1St Time Ebay Seller

Hi E.
I would start with an item you care nothing about and learn that way. Don't make mistakes with items you're wanting to receive a certain amount on.
Also consider that you will be charged whether your item sells or not. There are also different ways to list items.

I can give more answers, we actually have a consignment shop and our profits go to a home for abandoned moms and children, called the WISH home. Let me know if I can be of help.
D.

I also sold some Dept 56 Snow Village Buildings on Ebay for a family friend about 5 years ago. They sold well and I made her a lot of money. I sold them closer to the holidays.

My biggest piece of advice is to stagger the listings so you are not packing and shipping all of the boxes at once. Also, be sure to charge enough for shipping. I undercharged a bit here and there. I would also do a search for how much others have sold the same items either on ebay or on another website. Some of the houses are worth more than others. I set reserve prices for all of the houses as I wanted to insure that I got what they were worth at least.

Good luck! I had some fun moments with ebay and also some stressful nights of packing boxes and then stressful days of bringing 20 huge boxes to the post office. I think the postal service will pick up at your house now. If that's the case, your job will be much easier.

I used to sell quite a bit on ebay, but they have steadily raised their fees so I rarely use it anymore. Why don't you try craigslist. You're somewhat limited to locals but there are no fees.

There are other auction sites out there as well:
http://auctions.nettop20.com/

As far as advice goes, if you are determined to use ebay, here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Be very clear about what is offered on your listing page, including any flaws or defects in your products. If you are selling as is, make sure you state it and decide if you will accept returns. If not make sure you state that on you listing as well.

2. Use photos, photograph the actual object for sale (not a stock photo) make sure you use a neutral background, ie. don't photograph the item on your bathroom counter surrounded by all of your RX bottles and bathroom stuff.

3. Choose the day you end the auction. Studies have shown that low volume, high profit items sell the better if the auction ends on saturday. Keep in mind that ebay is a very fluctuating market. What works one week may not work the next.

4. Make your listing easy to read, simple and attractive.

5. State your shipping and handling procedures and charges clearly. Make sure you charge enough to cover your shipping costs.

6. Decide how you want to be paid. Check. Money Order. Paypal. If you accept checks, hold the sold item until after the check has cleared and state that you will be doing so in your listing

7. Mail your item quickly (within 2 days of receipt of the money) if you cannot, make sure you advise your buyer when the item will be mailed. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

8. Don't forget to give feedback!

i sell on ebay alot. going thru paypal is your best bet. just read ebays tips. they have a lot of good info. they do charge more on fees for setting reserves. shipping thru the usps (not ups) is usually the cheapest. you can ship priority mail and its important to pay the .65 cents for delivery confirmation that way if someone wants to say they didn't get it (which happens) you can come back at them and say i did delivery confirmation and it says you got it. (it happened to me and when i told them i did confirmtion i didn't hear nothing more from them). you can go directly to usps.com and check postage by zipcode to figure out shipping cost. figure as if you were shipping to washington state to cover all areas. make sure you ship everything nicely packaged. people can be ____@____.com and send you nasty feedback if they feel you didn't package something good enough. be very descriptive, like if there is a chip on something no matter how small make sure you put that in your listing so they dont try to dispute the item for damage. if its plainly stated on your listing ebay wont let them dispute it. the more pictures you take of the item the more ebay charges you for fees. thats something else you need to think about when you figure in shipping charges. check to see what everyone else is charging to ship their houses too. it really isn't the season to sell something like that. and people do look at your feedback, so being a new seller might make people leary about purchasing a pricey item. we started with little things around the house, my kids psp games they didn't play anymore, fishing reels my husband didn't use anymore etc. to start getting some feedback. oh yeah, and when you list your items, list them and night so the auction ends at like 10:00pm or 11:00pm, if you have the items end in the middle of the afternoon or in the morning, noone is going to be bidding on them cause there all at work. you'll get like one person bid on it and get it cheap cause they didn't have anyone bidding against them. when you have them end at night thats when everyones home and on the computer, and they'll be fighting over it.
hope this helps. i tried to mention some things that i've gone thru and things i haven't seen mentioned yet. good selling.

There is a store in Oviedo called Quickdrop-- it's in the Home Depot shopping center -- they will list your items for you, then pack them up and ship them. Worth looking into- I'm not sure how much of a fee/percentage they take. I would be worried shipping something so fragile, so personally I wouldn't mind paying someone else to package and ship them for me!