Table of Contents

• My Journey with eBay
• Introduction to eBay
• Who Should Sell on eBay?
• Step 1 – The Basics of Selling on eBay
• Step 2 – Setting Up Your Selling Account on eBay
• Step 3 – Product Research on eBay
• Step 4 – Sourcing Your Items for eBay
• Step 5 – Listing Your Items on eBay
• Step 6 – Order Fulfillment on eBay
• Step 7 – Scaling Your eBay Business
• Additional Tips
• Conclusion

My Journey with eBay

I have been an eBay member and seller since January 7, 2003. Over the last 19 years, I have found eBay to be a sales platform that has afforded me and my family the opportunity to pay off debt, go on some amazing vacations, and have a little extra to be able to invest or do other things that we want to do. It very much started as a side hustle for me; and still is, really. But now it is a 5 figure annual side hustle. As you can see my last year’s total sales reached over $50K! If $100 to $2,500 profit per month is something that would help you out, then keep reading.

Introduction to eBay

Founded a year after Amazon in 1995, eBay has continued to be a force to be reckoned with within the world of e-commerce.

Here are just a few stats from 2021 to help back that up:

1. As of the fourth quarter of 2021, eBay has 147 million active buyers worldwide
2. 78% of that traffic comes from the United States
3. 19% of consumers in the U.S. shopped on eBay in 2021
4. Approximately 17 million people sell on the platform worldwide. Compare that with approximately 10 million who sell on Amazon worldwide
5. 28% of Amazon sellers also currently sell on eBay

The platform began as an auction-based marketplace for used items and collectibles. It was perfect for those selling items to declutter their home or those with collection specific buying or selling needs. Now it is a great place to sell brand-new products as well.

eBay has a low barrier to entry that boasts some amazing options for sellers. Simply put, you can choose to list items as auctions or set prices (buy it now/good till cancelled), upload your own photos of your items, add detailed descriptions, and sell practically anything to just about anyone in the world.

Who Should Sell on eBay?

Anyone; and if you ask me, everyone! It is so easy to set up a seller account and begin selling. You can create an account, list a product, and sell it all in the same day!

The level of success that you experience on eBay is literally up to you. What may start out as a random junk selling adventure or a more legit side hustle, could very easily be scaled to the point of completely replacing and exceeding your 9-5 income.

Step 1 – The Basics of Selling on eBay

The process of utilizing the platform to sell items is similar to others: choose and acquire inventory, list your items, a customer purchases an item, and you fulfill the order by packaging it and shipping it to the customer.

At this point, it may be worthwhile for you to consider what type of seller you want to start out as. There is no right or wrong choice here, as there are great profits to be made with each type. Here are some of the seller types you can think about:

1. Repurpose or Recycle Re-Seller – This is the type of seller that may sell older things from around their home, or search thrift stores, garage sales, and estate sales to resell items to the public.
2. Collectibles Seller – From comic books to sports memorabilia and rare coins to stamps, the Collectibles Seller sells anything that has value and is considered collectible. Some of the items in this category might even surprise you.
3. Car Seller – Yes, you can sell automobiles on eBay! I wonder if this is what helped push others to doing the same recently.
4. Vintage and Antique Seller – This could also be considered collectible to some extent, but tends to include things like silverware, china, clocks, antique furnishings and art, older toys, records, VHS tapes, etc.
5. New Inventory Seller
   1. Private Label – An opportunity for those who have created their own label or brand like in clothing. They are going to source the base item, have a logo or design added to it, and sell it under their own brand name.
   2. From Wholesalers – buying other company products, often in bulk, and selling them for a profit.
   3. Retail Arbitrage – This is buying things at a discount at retail stores (clearance and markdown sections are especially frequented for this) and then selling them for a profit on the platform.
   4. Dropshipping – While I don’t recommend this, there is a version of it that is allowable on the platform:
      1. Drop shipping, where you fulfill orders directly from a wholesale supplier, is allowed on eBay. Remember that if you use drop shipping, you’re still responsible for the safe delivery of the item within the time frame stated in your listing and for the buyer’s overall satisfaction with their purchase.
      2. However, listing an item on eBay and then purchasing the item from another retailer or marketplace that ships directly to your customer is not allowed on eBay.
6. Random Item Seller – Literally think random items like pet rocks and pinecones.
7. Niche Supply Seller – This may include a seller of shipping supplies, protective equipment (like acid free pages for scrapbookers), or beads for jewelry makers, just to name a few.

