Welcome to my guide for how to sell on Ebay step by step.

In this post I will outline the exact process that I go through every time I sell anything on eBay.

For the purposes of this exercise, we will assume that you are going to sell a mobile phone because everyone has one and lots of them get bought sold on eBay.

Before you start listing on eBay

There are some things to do before you create a Listing for your item on eBay and I will go through those step-by-step before getting into the nitty-gritty of the eBay listing itself.

Before you list something on eBay, you need to:

1. Check how big / heavy it is
2. Estimate how much it is worth
3. Check its’ condition
4. Take photos of it

How Big or Heavy is it?

In our case, we are selling a Phone, so it should be quite compact and light, even with the original box and accessories.

The reason I put this first is that sometimes you decide to sell something and you don’t realise until after the buyer has paid that:

• You don’t have a big enough box for it
• It is twice as heavy as you thought (more expensive to post)
• Needs extra padding which you don’t have

I have been caught out by postage a few times; here in the UK the postage for a parcel with a popular courier (MyHermes) is less than £3 for up to 2kg, but anything over 2kg is nearly double the price!

Estimate the Value of the Item

You will need a rough idea of the value of the item for pricing, but also for postage insurance.

I have written a separate post about how to value your items, you can read it here.

As a general rule, I would normally add extra tracking and a signature on to the delivery on any item worth more than £20. I sometimes do it for anything above £10 if I think it is an item which is easier to steal or more attractive to thieves, such as silver coins.

In our case, we will assume that we are selling a 2 year old iPhone which we will assume is worth around £200. This means we will need tracked shipping and a signature at the other end.

If you are selling electronics or phones, it is worth finding out the exact model or serial number because it will help you a great deal later on.

What Condition is it in?

Condition can make a huge difference to the value of an item, so you need to check if it works and what damage it has, if any.

You can sell items in just about any condition, but you have to tell the buyer about it in the listing, so you need to know if it works properly or has cosmetic issues before you list it.

It may also worth giving it a clean before you take any pictures of it.

For phones and other computer devices you should always remember to empty all of the drives and do a factory reset, if possible.

Take Photos of it

Good photos can make or break your eBay listing.

Before someone buys your item they have to click on it. People are less likely to click on it if the fist photo looks bad and less likely to buy if they can’t see the item from all angles.

The more valuable the item is, the more photos the buyer will want to see, to give them confidence in what they are buying. eBay gives you space for up to 12 photos in a standard listing.

Some tips for taking photos:

• Take more photos than you need, you can choose the best ones later
• Try to take photos of every side, top & bottom etc
• Good lighting is more important than a good camera

That last point is worth dwelling on.

If you are thinking of doing a lot of selling on eBay, you would be better off spending £30 on lights than £300 on a DSLR camera.

Of the pictures below, the top one was taken with a DSLR witha flash in bad light, the bottom picture was taken inside a light box with my mobile phone.

Most mobile phones have default settings which are more than enough to take great pictures, but even good lighting will make a DSLR take terrible picutres.

The bottom picture of the montage was taken in a light box, which has made the single biggest difference to my photographs of any investment I have made, you can see the spec on it here on my Kit page.

Unless you take a lot of photos of products or are planning on starting an eBay business, you don’t need to buy any special equipment, just try experiment with taking pictures, preferably in natural light or with extra lamps if you have them.

Once you’ve taken the photos, you are ready to start the listing on eBay.

Listing on eBay

In order to list an item for sale, you need to have an eBay account and a PayPal account. If you don’t have either, sign up for an eBay account first and it will prompt you to get a PayPal account.

Step 1: Hit ‘Sell’

Assuming you have both of these set up, the next step is to go to eBay and click ‘Sell’ at the top of the screen.

Step 2: ‘Create Listing’

You should now be in the Seller Hub, which will show you a big button which says ‘Create listing’. Hit that now.

If you are given a choice, pick ‘single listing’.

