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Monday, June 29, 2015

Detailed Steps to Setup An Ebay Business.

Today we are going to take a deeper look into setting up an EBay business.

We talked about in the previous post about opening an EBay business and the basics of what it took to opening this type of business. Now we will dive in a little deeper as too setting up an EBay account and running the business. I listed several steps to help guide you along the process, hopefully they
will answer some of your questions.

Step 1. The very first thing you will need to do is open and EBay account and a PayPal account. You will need to do this in order to sell on EBay and to collect the funds that you are owed for the items that you have sold. Paypal  is truly an awesome site  that is easy to use and they accept all major credit cards and will do international processing as well.

Step 2. Since you have just opened your first EBay account you will want to build up some positive feedback. I would recommend purchasing a few small inexpensive items to build up positive credibility and a positive feedback score. Positive feedback will set your buyers minds at ease and it will show people that you are a trustworthy person and that you have good integrity.

Step 3. When it comes to selling items you will find a lot of opinions on the web both positive and negative. Try to not look at the negative opinions because there is no way to know why their EBay business did not work for them. Focus on the positive comments and learn from these power sellers.

In order to learn how to sell items on EBay I would recommend selling some items that you may have laying around the house at first so you can experiment with wording and pictures and if you make a mistake it won’t cost you an arm and leg. Plus this will help you de-clutter your home, garage and shed and put a few extra dollars in your pocket.

If you are selling items like clothing, jewelry, or anything that has a brand name, make sure that you put the brand name in the title and description. Most people will be searching brand names in their search criteria on EBay and if you do not have the name of the brand in the title or description your item will not show up on their search list.

When it comes to condition of items, be 100% accurate and up front in the description of the item. If there is a flaw or scratch in the item make sure you mention it, I go as far as to take a picture of the flaw so people will know about it and cannot come back after me for not mentioning the scratch. People love it when you are honest and don’t try to sell something as mint condition when in reality it has a flaw. This also go’s in helping to build your credibility and good feedback on EBay.

Step 4. Take good pictures with a simple digital camera, you do not need anything fancy or expensive save your money. I use a point and shoot automatic camera, I do not use any kind of fancy high dollar camera. I do spend some extra time staging the item so it has good clarity, and there are no other items in the picture that would confuse the buyer.

With jewelry I try to use a black background that is nice looking. I may take a cardboard box and put it on top of a table and cover it with a clean black sheet. I smooth out the wrinkles, and place the item on top of the covered box. I take several pictures from the front, top, and sides. I then download the pictures into my computer and use a simple free picture editing program in the computer to crop the photo and clean up any distortion to the picture. 

I have four or five different backgrounds that I use, it just depends what I am selling and the color of the items. Staging to me is a very important along with writing a good description, spending time with the staging will make your item look more professional than your competitors.

Step 5. Pricing an item on EBay can be a little tricky. Do some research on EBay or Amazon Auction for the same item that you are selling? You do not want to over price your item and it does not sell, this is a waste of time and listing fee’s. Find what everyone else is selling the item for, as you will see some people take one or two pics of the item and write a brief description of the item in hope that it sells. If you want a few more dollars for your item, put on multiple pictures and write a detailed description of your item. You may find that you will get a few more dollars for your item than your competition since you put more effort into your listing.

Sometimes I will hold off on listing an item for 3 to 6 months in order for the market to turn around and the price to come back up. Once in a great while I will put something on a shelf for a year because the same exact item is selling to cheap and I have more invested in the item than what it is selling for. A little patients does pay off.


Step 6. Writing a description and listing your items to sell is at the top of the list of priority of importance. You do not want to take a short cut on this.
  • a.       Brand Names
  • b.      Item Name
  • c.       Model Numbers
  • d.      Sizes
  • e.      Color
  • f.        Make of the material
  • g.       Circa
  • h.      Measurements

You Must!  Give an extreme detailed description of the item. Remember that you want your item to sell and not lose the customer to the competition. There is a lot of competition on EBay so you want to make sure that you stand out above the rest of them.

EBay selling manager is a great tool to use. They offer different styles and templates to help you sell items. A listing template contains everything you need to design your listing page. There is other listing template software on the internet that you can use to dress up your product listing page.

Step 7.  Answering Customer Question. Buyers will have all sort of questions for you. It is imperative that you answer these questions as soon as possible. Customers would not be asking questions about your product if they were not interested in purchasing the item. Several of my customers ask questions about each item they purchase and will not make a bid until their question is answered. Customers can be fickle so do not let a customer slip away because you forgot to respond to their question.

Step 8. Shipping and handling. There are many ways to ship your items to the purchaser. I find that USPS has worked out the best for me. You still can receive free shipping supplies from the USPS if you order them correctly. Do some research online with the postal website to find these free items for shipping.

You will find that you get positive feedback from customers when you ship quickly and you use good packaging. Do not go cheap when it comes to packing the item to be shipped. I still remember receiving a 20” computer monitor from a seller on EBay that came in a box with no protection put around the monitor. There was no bubble wrap or peanuts in the box to protect it. I was very upset and I never bought another item from this customer, I also did give him negative feedback.

Customers want their items fast and in good condition, so take that extra few minuets to package the item extremely good, it pays off in positive feedback from your customers.


These steps should help you in setting up your EBay business. You will find a lot of positive and negative comments on having an EBay business on the internet. But like any business it takes work and commitment in order to make it successful. It is not one of those businesses that will make you get  rich overnight, but it can make you some serious money part time and could eventually turn into a full  time business if you devote the time and energy to make it one.

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