eBay selling tricks
Declutter, flog & make £100s with ease.

Want to de-clutter your home, flog unwanted goods, or even start trading homemade jewellery? The word is “EBAY”! This is a full guide to maximizing your cash by eBay selling, including how to list auctions effectively, smash down eBay fees, power tools to list automatically, and profit from bizarre items you never thought you’d sell.

Also read eBay Buying Secrets & Boost Your Income

Why Bother?

As well as bringing in extra cash, eBay* can help you de-clutter your home and is environmentally friendly too. After all, people are re-using your goods, rather than flinging them in to the tip – so everyone gains.

How much can you make?

Most people don’t realise the hidden value that’s in their home, and there’s serious money to be had. This isn’t just from the first flushes of a major de-clutter either: continuing to get rid of things you no longer use can provide a ready income.

For those who’ve got the eBay bug, it’s addictive watching the bids flow in. The pounds can quickly add up; especially as you’re profiting from stuff that was just picking up dust.

How much cash you make depends on the time invested and whether you un-earth a forgotten stash of Faberge eggs in the tool shed, but committed MoneySavers on this site’s eBay board commonly make £200 a month upwards. For more ways to bring in extra loot, read the Boost Your Income guide.

Use eBay selling instead of renting

The economics of trading are fascinating. The fluidity of eBay as a marketplace means stuff often moves quickly and at a reasonable price. This has a bizarre effect on some purchases.

Imagine that you’re intending to keep something for a limited time e.g. your flat needs a small TV for a few months or you want a computer game for three weeks. In the past, renting was cheaper than buying. Yet with eBay, buying it in, using it, ensuring it stays in good nick, then flogging it can actually undercut renting.

In fact, more powerfully, buy something for the cheapest possible amount (see the Cheap Online Shopping and Ebay Buying Secrets guide), then re-flog it when you’re done. It’s perfectly possible you’ll get as much as you paid for it, meaning your period of use didn’t actually cost you anything.

For example, if you’re more fickle about handbags than Wayne Rooney's Mrs, don’t bother with the new breed of handbag renting sites. Grab one from eBay instead and re-sell when you’re done. If it’s already second-hand or super-cheap, it may not cost you a thing.

What to flog and what not to flog

If you’re looking to sell something specific, this is easy – just go ahead and list it. But if your aim is simply to maximise the cash, with minimum effort, on everything you no longer need… read on.

Sort through your drawers

The first task is to sort through all those bulging drawers and messy cupboards, finding stuff to flog. Get a big eBay box to stash your wares in, and systematically clear out wardrobes, DVD and CD piles, the loft and garage.

Use the easy 12 month rule of thumb to help you decide what to offload:

"If you haven’t used it for a year, FLOG IT!"

What sells best?

There’s no hard or fast answer, but the following are simple guidelines:

• Brand new items sell better than second-hand ones.

  If a DVD’s still cellophane-wrapped or a frock still has tags attached, it will fetch a higher price.

• Branded goods sell better than non-branded.

  If it’s a PURE DAB radio, rather than just a DAB radio, people are more likely to trust that it’s decent quality, and they’re more likely to search for it in the first place.

• Things people are likely to search for are great sellers.

  One question to ask is “will someone search for this?” People are more likely to buy a Ted Baker shirt, than just a shirt. Of course, if it’s not a brand, the pounds will still add up, and you’ll benefit from a more ordered home. Think carefully about what works and what doesn’t.

• Niche is good.

  Things that are rare or difficult to get hold of sell well. Thus the petrol cap on a 1974 special version Beatle may take time, but once someone wants it, it’s likely they’ll be willing to pay. Consider starting the bidding at a higher price for items that a few specialist nerds may be interested in.

• Consider flogging stuff together.

  If you have lots of similar small items and not much time, consider selling them together as a job lot. This works especially well with things like baby clothes and cosmetic samples. Yet sell expensive branded goods individually, as people mightn’t want everything else you’re selling i.e. don’t bung Prada in with Primar!

According to MoneySavers, some of the biggest sellers are posh-brand toiletries, designer clothes, baby stuff, university text books and computer bits. To find out what people are searching for, check out Ebay Pulse on eBay’s own site, which lists the latest buying trends. Who knew that Sisters of Mercy LP from your student days would spark a bidding war?