Here are a few things to remember. First, this is not an exhaustive list. It is merely a jumping off point to start your entrepreneurial juices flowing. Second, there are profits to be had no matter what type of seller you decide to be. Third, the type of seller will help narrow down the niche you want to sell in. We will talk more about niches in Step 3, so don’t worry too much about that right now. Finally, the type of selling you want to do will also affect your sourcing options. Again, we will talk more about sourcing in Step 4. It is now time for us to take our next step towards success and profitability!

Step 2 – Setting Up Your Selling Account on eBay

Okay. You’re convinced that e-commerce is something you want to try and that eBay is your platform. It is now time to set up your account! The very first question that may come to mind is what type of account you should begin with? For simplicity’s sake, I am going to recommend that you start with the Individual Account. It now comes with 250 auction-style or Good Til Canceled (Buy It Now) listings per month. Here is why.

So many times people can be ready to put the cart before the horse. In other words, don’t try and jump to Step 7 and scale your business before you are ready. Start your journey with the Individual Account, learn the ropes, grow your skills, and once you have consistency with all aspect, you can upgrade to a larger store.

Here’s what you’ll do to start your Account:

1. Go to eBay.com and in the upper left hand corner will be a place that says Hi! Sign in or register. Click on the register hyperlink.
2. You will see a screen that invites you to create an account.
   1. Choose which account you would like to set up, either personal or business.
   2. Enter your first name, last name, email address, and select a password.
   3. I strongly encourage you read the User Agreement and User Privacy Notice before you go any further (I know many will not).
   4. Click on the button to Create Account
3. You should now land on the eBay homepage already signed into your new account.
   1. You will be given a user name, but you can change it by going to My eBay, selecting Account from the menu, then clicking on Personal Info.
4. Before you do any thing else add your bank information.
   1. Go in My eBay, select Selling from the drop down menu, then click on Account
   2. Find Payments and under that you will find Payment Opions, select this.
   3. Now add your bank account information so that your payments will get to you correctly.
5. All payments are processed via eBay’s managed payments system now. So they receive the money from the customer rather than using third party platforms like PayPal.

Now that that is all done, you are ready to take the next step!

Step 3 – Product Research on eBay

While you may already have an idea of what you want to sell on eBay, many people will not. Doing listings willy-nilly is a quick and sure way to create frustration for you and potentially cause you to want to quit before you’ve experienced the success that I am convinced you can have.

Therefore, even if you do think you know what you would like to sell, I would encourage you to look at an items profitability, demand, and competition before you begin listing.

