place to come

[05:26] and look for sold prices. When you're looking at things, it is important to keep in mind that some of these items are new while others are used or pre-owned. That will affect the price on some items. Next, you've got to figure out where you're going to be getting these items that you're going

[05:41] be selling on eBay. One of the easiest places to start is looking around your home. Find items that you no longer use and list those for sale on eBay. Another great place to find items to sell on eBay is through family and friends. All of my family and friends know what I do for a living, so they

[05:56] frequently keep me in line when they're downsizing their homes. If you're just getting started out, you may not have a lot of money to spend on items to sell. There are lots of different places to find free items to sell on eBay. I'm going to link a recent video that I made here sharing

[06:10] and different places to find free items to sell on eBay. One of my favorite ways to find things to sell on eBay is going to garage sales. You can get lots of great items at really inexpensive prices.

[06:23] The next place you can find items is at big box stores in the clearance section. I found lots of things at Target, Walmart, and other stores that have marched things down that I can flip on eBay.

[06:35] One of my favorite places to look is the Toys on Clearance. Another popular place to find things to sell on eBay is after-store such as Goodwill and Savers. Now, there are lots of other places to find things to sell on eBay.

[06:48] Leave a comment down below with a place that you have thought of to buy things to sell on eBay. A really important part of selling on eBay is shipping your item. This was one of the biggest hurdles that I faced when I first started selling on eBay.

[07:00] One of the first things you need to do is make sure that you have the shipping supplies on hand for the item that is selling. For the wallet that's sold, I don't really need a box, but I do ship out in bubble mailers. So I want to make sure that I have a bubble mailer ready and I also put a thank you card in my package If you have an item that requires a box make sure you have box bubble wrap and any other shipping supplies that you might need on hand

[07:23] You can get free boxes and bubble mailers if they are priority from the United States Postal Service and I'll put a link for the free shipping supplies from the USPS down in the description box below. The next thing we're going to talk about are eBay seller fees and whether or not having

[07:37] an eBay store is right for you. There are two main types of fees when selling on eBay. One is the insertion fee and the other is a final value fee when your item sells. I'm going to link an eBay page down below that goes into way more detail about selling insertion fees and final value

[07:54] fees because it does vary depending on the item that's being sold. But every month you get 250 zero insertion fees or more if you have an eBay store, which we'll go into more in a moment. The final value fees vary depending on the category that your item is selling in.

[08:09] It could be as low as 3% all the way up to 15% depending on the item that's being sold. Now, as a new seller, eBay will put a selling limit on your account of 10 items. But once you have those 10 items listed, you can contact eBay to ask them to raise your selling limit.

[08:25] You might be asking yourself if an eBay store is right for you. What an eBay store is, is a subscription that you're paying to eBay every month. And depending on the level of store that you choose, you get different perks and discounts.

[08:38] So there are a few different types of stores. There's a starter store, basic, premium, anchor, and enterprise. And as you can see, there are monthly renewal or yearly renewal based on if you are paying per month or per year.

[08:52] Each of these stores get different perks. So in a basic store, you would have 250 items that you could list at zero insertion fees and 25 cents after that on auction-style listings. And for fixed-price listings, you would have 1,000 zero insertion fee listings and 25 cents per item after that.

[09:12] And it goes up from there as far as premium, anchor, and enterprise. So if you're just starting out and you don't have 250 items listed, then it's probably a good idea just to keep it at a starter and maybe consider moving up to a basic store once you've got a thousand or more items listed.

[09:28] If you're wanting more detail about any of these topics about selling on eBay or maybe a couple things that I didn't hit that you still need to know, make sure you check out this playlist that I've set up just for you. Thanks so much for watching.

[09:40] Hit that subscribe button and I'll see you on the next one.