Don’t be too quick to cry ‘that’s rubbish’! Try to sell EVERYTHING!

Don’t bin it, 'bay it!' When it comes to eBay, one man’s junk is another’s dream auction, and it’s astounding what people will fight for. Faulty electrical items, for example, are popular because some clever bods fix or use them for spares (of course, always be up front about the item’s condition).

Among the bizarre things MoneySavers have sold are:

• Used carrier bags
• Cosmetic samples from magazines
• A broken Gameboy that had fallen down the toilet.

For inspiration, read the brilliant Things you never thought you could sell on eBay forum thread.

Use eBay as a free removal service

If you’ve an old sofa or broken washing machine, it’s madness to pay the council to collect it. Just put it on eBay for a nominal sum ie 1p (or see Freecycle later) and people will come and collect it. People with fixing skills often buy broken washing machines, for instance.

How to make your first sale

eBay* is free to sign up to and very user-friendly. It’ll guide you through the selling process in simple steps. Yet there are some skills that can improve the price people will pay.

Step 1. Buy to build your profile

Before flogging cast-offs on eBay, it’s wise to buy a few small items you need; you can buy everything from tights and toothpaste on eBay, and may well save cash to boot (see the eBay Buying Guide).

As well as giving you an insight into how the site works, this will build up a feedback rating. Few buyers will do business with zero feedback sellers, and even if they do it’s unlikely to fetch true market value.

Step 2. Spy on what others have done first

The joy of eBay is it’s possible to see exactly how much other items have sold for, and how other sellers have described similar items. To do this, fill in the search box and check “completed items” on the left hand yellow bar.

This also reveals which descriptions or chosen categories get the most bids. If you spot a listing identical to your item, click on “sell similar item”. This will automatically fill in some of the details for you (though use the steps below to see if they’ve done it well). Never copy descriptions or pictures wholesale though, as this infringes other sellers’ copyright.

Step 3. Get the words right

There are two lots of text in every eBay item. Each serves a slightly different purpose and you need to write towards that.

• Compose the perfect title to ensure people see your item

  The most important part of writing your description is making your item title searchable. Remember that when buyers search, eBay only automatically searches for words in the item’s title, not the rest of the description, so every word counts. The maximum number of words/characters allowed in a title is 55.

  Imagine what you would search for. ‘Fabulous, plunging neckline plum dress. Barely worn’ is a total waste of words: no one’s going to search for ‘fabulous’ or ‘plunging’ or ‘plum’.

  Instead put “Brand new size 10 purple silk French Connection dress”, and you’ll cram in tons more search terms.

  Alternatively, “Driving video game, not had it long” isn’t going to come up as often as “New Gran Turismo Version 6 for Xbox”.

• Use eBay jargon to maxmise titles

  EBay pros use certain acronyms to get their message across; these are useful for cramming extra info into titles without exceeding the character limit. Don’t go overboard though, or newbies won’t have the foggiest what you’re on about. The following is the most commonly used eBay jargon:

  BN. Brand new
  BNWT. Brand new with tags
  BNIB. Brand new in box
  BIN. Buy it now

• Penning a pukka description to market your product

  Now it’s time to sell and market your product. Include as many details as possible: brand; condition, size, colour, material. Let buyers know why you’re selling it and how fast you’ll be able to ship.

  While of course you’ll want to big up your product, make sure your description’s accurate. It might be tempting to describe a shirt as like new, but if it turns up with kebab stains down the front, the buyer will leave bad feedback. Plus if it’s not as described, they may have recourse to action (see your responsibilities section).

  Be clear, concise and pay attention to grammar. Finally, always, always, always run your description through a spell checker, and if it’s a higher value item, ask a friend for feedback. To show how important spelling is, entire websites, such as Fatfingers and Goofbay, are dedicated to profiting from people’s spelling slip-ups, as listings with spelling errors go for much lower amounts.

Step 4. Pick the perfect picture

A decent picture is paramount. You might just get away with not including an image for a Harry Potter DVD, but no one in their right mind’s going to pay good cash for a painting they’ve never laid eyes on.