1. Profitability – To determine profitability, take the total price of a sold item plus what you collected to ship it and subtract your costs for that sale
   1. Consider how much the item cost you to procure.
   2. Consider the cost of insertion fees (only applicable if you exceed your allotment for the type of account that you have).
   3. Consider the cost of final value fees that will be charged to you against the total cost of the sale
      1. Currently at 12.9% plus $.30 per order.
      2. This is taken from total of sales price plus shipping.
   4. For example:
      1. You sold an item for $20 that included free shipping, so total sale was $20
      2. The item cost you $6 to buy
      3. Ebay will charge you roughly $2.58 for the final value fee, plus $.30 for the transaction.
      4. Shipping will cost you the buyer $5.00.
      5. When all is said and done, you make a $6.12 profit on selling that item.
      6. You have to determine if that is profitable enough for you and then either:
         1. List it as is,
         2. Add shipping to the listing, thereby increasing profitability (many in the U.S. will be willing to cover shipping costs, especially if they have options to get it quicker),
         3. Or source the item to buy it cheaper, which will increase profitability.
2. Demand – based upon the basic sales principles of supply and demand, you want to know if there is a demand for your product prior to procuring and supplying it. We will do that by calculating the sell through rate utilizing data that is free to find on eBay. The basic formula is total number of Sold or Completed Items divided by the total number of Active Listings.
   1. To get the number of active listings:
      1. go to the search bar and enter in a specific title of an item you are looking for, in this example we are going to use pet rocks
      2. As of this writing, pet rocks have 13 active listings
   2. To get the number of sold or completed items:
      1. we are going to filter our search using the terms on the left of the search results wind that say ‘sold’ and ‘completed’.
      2. As of this writing, pet rocks has 19 results
   3. Dividing 13 by 19 gives us 1.4615 or 146% sell through rate.
   4. Currently, the demand is much greater than the supply on this item.
3. Competition – how many other people are selling the item(s) you are wanting to sell?
   1. Based upon our search of active listings above, we can see that there is very little competition with this item.
   2. If competition is higher, it doesn’t mean you should rule the item out.
   3. If the item has a high sales volume, it still may be worthy pursuing.
4. Research Tools – There are tools available, like Terapeak and others, that can help with this process as you scale your business, but we will address those in another post.
5. Product Ideas – If you are feeling stuck and uncertain of what items to sell, here is a list of ideas that may help you think more clearly about your future inventory:
   1. New Releases of Popular Items – If you can get your hands on a few of these, and are good at doing it regularly, whether they are game consoles or the latest prairie dress, you may have found your future inventory.
   2. New Trends – Like prairie dresses or stand alone individual slushy makers, acquire inventory related to the newest trends you may see on TikTok or other social media platforms.
   3. Seasonal Items Strategy – Maybe you have a great line on Christmas items, or 4th of July t-shirts that can be listed and sold leading up to the coming holiday. Or maybe you have the best ever calendar that can be listed and sold all throughout the 3rd and 4th quarters of this year and into the early part of the new year.
   4. Normal Everyday Items – You’d be surprised at what sells. From knick-knacks to dishes, everyday things around your house can sell.
   5. Vintage Items – we talked about this earlier.
   6. Used Clothing – Whether sourcing from thrifts stores or distributors, this is a huge market place. I would still encourage niching down into a specialty area like women’s, children’s, shoes, etc.
   7. Kids Toys and Electronics – Hopefully self explanatory.
6. Niches – The above process will allow you to niche down your ideas. A niche is just a fancy word for a general to specific category. The niche I sell in is Sports Memorabilia. The sub-niche that I am most known for and successful at is baseball cards. To sub-niche even further, Topps Baseball Cards are what I know and do best. That doesn’t mean that I don’t sell other memorabilia, it just means that my niche (focused category) is very specific so that I can market my descriptions to a specific audience intentionally. I strongly recommend that after examining the rest of the information in Step 3, you begin to narrow down your own focus and decide on a niche that you will be known for.

Step 4 – Sourcing Your Items on eBay

Because there are so many different models and niches to sell through on eBay, sourcing might look a little different than it does on other platforms. Here are just a few places that you can source inventory for your side hustle or business:

1. Directly from Wholesalers or Manufacturers in the U.S. or abroad
2. Retail stores in your community
3. Thrift stores in your community
4. Garage Sales
5. Estate Sales
6. Auction Houses, both online and in person
7. Craigslist
8. Periodicals like the Greensheet in Houston or your local newspaper
9. Facebook Market Place is another place where I have found entire collections to flip

This, again, is not an exhaustive list as there are literally hundreds of places to source inventory. Regardless of where you source your inventory, be sure and download the eBay app to your phone so that you can do some of your research on the fly!

