What Is It About E Bay Part 2

In my other post I stated that E Bay was a sellers market. Today's E Bay is a buyers market in places like electronics, videos, cd's etc. In the selling of antiques and collectibles, unless it is a unusual or scarce item it will not bring the money that it once did. E Bay items still sells at a reasonable good price for just about anything other than the most common things. If it is a hot item then the price goes up and up. Bringing a good price is due to the world wide market that E Bay reaches. I don't sell everything I put up for auction, I don't think many sellers do.

When I first started to sell, I would only sell in the USA. I wanted to be paid by check or money order only. This worked well for a long time. I didn't want to sell world wide because the shipping and insurance costs are different then selling here in the good ole USA. Also, you had to fill out all kinds of customs forms. It could be intimidating. My sales were good selling here in the USA and I was happy with that. I started to get e mails from people all over the world asking if I would ship to them. At first I said no and thanks for inquiring.

Pay Pal which is now owned by E Bay became an easy way to pay for the things I bought and if the seller accepted Pay Pal that cut out the time consuming check writing and mailing etc. Paying by Pay Pal was a great way to pay for things you won in the auction. The seller also sent your item very quickly since they had been paid already. I liked Pay Pal. The e mails were stilling coming asking me to sell to people world wide. I was considering it and also considering using Pay Pal to get paid by my bidders. I did set up my Pay Pal account to accept credit cards. The cost was just under 4 per cent. With my Pay Pal account set up to be able to pay and receive money, I then started to accept bids from all over the world. It work so much better than I expected. I became a Power Seller on E Bay. E Bay invites you to become a Power Seller, you can't just ask to join. My sales were flying high and I was getting much higher bids than when I sold just in the USA. The combination of selling worldwide and especially having Pay Pal to receive money from credit cards was the key. Most sellers accept Pay Pal now. There are still a few who want their money by check or M.O. and that is just fine. I still get paid that way and if the buyer has good feedback I don't hold their item till their check clears. I just mail it when the check arrives and I have never had a bad check and my customer appreciate it.

One of the things I do is to mail the buyer their item within a day or so and I send just about everything by Priority Mail. It gets to the buyer in 2 or 3 days and the buyers love it. The nice thing about Priority Mail is that the Post Office supplies all of the boxes, labels and stickers for mailing and it is all free. You can order everything on line from the Post Office and get different sizes. I do buy larger boxes for when I need them, but the Post Office Priority Boxes and envelopes just about covers 98 Per Cent of my shipping needs.

Getting back to shipping world wide. I talked to the counter people at the P. O. about what I needed to do to ship world wide. They have booklets on just about whatever you needed to know. Also you can go on line and figure out how much it will cost to ship world wide and what insurance costs. You can fill out the customs form at home or at the P.O. they will help you out. Just remember that the buyer pays for all the shipping costs and insurance. You will need a scale to weigh your packages so you can tell your buyer what the costs are. All of the charts for different countries or zip codes that you will need, you can get at the P.O.

Good communication with your buyer or seller goes a long way to having good experiences on E Bay. My bad experiences on E Bay are minimal. My feedback is 100 % good. Misunderstandings do happen and if you communicate they can be cleared up.

Standing Cheese (SC) brings up a good point in his comment on my post E Bay part 1 above, about the seller at times being at the mercy of the buyer. I have to agree with his comment. E Bay also takes a stance to let the buyer and seller work it out and they stay out of it. E Bay doesn't always respond to your problem and if they do you don't get much in the way of relief or help. E Bay good or bad, it is a great experience. I love it.