Uploading is super-easy, just click on “add pictures” on the selling page.

• Blurry is bad.

  Most digital cameras these days will take a snap good enough to upload. Make sure there’s enough light, and if you’re taking outdoor pics, i.e. for a car, plan for a sunny day.

• Photograph from all sides.

  If it’s an expensive item, take shots from different angles, as well as close-ups and distance shots. Your first picture is free, but eBay charges 12p for each extra shot. See sneakily upload extra photos for free later for how to dodge these fees.

• Keep out the clutter.

  Use a plain background: buyers won’t be enticed by your pet pooch or cigarette butts. Try to create a salubrious image of the product; remember – you are selling a dream!

• Love your flaws.

  Take close-up photos of slight imperfections, so buyers can have a gander. They might be more likely to buy if the flaw’s not as bad as they thought, and will leave you good feedback for honesty.

• Get it in the gallery.

  For 15p, eBay allows you to add a thumbnail image of your item to the search results page. This is well worth it: it attracts time-pressed customers to click when they’re scanning the page.

Step 5. Picking a start price

This is a delicate balance: set it too high and no one will bid, set it low and there’s a risk it will sell for the knock-down price.

• First find what similar products have sold for.

  As described above, searching completed items gives a list of prices similar auctions have already fetched; a useful guide to how much you’re likely to make. Plus, for stats geeks, the free website Get4it does some serious number-crunching on how much you could get. Search for a product and it gives you average sales prices, plus the number of sold and unsold auctions.

• Then pick a price to sell

  Consider lowering your start price: not only will it slash the initial listing fee, but your auction may attract more attention. Boffins at London University did some research on this topic, and found that auctions with modest start prices sparked more bidding and fetched higher final prices. Of course, there is always the risk that it will sell for the knock-down price.

Step 6. Time it right…

As with good comedy, timing is crucial, and there are a number of wee pointers to consider.

• Plan for a bid-closing frenzy

  Avoid ending auctions at 4am, when nobody’s about; often you get a disproportionate number of bids in the last hour; as people can scour out a bargain, plus the various bidding tools (see the eBay Buying Guide) can come into play.

  According to eBaying MoneySavers, the best time to close an auction is Sunday evening. So for a ten day listing, the best time to start it is on a Thursday night. Different items sell better at different times; there’s a full list of tips in this Best time to close eBay auctions forum thread. If you’ve a prior engagement, eBay handily lets you list auctions and schedule a start time for 6p.

• Think about seasonality

  Plus, remember to sell stuff at the right time of year. No one's going to search for barbeques in December or Christmas crackers in July. The more precise, the better: if you’ve got an air conditioning unit to sell, wait for a hot spell to really pump up the price.

Smash down eBay fees

EBay makes its money from sellers not buyers; when you’re flogging something it eats a generous chunk of your profits.

There are two types of fees:

• The initial listing fee.

  This is a charge of between 10p and £1.90, depending on your start price. Yet there are a few little words every eBayer loves to hear: ‘10p listing day’!

  On these days, initial listing fees are slashed to just 10p, no matter what the start price. So list an Xbox 360 with a starting price of £50, and the listing fee will be 10p, instead of £1. These days are especially good for items with high start prices of £100 plus, as you’ll save more. If you’re not around on a 10p listing day, you can schedule your auctions to automatically begin on a 10p listing day for 6p.

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• The ‘Closing Fee’.

  If your item sells, you’re charged an additional ‘closing fee’, which is a percentage of the final sale price. For example, start an auction for a telly at £30 and, if it fetches £150, the total fee would be £8.65. See eBay's Fee chart for a full breakdown.

  Sadly, there’s no way to cut the closing fee, apart from using a different auction website (see other auction sites for more details).

  Ebay fees can be hard to fathom, but handy eBay fee calculator Ecal does the maths for you. Just type in a start price and final value and it’ll whiz back to you with the costs.

• Cheque it out

  The standard way to pay on eBay is using its online payment system Paypal; this works well for buyers, as it’s free and affords extra protection.