Step 3: Tell eBay what you’re selling

eBay will now prompt you to tell them what you are selling. Start typing in the name or a description of your item. In our case, I am going to pretend it is an iPhone 8.

This is quite a handy feature on eBay because if eBay understands what you are selling it will populate a lot of the information for you. It will also try to assign a suitable category to sell it in.

As we are selling a mobile phone, there are lots of technical specs and numbers which go with it, so it is good that eBay will do all that for you as it will also help people to find it in search later on.

You can either click on a suggested category or just click ‘get started’.

Step 4: Pick an item or go ‘Custom’

Once you have selected a category on the first page (or not) you may be asked if you want to chose an exact match for your product.

If your item doesn’t have any matches or is unsuitable, you can scroll down to the bottom of that eBay page and skip this step.

Using the phone example, this is an excellent idea because it populates our listing with all of the technical specifications we could possibly need. This worth doing because it:

• Increases the trust in your listing with potential buyers
• Will help your listing be found when people search
• Reduces the chance of misunderstandings between buyer and seller

It is worth stressing that you do need to find out exactly what type of item you have if you are going to use this feature.

For example, if you select ‘iPhone 8 128GB’ and it is only a 64GB phone, you will end up with a dispute on your hands.

Once you have selected a product (or skipped it) you will go through to the listing proper.

Step 5: Title

The title is very important because it is the main factor in getting found by search within eBay.

It is doubly important because once your item appears in a search, the only things visible to potential buyers is the title and the main photo.

In the title you should try to include:

• Name
• Some details
• Related search terms
• Selling point

You should try NOT to include:

• ALL CAPS Because it is Harder to Read and Looks Shouty
• Punctuation – it’s not great for searches apparently
• Spelling mistakes
• Phrases like “Not Gold” or “Like Lego” as eBay doesn’t like these

Using the phone example, I would use the following title:

“iPhone 8 Plus 64GB Space Grey Unlocked Excellent Condition Apple”

I put the name first because that it what people will type in when they search.

Phones are quite a specific example, but the chances are the buyer might have already done some homework and decided that they want a 64GB in Grey.

Having an unlocked phone will matter to a lot of people as some networks are notoriously difficult to get unlocked from, so whilst people might not search for it, in this case it makes the phone look a lot more attractive.

Assuming my phone is in good condition, I am going to put that in the title too because it might just make a potential buyer click on my listing instead of someone else’s.

The next couple of boxes are “Subtitle” and “Custom SKU” which can both be ignored.

Subtitles are poor value in my experience and the Custom SKU is for serious sellers with lots of items for sale.

Step 6: Condition

The condition drop-down box will vary, depending on which category you are listing. The options you can see above are for a phone, but if you are selling clothing you will have a choice of:

• New with tags
• New without tags
• New with defects
• Used

Unless you are selling a brand new item, you will be expected to describe the condition the item is in.

Be honest!

If your item has scratches, say so; if it doesn’t work, say so. Items arriving in a worse condition than expected are likely to result in people returning the item or asking for a refund.

You might get slightly less for your item than you would for a perfect one, but dealing with returns, refunds and disgruntled buyers will cost you time, money and stress.

If the buyer doesn’t read the listing and is disappointed, that is their problem (usually), but if you don’t mention something and the buyer is unhappy, you will be expected to offer a partial refund or accept a return.

Step 7: Photos

Taking the photos was covered earlier near the start of this post, but there are some things you will need to do in eBay to get the most out of your photos:

• Put the best picture in the ‘Main Photo’ slot
• Rotate the pictures if they are the wrong way up
• Crop the pictures if they have a lot of background
• Try enhancing them with the magic wand to see if it helps

Here is a before and after on a pair of shoes I was planning to sell:

My shoes don’t necessarily look ‘better’ now I’ve used the eBay magic wand feature, but you can see more detail on them and they also take up more of the space in each picture because I’ve cropped them.