Step 5 – Listing Your Items on eBay

This is going to look like a lot, but it is, in my experience, very intuitive and user friendly. These are in the order that you will see them if you are doing your listings on a desktop. There is a slightly different interface for the phone apps. I hope to get a video tutorial up on my YouTube channel and get it linked here in the near future. Anyway, here we go:

1. Title – You have 80 characters to be as specific as you can in the title.
   1. Getting started out, I wouldn’t worry about SEO here. If you are not familiar with Search Engine Optimization, that is okay. It will be discussed in other articles as many different side hustles and online entrepreneurial activities require that you hone your SEO skills. Others may argue with me, but having scaled to over $50K in sales, I have never worried about SEO for my eBay store. Now that may mean that my product never ranks on Google searches, but I have found that my items find their way to the top of the list at least once a month for buyers who sort their searches by ending soonest.
   2. If there are titles on packaging of new items, use the descriptive and title words that the manufacturer used on their packaging. Matel, Nike, Apple, etc. spent millions on marketing plans to get the right wording on their packages, so make use of their well spent money to market the items you are re-selling or selling new.
   3. If you are including free shipping and handling, add something like FREE S/H to your listing title.
   4. If the item is new and in the original packaging, add something like NIP (New In Package) to the listing title.
   5. If it is at all possible, include some reference to the condition of the item in the title (certified, graded, exc. cond., etc.).
   6. Watch out for that subtitle line and be sure to only use it on higher priced items as a subtitle will increase the listing fee by $2.00.
2. Categories – Again, eBay research is your friend here.
   1. If you are selling a particular item, and have researched successful recent sales, check the closed listing over the last 90 days to see how others have listed that item.
   2. Otherwise, it is pretty intuitive to walk through the process. Just keep clicking through until you get where you want to be. For example, I recently listed about 600 Hot Wheels cars that were new in their original packaging and 25-30 years old. The category path (where I made choices to niche it down) is as follows:
      1. Toys & Hobbies>Diecast & Toy Vehicles>Cars, Trucks, and Vans>Vintage Manufacturer
      2. For the cars I have had available, this has proven to be the best and most commonly used category structure to sell them.
   3. You can do a second category if you like, but additional fees may apply.
   4. In my experience, most people get on eBay and search for specific items or they go through and look at a sellers store or other items. This may be because my niche area is sports cards, but I have found that as long as eBay will accept the category I select, the category has had little impact on my sales. My customers log in and look for specific cards, sets, autographs, etc.
   5. If you have upgraded to a store, you will also be able to put in your store category for the item you are selling at no additional cost.
      1. Store categories can be anything you want that makes sense for your store.
      2. They do not have to match the categorization system that eBay uses.
3. SKU & UPC – These are most important and required for newer items that are new in package.
4. Condition – This condition is simply a toggle between new and used for most item categories. Select the one that is appropriate for your item.
5. Photos – Always, always, always use your own photographs.
   1. Take multiple shots on a plain contrasting (often white) background so that the item you are photographing really stands out.
   2. Never use stock photographs or someone else’s photographs (unless you have paid them to take pictures of your actual items).
   3. If there are any defects (like a small crease or ding in a corner of a new packaged item), take a special separate picture of that and describe it in detail in the Written Item Description.
6. Item Specifics – There are both required and recommended item specifics that you must or can include respectively. What falls into each type will be dependent upon the category you are listing in.
   1. Required items will have an asterisk next to them. These must be included or you won’t be able to finish and activate your listing (ie. you will get an error when you hit ‘list your item’ at the end of the process).
   2. Recommended items are up to you. In sports cards, I add in the manufacturer name and year manufactured recommended item specifics because I have found that it helps my sales as card collectors will search by those two specifics sometimes.
7. Written Item Description – Everyone has their own formula, but here is the one that I have found that works for me:
   1. You are bidding on…(then include an exact copy of the title)
   2. Written description of condition, noting any flaws or defects, then a statement of ‘don’t take my word for it. Check out the pictures and judge for yourself.
   3. Shipping costs and policy. For example, I have a single shipping charge statement for all items that don’t include free shipping. So, if a customer buys multiple items, they get charged the highest stated shipping cost and all other items ship for free. I have found that this has really increased my sales in my niche dramatically.
   4. Include a statement about how you handle international shipping orders.
   5. Make a statement about your return policy.
   6. Offer a call to action to check out other listing or, in my case, my store.
   7. **Most of these descriptive elements can be found in other places in the listing if they want to poke around and click on tabs and links, I have found it to be very helpful to put it all in one place here.
