How to Sell on eBay for Beginners (2026 Step by Step Guide)

[00:00] If you're looking to learn how to sell on eBay, this video is for you, because I'm going to take you through a complete step-by-step beginner's guide. And if we're meeting for the first time, my name's Matt, and I've been an eBay seller for the last five years, having sold over 15,000 items.

[00:15] And look, like I said, we're going to cover literally everything today, the complete A to Z guide, and if you can make it through until the end of the video, not only are you going to list up your very first item today, but you may also make your very first sale today as well.

[00:28] So first things first, we're going to create ourselves an eBay account. Now eBay is totally free to join, which is brilliant, and secondly, it is the easiest process to go ahead and set yourself up with a seller account. You just go across to eBay and you'll see the button on the top left hand corner of

[00:43] the screen that will say sign in or register. Just go ahead and click on register and you'll be prompted to go create an account option here, either a personal or a business account. Now when you're first starting out, I always think it's just easiest to go ahead with a personal account.

[00:55] From there, you can always change it over to business if you want to get a little bit more serious. But you're just going to put in some details like your first name, your last name, email and password, and then you are in. You have yourself an eBay seller account.

[01:07] Now, once you're in your account, you actually want to get this screen to display. This is the eBay seller hub, and it doesn't actually enable when you first register an account. You actually have to go and enable it yourself. So you're going to go up to the top left-hand side of the screen.

[01:20] You're going to click on Help. When you click on that, you're simply going to type in the prompt and say, Seller Hub, and then from there, there's going to be a button right here just underneath for you to go ahead and enable the eBay Seller Hub.

[01:32] What that will do is it will then display all of your information like you're seeing here on my existing store account. The next thing that I'd love you to go and do if you're first just starting out is click on Account Settings. So just clicking on the top left-hand corner, seeing underneath your username, the button

[01:48] that says Account Settings. and then you're going to want to go into this one here, payment information and click on the button that says payments. From there, you're going to get an opportunity to add in your debit card. Now, this is the point in time where I love to say to go ahead and create yourself a business

[02:03] bank account. These are generally completely free to do but it separates your finances from personal and business, in this case, our eBay business. And then from there, other things that you can do is to go ahead and create something like a spreadsheet that will be able to track your profitability.

[02:19] We also have a software called Slipsit, which kind of does it for you. So you don't have to go and create a spreadsheet. It just simply connects to your eBay account. The link is in the description below if you're interested in checking that out. So within a couple of minutes, we now have an active eBay account.

[02:33] We can go ahead and now try and find an item and then list it up and put it in front of millions of people. It really is that simple. So when it comes to trying to find an item to sell on eBay, this is going to be the most important step of your entire process. It all comes down to product and price when it comes

[02:49] to selling on eBay. You need to make sure you have an in-demand product and I'm going to show you what an in-demand product looks like in just a second. But some really nice places to start, firstly smaller items and secondly around your own house. Something you don't need to go out

[03:03] and expend money on. So there might be something like a DVD or a video game or a CD, maybe some shoes, maybe some clothing, you can absolutely find any of these lying around the house and they can kind of be your test pilot for starting out with your eBay journey.

[03:18] Now, the item that we've got here is Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Wii. This is the one that we're going to be going ahead with and listing up as an example for you guys here today. Now, the process that I go through is I like to see whether or not it sells well and I

[03:32] also like to see how quickly it goes on the sell. So I'm jumping in here and I'm on my eBay seller hub and I'm actually just typing into the top of the search bar, Super Mario Brothers Wii. What you're going to be wanting to do here first and foremost is you're going to filter

[03:46] things down to the nth degree. By doing this, you're going to clearly see how much the item goes on the sell for and how quickly it's expected to go on to sell. So follow along with me here. The first area that we're going to go to is this sort button.

[04:00] We're going to go down and we're going to type in high first. So price plus postage, highest first. The next thing that we want to do is we want to go over here to the left and we want to click on item location and I'm going to go with Australia only.