These were the only pictures on my machine at the time, but you can see how much the pictures change by cropping and ‘wanding’ them. It is rare that a picture looks worse for doing a bit of cropping and enhancing.

The photo and the title are all you have to get potential buyers to stop scrolling and look at your item, so the photo in the ‘Main Photo’ slot needs to be the best one.

Good photos will get you more views and more sales.

If you get a lot of detail in your photos it can also help you avoid disputes, because if you show a defect in the photos, no-one can say that they didn’t know about it.

Step 8: Details

The details area looks different for every type of item, but if you managed to find a matching product in the ‘Tell us what you’re selling” section, many of the details will already be populated.

If you are selling something like a phone, it is good to get these details correct because if you overstate the spec of your item you will have an unhappy buyer.

For that reason, it is better to leave boxes blank in this area than fill them in if you don’t know the answers.

Step 9: Description

The description box is your chance to sell your item and close the deal with your prospective buyer.

It’s also the place to tell them everything they need to know about the item.

If you put as much information in the description as possible, it will help to to resolve disputes when they occur and reduce the likelihood of them happening at all.

Your description should contain the following if they are relevant:

• The name of the item (or just the title copied and pasted)
• Size / Dimensions / specification
• Condition (copy & paste the one you wrote earlier here)
• Age
• Reason for selling (e.g. “got an upgrade but this still works fine”)
• Postage (what method you will use)
• International Postage (will you post it abroad?)
• Returns (do you accept them)

Here is what I would put if I was selling a phone:

For the postage, I have opted for special delivery which is around £6-£7 for something the size of a phone. If you are sending an item worth £200 it is worth paying a bit extra to have it insured properly.

On this occasion I have said ‘no international bidders’ which is advisable if you are selling scam-magnet items like phones.

If I was selling an antique item or an old coin worth £200 I would probably allow international bidders because they just don’t attract scammers in the same way.

I will go into more detail about postage further down the page.

Step 10: Format

Next you have to choose the format; Auction or Buy It Now (Fixed Price).

I have written a separate post about this topic, which you can read here.

For most items, you will get a higher price if you use Buy it Now, but you will have to wait longer to make a sale.

If I am selling something that I don’t really care about and I just want ‘some’ money for it, I will use an auction and set the starting price to 99p. Doing it this way, I know that at in a week’s time I will probably have sold it and I will have ‘some’ money for it.

With something like an iPhone, you could list it with a fixed price format and probably get a sale in hours, depending on how you priced it.

For more niche items like antiques, you could be waiting months for a sale with a fixed price listing, but equally you might only get 99p if you list it as an auction.

Step 11: Duration & Start Time

For auctions, you can set the duration to 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days.

Fixed price listings used to have more options, but now you can only have ‘Good ’til cancelled’ which renew once per month until the item sells.

Auctions with any other duration than 7 days are likely to incur a small listing fee; as a personal seller it is £0.35 extra to change the auction duration.

With something like an iPhone or gold bullion, you could set the starting price to 99p, use a 1 day auction and still get a good price for your item. For most items, I wouldn’t recommend this approach.

Scheduling the start time is an excellent feature for auctions (usually costs 15p) because it allows you to time the end of the auction to coincide with busy periods on eBay.

A 7 day auction will end exactly 7 days after it starts, so if you start it at 10am it will finish at 10am.

I try to make all of my auctions finish between 6pm and 9pm on a Sunday.

If I have lots of things to sell I will spread them out over the week but always with 6pm to 9pm start / end time.

Step 12: Price

Auctions

Auction pricing is slightly different to fixed price / Buy it Now pricing. Here are your options:

If you use a starting price of 99p and a duration of 7 days for your auction, you will not pay any listing fees.

If you have a figure in mind and don’t want to go any lower, I would suggest using a higher start price instead of a reserve price, as the fees for a reserve price are quite high and you still have to pay them even if you don’t make a sale.

