Whether your a first-time seller looking to make some profit online, or an already established ecommerce business looking to expand into multiple channels, there are plenty of options for you and your business.  

Here’s a quick setup guide to effectively help you get on your feet on eBay so you can start selling sooner rather than later!

eBay Set Up

The first and main thing you’re going to want to do to establish yourself on eBay is Set Up Your Seller Account.  

You’ll have to put in your contact info as well as payment info, which has several options for you to choose from.  

You can go with Paypal, credit card, or even direct pay; whatever best suits the needs of your business (eBay itself recommends Paypal).

Now you can jump straight to selling by Listing Products!  

eBay offers several options with regards to how you can sell your goods: their infamous Auction option is available, as well as a “Buy-It-Now” option that lets you sell your goods at a fixed price.

Auction

The Auction format allows you to set the starting bid for the item as well as the end time and date for the auction.  

Then, you sit back and watch buyers bid on your item! While this can create a driving sense of competition and franticness among the competing buyers that could potentially drive the price to satisfying shores, you could end up getting a lower price for your item than you initially anticipated.

Buy-It-Now

That’s where the assurance of the Buy-It-Now format comes in handy.  

Here, you list the item at a fixed price.

This ensures you get the price you want for your item, albeit at the loss of customers’ control over the price.  

However, you can add a bit of leeway to the pricing by letting customers submit their best offer using the feature sharing the same name.

Whichever format you end up choosing for your item(s), you’d do well to still remember some things that apply regardless of the format.

  • Use your best pictures for the product listings
  • Write the best descriptions you can to draw customers to your product

Fees

Using eBay does not come without its costs.  

The first 50 items listed each month are free; beyond those, each item lands itself a $0.30 Insertion Fee.  

There’s also a Final Value Fee: once the item sells, this fee is calculated with the final price plus shipping costs.

Shipping

There are a few different options when it comes to shipping through eBay.  

You can handle the shipping yourself, but keep in mind that everything still needs to be ran through eBay anyways so that the buyer can track their package.  

That’s why using eBay’s own shipping labels is the more popular option, which automatically track everything along the way.

Selling on eBay is a relatively straightforward progress, and a great arena to expand into if you’re considering multi-channel sales.  

But as great as eBay is, it isn’t the only option when it comes to selling your products online!

We have setup guides for Walmart and Shopify, as well as several helpful articles dealing with selling on Amazon.  See which one works best for your business!

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