[04:13] You just go with your own country. Wherever you're watching this, just select your own country there and in condition, we want to go and we want to select anything that is basically pre-owned. So we going to go into condition and we going to type in very good we going to type in good and we also going to type in acceptable So that basically matching the condition of what we got here

[04:32] We've got a pre-owned game. We then want to go down the sidebar on the left here and the big important one that we want to be selecting is here. We want to type and click on sold items and we also want to go back down there and we

[04:45] want to click on completed items. There's an example here. We're starting to find our product. It looks like the best sale was $39.90. We're looking at about $40 collectively speaking here for this game.

[04:58] You can see the bottom one here is priced in at about $30. So based on that information with all of these sales, I think that we can go ahead and list ours up for about $35. It seems to be right in the middle. You will sell it a whole lot more quicker if you price yours up for $29.95.

[05:15] A really big common mistake that I see a lot of eBay sellers do when they're first starting out is they see it selling for $40 and they go, great, I can sell mine for $40, but you just don't get a lot of impressions and page views

[05:27] when you first start selling. So the best way to get impressions and page views is to be competitive on your price. Now, to go ahead and create our very first listing, all you have to do is click on the title that you like the look of,

[05:40] and I'm using this because it's got really nice keyword information and it's going to be very important to get our listing found. Now, you'll see on the right-hand side here, you'll have the button that says sell one like this. This is actually the start of the process.

[05:52] We're actually getting a fast start by taking all the data from that previously sold listing and we're going to get a really fast start on our own draft listing by clicking on that button. From there, you're going to want to upload some photos.

[06:04] Now, I've already gone ahead and taken some photos. I've got a little screen grab here of the process. I've turned my photos into a square mode on my Apple iPhone. So, a square mode is going to be native to eBay. And then from there I'm going to want to take a top down shot, a back shot, I'm going to

[06:20] open it up and take an overall shot plus a shot of the disc and then I'm going to take a shot of the spine. The other six photos that I'm going to do because it really just does show absolutely everything to do with the product.

[06:32] So I'm going to go ahead and click the upload button, I'm going to grab all of my files here for the six photos and I'm just simply going to open them up. So I just airdropped them from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro and they're uploading right

[06:44] here in front of us and you can see here, a really nice cover photo has just produced. It is six photos that you want to take as a minimum. If you can't take any more photos to clearly show what the product is, maybe potentially

[06:56] show some blemishes, that would be really important as well. But this product is in great condition and I've just highlighted it there by showing every single aspect of the product. So that's the most important thing. When it comes to your title, this title is pretty good because it does use up 79 out

[07:12] of the total of 80 characters that you get to use with the title. I am going to go ahead and remove these little dashes that you can see here, because a customer isn't going to be searching for them in the eBay search bar.

[07:24] They're also not going to be searching for this VGC either. So I'm going to go ahead and remove that. But now, having a look at the title, we've got New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Nintendo Wii,

[07:36] Oz, PAL, and then complete with manual. Now, that is literally the title of the game. it actually does say the word new there, so it's not referring to the condition being a brand new copy. It is what the game is called, New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii.

[07:51] And then that is the first set of characters, the first five words that we have in our title. So it's going to be a perfect match when a customer tries to search for this game. It is going to pop up because we've got that at the front end of our title.

[08:05] Then from there, you're going to see further down that we have quite a number of item specifics that have already been added in from the previous seller. This is why getting a listing done super fast is so much easier when you do this sell similar approach.

[08:19] I do think it is recommended for you to go ahead and do some revisions of any of these if that's accidentally putting the wrong information. But just doing a really quick sweep through here, I'm pretty content with all of that information, so I think we can just keep moving on.