   8. ***If you select sell similar from one of your own listings, or save this listing as a template once done, you don’t have to rewrite this for every listing you do, which will save you a tremendous amount of time. That will allow you to get even more listings done more quickly and efficiently.
8. Format, Price, Quantity, and Best Offer – These are fill in boxes and don’t take but a few seconds to complete
   1. Under Format, select the toggle that you want, either auction or buy it now.
   2. Then select what Price you want to sell the item for.
      1. For auction listings, this is the minimum bid. Be sure you are going to be happy if you start the auction out with a low bid and nobody bids it up. For example, when I sell most cards in an auction I will start them at $.99 and let the market determine the price. But for certain specialty cards, like a 1952 Mickey Mantle Bowman Rookie card I sold last year, I had a much, much higher starting price.
      2. For buy it now listings, I err on the side of pricing the item at the high end of the market (highest price recent sales have shown on eBay) and then inviting customers to make me an offer.
   3. Under Quantity, select the number you have available if there are multiples.
   4. Finally, select if you want to accept Best Offer or not. If you choose to accept offers, you can even set the minimum offer you would take so that eBay automatically responds to offers on your behalf based on that criteria.
9. Payment Options – eBay now requires you used their managed payment system. However, you can select whether or not to require immediate payment on Buy it Now items.
10. Sales Tax – I would encourage you to go and read about this in the help section, however, I no longer have to worry about this. Being in Texas (a state that eBay has an agreement with), eBay collects sales tax on the sales that need it collected on and they also send in the payments to the tax assessor on my behalf.
11. Return Options – In order to qualify for some perks in Top Rated Seller Status, you have to offer returns. I was most nervous about this when I first started. I now offer, and have for years, a 30 day money back guarantee regardless of reason. I also pay for the return shipping. I have less than a dozen returns a year, with most year having less than 5. I have found that by having this policy, I have created a number of repeat buyers simply from the extraordinary customer service.
12. Shipping Details – You can do either flat shipping costs to domestic customers or calculated costs. I have always done flat fees because of the items I usually sell in my niche are predictable and relatively small. Therefore, I have consistent shipping costs within very close margins whether it is to Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, or California. For larger items I use USPS Priority Mail flat rate packaging wherever possible.
    1. I strongly encourage you to offer international shipping and to use the Global Shipping Program that eBay offers. 99 times out of 100, I have found that they beat any options I have available to me to ship directly around the world.
    2. Your domestic shipping fee will be charged and you will be required to ship your items to the shipping center in Kentucky.
    3. The customer will take care of all of the additional paperwork required, like customs forms, and will pay eBay a calculated shipping amount on top of what you have already charged to get the items from Kentucky to wherever they are going in the world.
    4. Having an accurate package description and weight here in the shipping section makes this process much more accurate and buyer friendly. If you mark you don’t know the package details in this area, it might cause complications down the line.
    5. This has allowed me to ship to foreign collectors and expats in dozens of different countries over the years that I have been selling on the platform.
13. Sell It Faster – This is your opportunity to promote your listings. If you select this toggle switch, you can select your ad rate and you only pay once an item sells.
    1. I have done $100’s of thousands of dollars in business in my 19 plus years and not once have I found it necessary to pay for ads on this platform. So for the time being, I will continue to not select this option.
    2. This may be niche dependent. My only warning is that if you choose to do ads through promoting your listings, be conscious of the added costs involved in selling your item.
14. Volume Pricing – This allows you to offer a discount to your customers that buy multiple items from you on the same invoice. You get to select the quantity and the percentage of discount from the provided toggle switches. This can work across multiple different items so long as each item that you want included in the volume pricing has this section set the exact same. So if you are selling shirts and pants and want to offer a 15% discount when 3 or more are bought, the listings for pants and shirts must both have that as their volume pricing structure.
15. Review Fees – This is a reference bar for you. If you have added any upgrades in your listing, this bar will show you the total amount of those upgrades plus your insertion fee cost as a total. If you have not done upgrades and are still within your monthly allotment for listings based upon your store or individual status, the amount should remain at zero.
16. List, Preview, and Save As Draft – These buttons allow you to do exactly what they say. The List button will make the listing active. Preview allows you to see what the listing will actually look like to your customers prior to making it active. Finally, the Save as Draft allows you to save your progress and return and finish the listing at a later time.

