Ebay has a broad audience for a wide variety of goods. Here’s how to sell your stuff on eBay at your leisure without breaking the bank …
Over the years, I’ve bought and sold hundreds of items on eBay.
In the earlier years, I’d pay to list my items. This fee was called the insertion fee.
I’d pay the insertion fee regardless of whether the item sold or not. At some point, eBay would allow me to list the item again for free if it didn’t sell, but it still cost to list the item in the first place.
Sell your stuff on eBay with no insertion fees
Fairly recently in the grand scheme of things (I can’t remember the first time I noticed), eBay moved in to get a whole lot more people hooked on listing items for sale with them.
They removed the insertion fee on the first 50 items each month. List 50 items, and if none sell, you owe eBay nothing. If any of them do sell, then it’s a 10% commission to eBay.
There’s fine print, of course, but for the bulk of things a casual eBay seller would want to list, it’s covered.
This arrangement is perfect for leisurely selling on eBay. List a few items at a “make me sell it to you” price, and if they don’t go after a while, either take the listing down or drop the price some and let it ride some more. Either way, it costs nothing until there’s some selling action.
Take these steps to sell your stuff on eBay almost risk-free
It’s a pretty relaxed side hustle. It’s almost a side hustle, but without the hustle.
Here are the steps to take to sell your stuff risk-free. I’ll assume that you have an eBay account and that you can sell things on eBay.
1. Research how much your item goes for
Ebay makes it simple to do pricing research, but it’s not quite out of the box.
When you do an eBay search, you get all active auctions and fixed-price listings. The prices given here are what the seller wants for them.
You want to know what the buyers actually took. This is closer to fair market value.
To sort by these, scroll down the left sidebar until you get to the Show Only section, and check the Sold Listings box. The page will refresh with all of the recently sold items like yours.
This is a great starting point but you’ll need to look at the condition of the items that sold (new, like new, used, for parts only, etc.) and compare it to the condition of your item.
2. Figure out how much it will take to ship the item
It’s important to include the cost of shipping the item to all places that you intend to sell it.
For the last several items I’ve sold, I’ve made it easy on myself: Ship within the US only, and use USPS flat-rate shipping postage. That way there are almost no surprises when I ship it.
Just as important, I think, is figuring out how you’re going to ship the item once it’s sold. The way I do this is I have a few flat-rate USPS boxes on hand to pack up the items. Sometimes I even just leave the items in the box I chose as a reminder.
3. Price the item to profit
Looking at the total price range (cost plus shipping), calculate what you need to sell the item for in order to profit.
I’ll assume here that you list the item with free shipping (including the shipping in the list price).
Begin with this list price, and subtract out shipping, eBay’s final value fee, and Paypal’s fee. Ebay‘s final value fee for free listings is 10% of the total cost (list price plus shipping). Paypal’s fee is $0.30 plus 2.9% of the transacted amount.
The amount left over is what you’ll profit by selling the item. It should be greater than zero (duh!) but also should be a good payoff for your time.
4. Take pictures of the item
A picture is worth a thousand words! With a free listing, you can upload up to a dozen pictures.
A few pictures from different angles and some close-ups should cover what you need, and convey to potential buyers what the item is all about.
5. Create the listing and run it
Ebay has streamlined their listing interface over the years, and it’s gotten pretty good.
- Click on the Sell link in the upper right of the homepage. This will begin the process with the guided interface.
- Describe your item on the next screen. This will be your listing title. You get 80 characters so be sure to use as many of them as you can. I usually include FREE SHIP to emphasize the free shipping.
- Select the category for the listing either by searching in the hierarchy or by looking at the category that other sellers of the item placed it in.
Ebay may actually catch the category of your listing by the title alone, in which case you don’t have to! - Upload your photos. The view angles given in the box are just suggestions; they’re not mandatory. You can crop the pictures after you upload them.
- Select any item specifics from the list. Depending on the category of your item, there may be an additional section with item-specific details. For example, if I’m selling a money-fancy-serial-numbers/” target=”_blank”>fancy serial number bill, I’ll get places to enter circulation condition, year, denomination, grading, etc., because eBay will allow filtering by those details. Adding in this information generally helps because someone looking for a particular detail will filter by that detail, and it will show up only if you’ve entered the detail information.
- Write the description of the item. Give whatever information is needed to market the item. I tend not to go overboard with the formatting of the text; I figure plain text is more pleasant to read than a badly-colored 1995-
esque HTML hack of a listing. - Select the listing type as auction or fixed-price. I prefer fixed-price auctions. They stay up longer, and I still have the ability to accept a lower offer price. That, and I don’t want to count on people competing for my item to drive the price up. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.
- Consider carefully where you’ll ship to. Because I use USPS flat-rate shipping, I limit myself to US buyers. If you want to ship internationally, be sure that you understand what can and cannot be shipped outside the US.
Ebay makes some effort to point out land mines, but they can’t catch all of them. - Specify the shipping. Here you specify how the item will be shipped, how much it costs, and to where. You can enter a fixed shipping price, or let eBay calculate it based on where the buyer is located relative to you. Or just roll the shipping into the cost of the item, and set Free Shipping in this section. (This is what I do. The advantage is that buyers can filter by free shipping, and you’ll show up there.)
- Specify return policy if applicable. I just use the defaults; they’re pretty good.
- List it! Check to see that you haven’t accidentally incurred any charges on your listing, and go to town.
6. Monitor your listings
If you have fixed-price listings, then by default they’ll stay up for at least a month and will allow buyers to make an offer on your items.
Watch your email (or check back on eBay) to catch sales, as well as buyers wanting to bargain with you.
You can allow eBay to relist your item if it doesn’t sell. It will count again against your quota for the current month, but as long as you don’t try to list more than 50 qualifying listings in a month, it still won’t cost anything to list them.
If an item isn’t selling, then you can drop the price to encourage some action. I usually start my item a bit higher than I think I can get (because why not?) and this gives me some room to go down. Most of the sellers I’ve dealt with these kinds of listings will try to deal anyway.
7. Fulfill the sales
If someone buys from you, you send it to them. If you did everything in Step 2, then the item should almost be ready to go, save the shipping label!