[08:33] The condition here, it does say add condition for your item that's brand new. I don't think it is. I think having a look at ours, these are the condition prompts. I think it's definitely pre-owned obviously, but having a look at the condition of this, there's hardly any scratches. So to give myself a bit of safety,

[08:48] I going to go ahead and just say that it is in very good condition So I type in very good there And then further down I got this button here where I can use an AI description Descriptions actually aren that important when it comes to selling on eBay.

[09:01] So just go ahead and throw in something like an AI generic description, and you'll be totally fine to keep moving on. The next thing is our pricing. Well, we just did that pricing research, and we know that we're going to want to list this one up

[09:13] for about $29.95. We do want to tick the box here that says Allow Offers. Offers make up about 50% of my sales. It's going to make up about 50% of your sales. To turn the offers on, it allows people to then barter with you.

[09:27] Somebody could send me an offer of $25 for this video game. Even though we've got to list it up to $29.95, I can then say yes or no, or I can reply with a counter offer to $28 and potentially make a sale on a counter offer.

[09:40] It's just a really important tool that eBay provides that we as sellers should be utilizing. Now, schedule your listings. I don't recommend scheduling your listings, not in this process at least anyway, so go

[09:52] ahead and just avoid that for now. And then you'll get down to the postage side of things. Now in the sense of postage, postage is actually one that you can go ahead and you can add in a postage policy, which is something I think is really, really cool and really easy.

[10:06] A lot of people get really complacent and they get really concerned, I should say, about the postage process, but if you click on this little box here, you can create a name here And you might say it might be envelope.

[10:20] And you're going to put these items into an envelope with this process. It's going to be standard, small or medium size of an item. That's what we were talking about before. The postage cost is going to be at a primary service.

[10:33] It's going to be the Australian Domestic Standard, as you can see there. Australia Post Standard parcel. We're going to save that. And then you'll see here, offer free postage.

[10:45] That's what I personally like to do. I think it's the easiest thing to get started is just go with the free postage model. I'm going to leave international postage off for now. You can check out some other videos on my channel if you want to open up international postage.

[10:57] But literally, it's as easy as that and selecting a preference of handling time. Look, I think one business day is what you should start with. That gives you at least 24 to 36 hours to get your item out the door via that envelope.

[11:11] So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to save that. If you do sell any item on eBay, you're going to need to know how much it's going to cost you to ship the item off. Whether you're doing the free postage or whether you're doing charged postage, the buyer is ultimately going to give you the money that you're going to then use to pay for the postage.

[11:27] But you're going to need to know what that amount is or else you're going to get burnt. Now, fortunately, with the smaller items, they generally don't cost as much to send off anywhere around the country here in Australia, at least anyway. So there is a PDF that I'm going to link in the description box below for you guys.

[11:42] You can print it out, you can have a look at it. It's going to show you what the price points are of the envelopes and the statuettes that I use here in Australia. And you're going to get a really good understanding of what the potential postage rates are going to be,

[11:54] depending on where it goes within the country. So if you're selling or watching this from another country right now, check out your local postal service price points and get an understanding of how much those price points are going to cost you

[12:06] should your particular item go on to sell. Now you're going to add in some preferences in regards to your settings, so you can add in your address for return to sender and things like that in that little section there.

[12:19] And then you're going to get down to here which is promote your listing. Now you're going to have general and you're going to have priority. I really do recommend that you click on general and I do recommend that you go with, if you're first starting out selling on eBay, 8%, but if you're new to selling on eBay, sorry if

[12:33] you're existing and you've sold a little bit on eBay, 3%. As you're starting out, because this is the beginning of the guide, I think 8% is a great place to start until you've made about 100 sales. And then once you're a top rated eBay seller, you can bring that down to just 3%.

[12:48] And then from there, you can literally list your item for free. And then when it goes on to sell, you'll make some fees and pay those fees to eBay. But at this point here, to get this listing live, we've just listed this up by hitting

[13:01] listed for $29.95, a free postage. And this one's good to go. Now let's say that our item has gone on to sell instantly. We had that really attractive $29.95 sale price and somebody has just swept through

[13:13] and gone ahead and bought it. When it comes to doing your shipping we had with that business policy postage policy that we set up we got a one day shipping and handling time So we must make sure that by tomorrow it goes into the mailbag and out the door

[13:26] Now, when I first started selling on eBay, I literally took my items to the post office, facilitated everything at the post office, and then sent it on its way. It is so much easier to just simply do it here at home.