You can also set a Buy It Now price to give people the option of buying quicker, but this will disappear as soon as someone bids for the item.

If you put £300 in the ‘Buy it Now’ box and 99p in the ‘Starting Price’ box, you could end up selling your item for 99p!

I have never used the ‘Reserve Price’ option and I would encourage you not to either.

If you have an item which is valuable and you can’t bear to let it go for less than X, simply use a fixed price listing and you should get offers or a sale soon enough.

Fixed Price

With fixed price listings you have less options but the ‘Best Offer’ feature is more important.

eBay will also suggest a price to you, I find this hit and miss because it is often a bit lower than I am aiming.

If I am selling something on a fixed price listing it is because I know it has value and I am willing to wait a bit for the right price. The eBay suggested price might well make you a sale faster, but if you want a quick sale, auctions are better, in my opinion.

I would usually aim a bit higher than the average and tick the ‘Best Offer’ box. I make a lot of sales through offers and if an offer is too low you can always turn it down.

For the iPhone 8 Plus in our example, a ‘sold listings’ search on eBay tells me that the going rate for these is £250 to £350 depending on the condition.

The phones which sell for £350 tend to be refurbished models which are ‘as new’ and come with a warranty, so I am going to use a fixed price of £310 and accept offers, as my phone doesn’t come with any kind of warranty but it has almost no scratches.

If someone offers me £290 I will probably take it.

Step 13: Returns

Business sellers have to offer 14 day returns in the UK, as a minimum.

Private sellers don’t have to offer returns and I will usually un-check this box if I am having a clear-out of junk which I don’t want any more.

Clothing and footwear have a much higher chance of being returned, so I would state ‘No Returns’ quite clearly in the description too when you list these.

Note that buyers can still return items even if they are listed as ‘No Returns’ if they are ‘not as described’. If a buyer opens a case against you using this reason, eBay will nearly always side with the buyer if they have to resolve a dispute.

This is why it is important to be as accurate as possible in your description and show any known issues in your photos.

Step 14: Delivery

This is almost the last thing on the list but it is the thing you need to think about first, because it can cost you a lot of money if you get it wrong.

As a general rule, I will only charge for delivery if I am doing an auction starting at 99p.

If I am doing a fixed price listing I will just add the postage into my costs and adjust the price accordingly.

Knowing how much it will cost you in advance is the key, which is why you need to have a good idea of how much it weighs and what size of box it will be in.

Domestic Postage

The delivery options will vary depending where in the world you live, but here in the UK you can either pick Royal Mail or a courier like MyHermes or UPS.

To post something like an iPhone by Royal Mail you need to go to the Post Office, queue up and talk to a human and use Special Delivery which will cost £6-£7.

For the pair of shoes I used as an example earlier, I would use a courier like MyHermes and it would cost me £2.79, provided the package weighed less than 2kg.

Parcels weighing more than 2kg cost nearly double that!

Most couriers and services will judge your item by both size and weight, so if you are sending something long and thin or big but light, it could cost you more than you are expecting.

International Postage

The price of posting things internationally is relatively high, so you should definitely work out your costs before you check this box.

I would strongly suggest you go with tracked / signed for postage when sending things abroad, because it:

• Deters theft from within the postage system
• Prevents the buyer claiming it ‘never arrived’
• Will help you locate it if it gets held up for tax reasons

If you become a business seller, you can use the eBay Global Shipping Programme which lets you post your item locally to a warehouse run by eBay. The international side of things is handled by eBay and you don’t have to worry about it.

To give you an example; if I sell a coin for £25 to a UK buyer I will spend £2.20 on postage to get a signature on arrival, but I will need to spend £12 to get a signature and tracking to the USA or Australia.

That’s it for my step by step guide to selling on eBay, if you want more tips check out my eBay posts here.

If you want to start an eBay business, you should check out my eBay business ideas here.

The post How to Sell on eBay Step by Step appeared first on Widget Flogger.