  Yet, when selling, the argument’s reversed: Paypal wallops sellers with a fee of 3.4% of the amount paid, plus 20p for each transaction, so on an £150 sale, there’d be a £5.30 fee. Add this to eBay’s other fees and it’s a fair whack.

  Unfortunately eBay requires all sellers to offer Paypal as an option. Yet there’s nothing to stop you telling buyers “a cheque’s preferred”, to avoid Paypal fees.

Free hot selling tools

Since eBay started 10 years ago, a raft of listing tools have sprung up to save time and sever fees.

Sneakily upload extra photos for free

Buyers will want to have a good gander at their potential purchase, so the more photos, the better. Your first picture is free, but eBay charges 12p for every extra pic you upload. Yet there’s a way to sneakily upload up to six extra photos, for nowt.

This is because eBay doesn’t charge for photos stored on other websites, even though it’s still possible to include these in your listing.

Here, you sign up for a free account with a ‘photo-hosting’ website, which allows you to upload and store snaps online. Two of the best for eBay are Photobucket and Auctiva. Simply sign up, upload a photo, and you’ll be given a special web address for that picture.

Then, to add a photo on your eBay listing, click “add pictures”, choose the “self hosting” tab and enter the web address where the pictures are hosted.

Use free bulk listing tools

Some websites offer free bulk listing tools that let you create auctions in advance, so you can post them at an auspicious time – including 10p listing days. The big advantage is that if you go via eBay directly there’s no way to save draft auctions without starting them. Yet these tools let you save and edit at leisure (i.e. write the description, then upload a pic the next month).

They also offer templates, for more slick-looking auctions. There are two big main choices, with different pros and cons; both can be fiddly so play around with both to see which you prefer.

• Auctiva – good for free scheduling and photos.

  Auctiva is a super clever tool, with the main selling point that it automatically starts auctions according to your schedule, without charging the 6p fee (it’s online, so no need to upload items from your PC).

  It also doubles up as a photo hosting website, allowing you to upload six extra photos for free. Plus there’s a super duper choice of free templates.

• Turbo Lister – good for creating auctions offline.

  Turbo Lister is eBay’s own software, which you download to your computer. It creates auctions offline (handy for those on dial-up internet); to make auctions live, simply click upload.

  This does mean that to upload auctions at a specific time, you need to be around then to click the upload button. It’s still possible to upload in advance and schedule listings, but eBay charges 6p for the privilege.

• Auctomatic – good for ease of use

  Auctomatic is a new listing tool, which is free to use while it’s being tested out. It too offers free photo-hosting and listing scheduling, as well as handy auction statistics to see which are your popular items.

Your responsibilities as a seller

Your legal responsibilities depend on whether you’re a trader (business seller) or a private individual. If you’re a private seller, you’ll still want to offer tip-top customer service to build your feedback, but there’re fewer legal and tax obligations.

Trading and the law

Are you a trader?

A trader is someone who makes some or all of their living from regularly selling goods. Technically it's up to the courts to decide but it's usually pretty obvious… think of it a bit like this.. you’re trader if you:

• Sell items that you’ve bought to re-sell
• Make items yourself and sell them for profit

You’re a private seller if you:

• Sell your own stuff that you don't need anymore

Your responsibilities as a trader

Traders are required to register as business sellers with eBay. If you’re a trader, the buyer has the same statutory rights as when buying from a shop. This applies to both new and second hand items. See the Consumer Rights article for more info.

If you’re a trader and sell using the Buy-it-now button, rather than just a standard auction format, then distance selling regulations apply. This means you need to include contract details, the full price and delivery charges in listings.

Under distance selling rules, you have to refund an item if the buyer changes their mind within seven days of delivery. It’s worth reading the government’s guide to distance selling regulations for more help.

Be careful with descriptions

With private sellers it's caveat emptor, or ‘let the buyer beware'; buyers’ only rights are that the product is fairly described and the owner has the right to sell it.

Yet traders’ sales are covered by the Sale of Goods act – whether or not they use Buy-it-now. This means your goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, and as described. Therefore you need to be more careful with your descriptions than private sellers. Visit Business Link's Guide to the Sale of Goods Act for more details.

