Thrifty Thursday: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Ebay

There are lots of ways to make a little money from home without costing you anything.  My favorite way is eBay. It is quick and easy to learn how to make money on eBay and it costs nothing....unless you sell something.  I sell coupons that I am not going to use so that I can make a little money on something that costs me nothing.  There are a lot of rules specific to coupons that make it hard to do but I try and it nets me about $50 per month.  I am going to try to branch out and use a few of these helpful hints to make a little more once my son goes back to school.

Make sure you follow some simple rules:

-Free Shipping Not Neccessary: Don't bend to the pressure to offer free shipping if there is a cost for shipping the item unless you think that it is going to be covered in the cost of selling the item because you will quickly see your profits drop.

-No Inflated Shipping: Don't charge more for shipping to cover charges.  No one wants to pay for someone else's fees and will easily not want your item based on the shipping.  If I mail something that only needs a stamp, then I charge $0.49 (currently the price for a stamp) and I don't charge anything for the envelope or other packing supplies.  If you don't know what the item weighs, you can get a small scale to do it at home or you can take it to the self serve section at the post office and weigh the item to price properly.

-Starting Price: Calculate the starting price high enough to cover both ebay and pay pal fees plus shipping.  Ebay wants the starting price for items at $0.99 but make sure you understand what happens when the item sells.  There is a $0.10 fee to ebay (10%), $0.33 fee to pay pal ($0.30 plus 3%), and the shipping for minimum of $0.49 which leaves you $0.07 cash in your pocket.  If the shipping is any higher (and you have offered free shipping), then you could be out money when trying to make some.  Of course, if you set it too high then you won't get a lot of people interested either.

-Pay Pal Account: Set up a pay pal account because this is the way that most money exchanges hands in eBay.  Always leave money in your pay pal account to cover fees and returns that might appear and don't transfer all of the money to your bank account yet.  Even though you are making money, it might not be as fast as you think because the fees do come back.

-Pictures: Take some great pictures of your item and there should be more then one.  eBay allows up to 12 for a listing so it is easy to do some overview and some close up.  If the pictures didn't get close enough, there is editing right in the eBay software to crop and fix the picture.  Make sure you have a plain background so that it doesn't take away from an item.  No one wants to see the entire picture of your basement to get a picture of the one item you are selling so make sure to stage the picture and get good lighting. It helps prove to others that you have the item and what condition it is in.

-Descriptions: Make sure you put a detailed description of the item including any details that the person reading would be interested to learn.  There are tons of different examples on eBay so check it you and make a template for what you think that you will use and adapt it as you find better examples.

-Spelling: Make sure you spell everything correctly.  eBay is based on search engines and if you don't spell the item correctly then no one will find it!!

-Reply to Messages: There are questions that come up and people send you a message through eBay so make sure you check your inbox and answer questions in a timely manner or people will move on to another option.

-Track your sales and profits!!  This helps at the end of the month to know what sold and what didn't but it also tells you how your hard work is paying off.  You may start to think that you are making the amount that ends up in the pay pal account and be upset when eBay comes back to take their fees.

Just like at a garage sale, it depends on your audience because some things sell quickly and others don't because the right person isn't looking at the item so you can always try again later.  Try, try again!!  It is worth the payoff!!  

Do you have any tips that work for you??