Step 6 – Order Fulfillment on eBay

The main difference for most sellers on eBay is that they hold their own inventory and are responsible for their own fulfillment. You will get notified (I highly recommend having notifications set to a way that you will see them pretty quickly) when a customer buys a product. Whether through the app, via email, or other methods, you can see what was purchased, pull the items from your inventory, package them, and prepare the shipping label. For shipping, I get my discounted labels from eBay so that I can print them at home and immediately attach them to my packages. If you want to see some of my favorite shipping supplies that I don’t get on the eBay platform, you can check that out HERE.

Once your packages are prepared, you can schedule pickups from the carriers that you use or you can take the packages in and drop them off. Whether it is UPS, USPS, or FedEx, I always get a drop off scan showing that they were dropped with the carrier (this has helped on more than one occasion over the past 19 plus years).

There are a variety of items that I have found to be helpful for a variety of shipping purposes. I will do a separate post with the links to the things that I have found most helpful from the tape, envelopes, bubble wrap, packing paper and boxes that I use to the ‘Fragile – Handle with Care’ and labels that have worked the best for me. I will get that post up and linked here ASAP.

Step 7 – Scaling Your eBay Business

Hopefully you started small with an individual account as was recommended in Step 2. Over time, however, you have the ability to upgrade your individual or business account to a store. For eBay store owners, they pay a fee and receive additional auction style and buy it now listings that they can use each month. While this can add up to significant savings on insertion fees, all stores still pay final value fees on all sales. Each tier of store fills a different seller need and has varying additional benefits. If you are ready to scale your business up, check out the subscription comparison on eBay.

Additional Tips

Here are a few additional tips regarding things that I’ve learned along the way:

1. Follow Reselling Groups – You can find these on YouTube, Facebook, Discord, and Patreon among other places. By being a part of one of these reselling groups you are able to learn from the wisdom of others and stay up to date on the latest trends and changes. The best part is that most of these groups are free to join (most because platforms like Patreon are paid membership groups).
2. Develop a Niche – It doesn’t seem to matter what platform you are on these days; being in a niche is always a top recommendation of mine. We simply cannot be all things to all people. Start with the things you know and love, as they will be things that you won’t give up on too easily and are areas where you will already have some expertise. For example, my niche is sports memorabilia. That area does include jerseys and other sports related clothing, however, I do not sell other clothing items because I know nothing about selling high end nor everyday clothing.
3. Improve and Grow Your Account Feedback – As with any sales oriented endeavor, customer reviews and feedback are crucial to success. While some say that this is not as important as it once was, if you are like me, I am not going to buy from anyone with a poor track record. While I currently have a 100% positive feedback score with rave reviews, there have been seasons where my feedback has dropped down to the 98% range. That is still an acceptable level for some categories, but really strive for excellence here.
   1. Once you have handled an issue that has come up with someone that left bad feedback for you, you can now request them to change it.
   2. Even if they change it to neutral rather than the negative that it was, you will find that a neutral level will have no detrimental impact on your feedback score.
4. Always Face Issues Head On – Do returns, communicate clearly and frequently, respond as immediately as you can, and you will likely avoid negative feedback. This is simply good customer service and it will be expected from the people that are buying your products.
   1. In situations that you believe your are being defrauded or scammed, don’t hesitate to get eBay seller support involved. This has only happened to me twice in more than 19 years, and the seller support was a tremendous help to me.
5. Top Seller Status – If you follow all of the above advice and can meet some seller standards through the platform, you can qualify for Top Seller Status that will entitle you, among other things, to a 10% discount on your final value fees!

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve been able to see that eBay’s low barrier to entry makes the platform a perfect place to start whether you are decluttering your home, needing a side hustle, or going full time to replace your 9 to 5.

If you found this guide helpful, let me know in the comments below. Additionally, let me know what other side-hustles or entrepreneurial opportunities you’d like to see a guide like this for.

I wish you well on your e-commerce journey with eBay!