A tip on tax

As you watch the pounds flow in, don’t forget that the taxman will want his share of it. Selling your own cast-off clothing and second-hand stereos is fine but as a rule, online earnings become taxable when you become a trader, someone who sells goods bought with the intention of selling them. There are some grey areas; if you’re not sure, ask an accountant.

Any sources of undeclared income need to be declared, so make sure you’re up-front with HM Revenue and Customs. For more details on this read the Boost Your Income guide. There’s also an HMRC guide to help you work out if you need to notify it about income made from online sales.

How to be a good seller

• Do unto others…

  eBay works by buyers leaving feedback for sellers; to build a sparkling reputation you need to deliver goods speedily and in the condition advertised.

  While not a legal obligation, offering good customer service will boost feedback and protect you from problems. The key is to put yourself in the buyers' shoes – how would you like to be treated? Describe the item accurately, reply to questions promptly, and try to dispatch within 48 hours.

• Price the postage right

  The buyer pays for postage, and when listing goods, you must specify a postage cost. Try to be as accurate as possible, as if the price specified is too low, you’ll have to make up the difference. If it’s too high, the buyer may leave bad feedback.

  To get an idea of prices, weigh the item and use the Royal Mail price finder. If you don’t have scales to hand, try its weight comparison guide, which outlines guide weights for everything from DVDs to power drills. If you’re posting anything weighing more than 2kg it may be cheaper to use a courier. Read the Cheap Parcel Delivery guide for full details.

• Packaging

  Don’t forget to factor in packaging costs when you specify postage charges. Hoard all brown envelopes and packaging materials. Big brown carrier bags from places like Habitat and Muji are a good substitute for brown paper.

  Make sure the items are secure and nicely packaged. Often traders like to add a personal touch by including a business card, or wrapping designer clothes in tissue paper. Some eBayers even use popcorn instead of polystyrene to pack around fragile goods (i.e., buy the kernels in bulk, cook the popcorn without oil and once it’s cool it’s a good packing material).

  If selling lots of items, try out Dispatch-labels, free software which lets you store customer addresses on a database, and print professional-looking parcel labels.

Potential hiccups

As with anything in life, problems can occur when selling. Yet don’t let this put you off, many sell for years without any issues. If you do get in a pickle, post on the eBay section of this site’s chat forum; if there’s a problem, one of the experts there will have dealt with it.

• Get proof of postage.

  One problem is buyers signing up, buying a mega-pricey item such as a Nintendo Wii and claiming it never arrived. Always, always get proof of posting (just ask for a stamped receipt at the post office), so if anyone tries to argue that they didn’t get the item you’ll have evidence. Better still, send items by recorded delivery; this includes tracking number which you can send to buyers so they can track a parcel’s progress.

• Discourage dodgy buyers

  It’s not just buyers that can get caught out by dodgy sellers; some buyers get up to skulduggery too, for example, claiming an item arrived broken to get a refund. Discourage this by adding a requirement that you’ll only accept bids from buyers with a certain feedback score. To do this, in My eBay, under the My Account column, click the "Preferences" link. In the Seller Preferences section, click the “Edit” link.

• Be prepared to refund

  Sometimes an item will arrive broken because you packaged it poorly or the buyer will be disgruntled by an inaccurate description. In this case, try to negotiate with the eBayer; most are nice, reasonable people. If you’re in the wrong, it’s fair to give a refund, whether or not you’re legally obliged. To do this, either use Paypal’s refund button or send out a cheque.

eBay is not the only site

While eBay is hugely dominant, there are alternatives which can yield profits.

Free Classified Ads

Perhaps the fasted growing trend is for offloading gear on a free classified site, the power-puncher of these is Gumtree* which divides the UK into different towns. It sells anything from bikes to beds and doesn't charge either the buyer or the seller (except for job ads).

Interestingly Gumtree is owned by eBay, it was bought in May 2005, probably as eBay started to identify it as competition. Thankfully it hasn't impacted its free community-based operations.

Other Auction Sites

While eBay is massively dominant, cqout*, eBid* and qxl* are sizeable auctions. Their advantage is they charge sellers less than eBay, which means some prefer it. On the downside, your auctions are likely to get less exposure than they would on eBay, so could get fewer bids.