[13:38] Now, the process that I'll go through when it comes to shipping is I use these envelopes. Now, these envelopes is what I was referring to before, which is what I'm going to be putting this game into.

[13:51] And you can buy them in packs of 10 from Australia Post if you're watching this here in Australia. I've also got these boxes as well, which I'll use and cut up depending on the size of the product.

[14:03] This is why when we were talking before about having a nice and small product that's lightweight, it's not going to cost a lot of money to ship off. When you put it into things like Flipdirt or your spreadsheet, the profitability of it is going to be nice and high

[14:15] because you're not having to wear too much expense with regards to this side of things, shipping. This is something, I guess the shipping side of things does scare a lot of people. It frightens people off from selling on eBay, but it really isn't as daunting as you might think.

[14:29] I also grabbed these. These are padded mailers, so they have a little bit of bubble wrap in them as well. Padded mailers, boxes, and envelopes is literally how I run my eBay business. The products that we sell,

[14:41] it doesn't get too much more convoluted than that. I do go out to Bunnings Warehouse and I buy butcher's paper and I buy bubble wrap. That is basically just to protect the product. And then from there, I'm either putting it into an envelope, a box or a padded mailer.

[14:57] You can use the Australia Post MyPost business. Now, if you're selling in Australia, you're going to get some discounts using the Australia Post MyPost business. And you can actually integrate your eBay store to your MyPost business account.

[15:10] And again, it is totally free to do. As you sell more over the journey, you're going to accrue further discount with your MyPost business account to the point where you can be a level five seller like I am,

[15:22] and you can have some serious savings when it comes to domestic and international postage. So I highly recommend you guys go ahead and create yourself an Australian Post MyPost business account and link in that store to your eBay account.

[15:35] from there you'll get simply filling out the details of every order through the my post business account and you're printing the labels with either a divo printer or an at-home printer just an a4 piece of paper can have your australia post labels printed out and then from there you're

[15:52] putting a label on the product or your handwriting like i do with my envelopes i still handwrite on the envelopes itself and you're taking it to the post office with a tracking number now when it

[16:04] comes to this item here you'll see there there's a little barcode that you can scan and that actually scans off the mobile phone into the eBay app and then from there there is a tracking number that is registered against that product

[16:18] so the buyer knows that this product is in this envelope and it is on its way so that's a really really important step to make sure that you're tracking every single item and the Australia Post Line Post business integrates all of those

[16:31] tracking numbers back to your eBay account and it also notifies your buyers that those tracking numbers have been applied. So the buyers from there really do just follow the process with the MyPost business and the

[16:43] Australia Post tracking and you kind of sit back and don't have to worry about all the customer service of people saying, where the hell is my item? They can simply follow the journey through that tracking number. Look, we actually have a program that we run over 12 weeks.

[16:57] It's the eBay Launch Lab. It starts you from scratch. it gives you all of these basic beginner tools, but then it actually puts something new into place that we haven't spoken about, and that is strategy. What do you actually do on a daily basis, each and every day, to make sure that you can start to generate consistent sales?

[17:11] Have you become a cooperated eBay seller? 100 sales, $3,000 in revenue, that's exactly what we try and do, and we produce for the people that are in that program, literally every 12 weeks. So check it out, link in the description below.

[17:24] To find out when the next cohort is running, if you want to start your eBay business the right way, Be efficient and be super profitable. I'm going to end this video right here. It's another beginner tip video which is all about those small items to give you guys a

[17:38] bit of insight into what I believe would be some great items to be starting out selling on your eBay journey. So go and check that one out and thanks for being here for this one.