It is not easy to start selling things online. There are a lot to be consider or otherwise you will lose money instead of gaining it. Normally, it is better to start selling for local market before going for international.I am giving out some information purely base on my experience. It might be helpful for those who wanted to sell their stuff online.
1. Know what to sell. Basically you can sell almost anything you can think of. Just look around you and you will find that 90% that you actually have is saleable. It just the matter of making money or not. I started with selling my unwanted stuff like CD or DVD. It is easier to ship as the size it almost identical as normal post.
2. Calculate your shipping cost. The next thing you want to know is how much your shipping rate going to cost you. The rates are all depends on weight and location. The heavy it is the more expensive it will become. I will normally average out the shipping cost and set a fixed price for it. That way I would gain some additional profit from it. If the cost are more, I will simply cover it with the profit gain.
3. Fees. eBay is imposing fees for all the items you are selling. Be sure to calculate it correctly. For me, I just make it easy, my profit is normally 15% from the actual value of the item. On top of that I will just add up the predicted fees from eBay. I will still gain profit even when I have to minus for the fees.
4. Communication with buyer. This is the utterly most important thing when selling an item. You must communicate and tend to you buyer immediately. Just think it as you own a shop and when your customer asked you something, you answer to them directly. That way, your buyer will like you and probably buy your stuff.
5. Receiving payment. eBay at the moment only accepting PayPal as their mode of payment transaction (for non-US citizen). So do be mindful as PayPal do charge a small fee for all transactions. You have to add this fee to your sale price or you might lose some of the profit. To cash out your money from your PayPal account however need you a valid Visa credit card. I am unsure but I heard some of the Visa debit card is also acceptable.
Useful link on calculating profit/loss with eBay and PayPal fees added HERE.
Good luck with your online trading.
My ebay LINK.
1 comment:
As far as BUYING on ebay goes,
1. You can possibly use a seller's inability to spell to your advantage to find some good deals. Sites like ebuyersedge.com (typojoe.com, etc) will search ebay for common misspellings of keywords you enter.
Most interested buyers will never see these misspelled listings, reducing the competition and most likely ending price.
Ebuyersedge also gives you the option of saving your favorite searches, then sending you an email when an item is listed matching one your saved searches, giving you a jump on other potential buyers.
This works best with 'Buy It Now's, but is also effective with auctions.
2. Whenever you send a question to a seller, use the "Ask a question" link that is on a page of another item they're selling that you're not interested in.
Maybe send the seller an offer to end the auction early. All they can do is say no.
3. If you bid on an ebay auction, use a sniping service (hidbid.com, auctionsniper.com, etc.) to avoid bidding wars, and hopefully save some money by not drawing early attention, and not giving manual 'nibbling' snipers a chance to react.
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