Comparing charges is tricky, because all auction sites have different fee structures. With eBid and cqout, there’s no initial listing fee; they only charge you once your item sells. Therefore, it’s well worth putting a few items up, with a high start price – you never know!

If the item does sell, eBid charges a flat 3% of the items final sale price. Cqout is more expensive: it charges up to 4.5% on items up to £50 (then 4% on the remaining £50 to £200, then 3% on the remaining £200 to £1000)

Qxl charges a listing fee of between 5p and 40p, and closing fees are between 1.25% and 3.75%, depending on the sale price. All of these compare favourably with eBay’s closing fees of up to 7.5%, plus listing fees.

The fees you would pay on a TV sold for £100
Marketplace	Listing fee (1)	Closing fee	Total fees
eBay	£1	£3.67	£4.67
Cqout	£0	£4.25	£4.25
eBid	£0	£3	£3
Qxl	£0.40	£2.06	£2.46
(1) Assumes item is listed with a starting price of £50.

Amazon & Play– For books, games and CD selling

Amazon* and now Play* have second hand marketplaces, for most of the products they sell new, and these can actually hold a candle to eBay's size. Do a normal search for something on the site, and if there's a second hand version available, it's listed. It primarily operates as a fixed price rather than an auction, making it an easy alternative.

Do they beat the ‘bay?

There’re pros and cons to selling items on Amazon Marketplace & Play Trade, over eBay. On the up side, you’re not charged a fee until your item sells, you can leave auctions up for as long as you like, and it’s extremely quick to list. However, as a rule, fees are steeper than eBay, except in certain, very specific situations.

• Amazon Marketplace: Profit from light paperback books.

  Amazon charges a hefty 86p fee for every sale, in addition to 17.25% of the selling price (11.5% if it’s an electronic or photo category). Yet, the bonus is it gives a generous £2.26 postage allowance for every book (DVDs and CDs are less), so if the book only costs £1 to send, you pocket the difference. For heavier books, this leaves you out of pocket, so factor in the additional amount into your price.

  Happily, there’s no Paypal fee to pay as Amazon pays the cash straight into your bank account. View a full fee breakdown.

• Play Trade: Better for pricier books & DVDs

  Play charges a lower 10% commission, plus 50p per completed sale. If you transfer the cash to your bank account there is a 5% transfer fee, but if you spend the money at Play.com there’s no charge. View a full fee breakdown. On the downside, there’s no additional postage allowance, delivery is free for buyers, so you have to factor postage charges into the price charged.

Amazon/Play/eBay fees compared
Marketplace	Transaction fee	Per cent fee	Electronic payment fee
Amazon	86p	17.25% (1)	£0
eBay	10p - £1.90	1.9% to 7.5%	3.4% plus £0.20 (2)
Play	50p	10%	5%
(1) 11.5% for Electronics & Photo items (2) Assumes you use Paypal (3) 7.5% of the initial £29.99 (£2.25), plus 4.5% of the initial £30.00 - £599.99 (£25.65) plus 1.9% of the remaining balance of the final selling price.




How much you could make on a (light!) book sold for £5
Marketplace	Transaction fee	Per cent fee	Electronic payment fee	Postage profit(1)	Total profit
Amazon	86p	87p	0p	£1.26	£4.53
eBay	15p	37p	75p	£0	£3.73
Play	50p	50p	25p	£0	£4.75
(1) Assumes the book costs £1 to post, that you list the postage price as £1 on eBay, and you add an additional £1 to your price on Play (ie it sells for £6). (2) Assumes the eBay start price is between £2 and £4.99




• Give it away! Freecycle

  If you just want to get rid of some junk, an environmentally friendly and cheap alternative to auction sites, is Freecycle. Here members ‘recycle' goods they'd otherwise have thrown out, in other words they're given away free to someone else in the group.

  In fact it isn't a website in itself, it's run via Yahoo group emails which is highly localised so you become a part of your area's own Freecycle. You can then send an email, listing stuff you want to get rid of.

  As the scheme gets more popular, members can get hundreds of emails a week, so it's a good idea to set up a new email account solely for Freecycle.