Almost all kind of your hobby stuff can be sold on Ebay. There are some limitations with some items. Mainly;
- You can not sell live animals including pet
- If you are planning to sell artwork, you may only sell reproductions (like posters, replica paintings, etc.), if it doesn’t violate laws, copyrights, or trademarks. For exact replica, you must state on your listing title that it is a replica.
- For food items you may obey food safety rules and informations.
How to start selling on Ebay;
1-Register an account : Ebay Account registration
2-You may start to sell by click “Sell” on any Ebay page or following the link Sell your item
3-Create your listing
4-Confirm your details and add an automated payment method for eBay fees.
Creating Your Listing;
1-Select your categories. You may enter your product name to search among possible alternative categories or may select from “borrows categories” . You may also add a second related categories to increase the visibility of your listing. Please use only related categories to obey Ebay rules.
2-Write a title for your product. The title must be understandable, informative and must include possible keywords for your potential customers. If you have some more information and keywords that can be helpful to your customers, you may add subtitle.
Ebay mainly search through title, because of that, try to use related keywords that can be used for Ebay search in your title. You can make empathy and can think yourself that “if you want to buy your selling product, how could you search it ?”. For example, do not use “very beautiful”, “cheap”, etc. in your title. Also, some words could have more chance to be buyer’s search list, for example “perfume” could have more search than “fragrance” .
While selecting keywords instead of common keywords try to select item specific ones in order to reach to your customer. For example instead of writing just “wood craft”, better write “wood craft flower unpainted” etc.
You may use google keyword planner for better options : https://adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
3-To sell your hobby items, you may select “Does not Apply “ for UPC
4-Please select condition as appropriate (new, used, etc.)
5-Add as much as possible photos . You have a maximum limit of 12 and as much as possible you must use them. Take your own photos from all possible details. Do not care too much about professional photos but mainly care for more informative photos for your customers. Give some different angles, important details, use plain background and let them to see details more clearly.
Never use other Ebay user’s photo or steal from internet. It will be a violation of Ebay rules to use them without a written permission of the owner of photo.
6-Fill item specifics. It will give more visibility on search results and will give more information for your customer.
7- Write description about your item. Keep it short, understandable and add all possible details for your customer. It is better to write the description, item by item for easy reading. You may search other similar item description and can use ideas, highlighted points, details, etc. But never copy any text from internet or from other Ebay user.
8-In selling details, you decide to list as fix price or auction style. In auction style, you may decide a starting price and let the buyers decide to final price. In fixed price option if someone accept your price and buy, your item listing will be finished. But in auction style, you may keep your listing open for bidding up to 10 days. At the end of listing who is offering maximum price will buy your item.
For auction type listing, people will notice mostly at the last hours of auction. Because of that try to finish your auction on people’s mostly searching time on Ebay. According to the statistics, it is on Sunday evening.
In order to decide your selling price, you may compare other similar Ebay item prices. Just use your keywords, search and sort by “Price + Shipping: lowest first”
To give a return option for your customers can give positive affect for your sales.
9-In Shipping Details, you will enter the cost of your packing, posting and etc. There are mainly two option as domestic and international. For international shipping you may add different price options for different locations.
10-When you fill all the necessary spaces, finally you may see your total listing cost. If everything is okay, you may press “List item” to start your listing.
11-When someone buy your item and send your sale price and shipping cost total amount to your account, you may ship the item.
12-Make a good pack for shipment. Especially for long distance and fragile items, you must consider possible falling, hitting or different kinds of damages. To demand tracking code from your post office and to share this with your customer will be helpful to both of you.
Additional Advices;
1-Seller feedback score is important for buyers. While building your positive scores, be patient. On the beginning, keep your profit low to have price advantages. Always care your customers, answer fast, response fast, ship fast, communicate respectfully, make good packing, sometime (could be nice) add some small free presents into that pack.
Also by starting as a buyer and collecting positive feedback from sellers could increase your feedback score.
2-Bidding on your own auction is forbidden, never try. Also, by opening a fake account and bidding yourself also not good idea for your Ebay account’s health.
3-Packing is important, especially for long distance, international shipments and for fragile goods. Be sure your items are secure and nicely packaged. Sellers like to add a personal business card or informative piece of paper to keep contact with the seller.
4-In order to find correct shipping cost, you may use web site of your local post office or delivery company. If you can have a kitchen scale, you may check your final pack weight, size and by entering the final destination, you may find exact shipping cost through their web site.
5-Calculate your selling cost on Ebay. Mainly there are two cost for Ebay; listing cost and after sales commissions.
For listing cost; while listing your items at the end you may see the total listing cost. You may use Ebay’s listing cost calculator https://www.fees.ebay.com/feeweb/feecalculator . If you do not have a store, you may have up to 50 free insertion fee listing possibility. Depending your store type, number of listings with free insertion fee can goes up to 100,000 .
After sales commission is 10% of your sales price plus shipping cost. Also, if you have an Ebay store, the final sale commission will be lower.
If you are using Paypal for payment, you must pay to Paypal 0.20 dollars + 3.4% of final value for each transactions.
6-If you are listing on auction style, to start from 0.99 dollars price could be a good tactic to have more visitors for your listing. On the beginning of auction, because of price, it will be attractive for buyers. After that because of number of biddings, your listing will be more noticeable.
If you afraid to sell with a low price, you may add a minimum price for your auction. So lower than minimum price, your item will not be sold.
7-While taking the photos of your items, always use daylight. Sometime with different lights, your item can be seen different color than original one.
8-Do not use all capital letters on your description. It seems like you are angry or shouting. Keep your description short, understandable and informative.
Good Luck !
