What:Â eBay is a site where you can sell anything from clothing to crafts, paying a percentage of the sales price to the site
Expected pay: NA
Husl$core: $$$$$
Commissions & Fees: 10% of sales price, up to $750. Up to 50 listings per month are free. (Those who list more than 50 items for sale each month either pay an additional listing fee or can buy a monthly or annual subscription.)
Where: Nationwide (worldwide)
Requirements: Be 18 or older
Review:
eBay is one of the oldest and largest sites to sell anything from camping equipment to cosmetics. All that experience has allowed eBay to work out many of the kinks in the sales process, including “buyer extortion.”
To clarify, one of the biggest challenges of selling online are dishonest buyers. They get your goods and then claim that they either didn’t show up, were defective or poor quality in a bid to get a refund or a discount.
If the buyer is sincere, he or she would be willing to return the product and would be covered by eBay’s satisfaction guarantee. But dishonest buyers don’t want to return the perfectly good product; they want to use bad reviews as a way of extorting concessions, ranging from discounts to free goods, from sellers.
Blocking bad buyers
Most sites do little about this. eBay is the exception. The company actually has a written “buyer extortion” policy that bans buyers from using feedback or seller ratings in an attempt to force a seller into providing goods or services that weren’t included in the original item’s description. If a buyer threatens you, you report the problem to customer support.
Sellers maintain that eBay investigates and supports its sellers. You, as a seller, also have the ability to block bad buyers or those not willing to pay on your terms. Add this nice feature to eBay’s 160 million shoppers and the fact that the site also gets you discounts on shipping, and you can see why we give eBay our top Husl$core.
Another great site to consider when you want to sell any number of wide array of products, from used books and videos to jewelry and clothing is Amazon. It gets heavy traffic, like eBay, and has a variable commission schedule that is sometimes advantageous.
Free sites, such as Craig’s List and LetGo are also a good option, but primarily cater to local buyers. So these are not the best sites to use when you’re willing to ship to appeal to a wider audience.
What their users say:Â (From SiteJabber)
“Except for Amazon, Ebay is still better than the others that have popped up. I read the reviews for Posh, I tried Swap, and some other sites to sell on. Just getting up and running is too complicated. They want your contacts information; they want this and that. I do well – not fantastic – on Ebay and though it’s going through some dramatic changes, I appreciate that it’s around for 3P like me.”
“I’ve been selling on eBay for some years and had my first experience of someone who bought an item but didn’t pay for it, so I wasn’t able to relist it. I called eBay and they sorted it out for me in a few minutes, I was very impressed, thank you.”
If you decide to sell on eBay make sure you add as much description as possible, answer questions and document what you sent in mail. That way when a dishonest buyer claims you sent a defective item you have proof you didn’t.Â
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[…] such as renting out a spare room through Airbnb or selling products on websites such as Etsy and eBay. When you include people who have engaged in these and similar activities in the past year, the gig […]
Seldom use ebay to sell items, but did this time. The selling part was fine, even up to the point of the sale. However, ebay charged me $18 for shipment for USPS ground in in fact their shipment label said 3 day priority which cost an additional $5. So far I have not received payment for the item. I suppose ebay is waiting for me to send the item before authorizing the remainder of the purchase price to my credit card. This part of the experience is not what I had expected. May not use ebay again.
My experience when I first started selling on eBay in 2013 is very, very different and less desirable. I mean I did pretty good selling. There were times when I would sell 100 items over a week-end but that is not the case today. Now I only sell an average of 1 item per day. Huge difference. I use to be able to list 1,000 or more items a month as free listings. Now they have me down to 200 free listings per month. Two years ago I was averaging 3 sales per day. A lot less than the 100 over a weekend but now I go days without any sales. The latest thing that they did is that now in order to reduce the price only on certain listings they have now started to charge 35 cents per listing for that change. I am not very happy about that at all because I reduce my prices on a regular basis. Not sure what I will do. Amazon? Garage sale? Open up a physical store because I have tons of new with tag items or?? Just trying to make up my mind. eBay seems like kind of a waste of time now. What are you doing? Are you happy?
As an Ebay seller with multiple ebay stores for over a decade I have been through the ups and down with them. In the last year it has declined so much while Amazon has excelled.
I feel the new CEO Jamie Iannone has to take some or most responsibility for this. It seems like ebay’s plan now with these CEO’s much like the last one is they come in and make a lot of changes and half way make them work while removing systems that have worked well for years, They launch things like the current ” Shipping Policies ” that certainly seem to be in less than a beta state and it is for the sellers to figure out how to deal with it while losing valuable time along with the extremely broken ” Money Back Guarantee ” and many other policies and changes to the website that NO ONE wants to take ANY responsibility for .They get in there and make or allow lots of half baked ideas and changes . Screw up and then take the 25 million dollar parachute clause .
What eBay really needs is some REAL competition . I have made a living with eBay for the last 10 years but even I am getting ready to give up on what was once an amazing site for buyers and sellers.
I’ve been an Ebay seller for over 20 years, and today I closed my account. The reason? Horrible communication – a buyer recently requested a refund on an iPhone 12 Pro Max I sold them, Ebay made it a strong suggestion that I refund the buyers money. Which I did. They even forced me to buy a return shipping label, as part of the return process. But the buyer never returned the iPhone, and when I contacted Ebay, I was told that I had to work that out with the Buyer myself. Ebay took the money out of my account, sent the buyer a pre-paid, by me, return shipping label, but they weren’t interested in helping when said buyer didn’t hold up their end of the agreement. That’s not a place to be a seller. I recommend any of the many other platforms you could use – where you won’t be charged huge fees to be ignored.