Originally Posted by Souly /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Ebay gives you 50 listings free each month. They charge 9% of each sale (final value fee). Its cheaper than it used to be. Buy it nows - the percentage varies. They charge $.50 for basic buy it now listings. They send you a invoice each month, mine gets deducted automatically.
You can sell lots of things on ebay. I just sold off my sons used angry birds for $175. He had quite a collection but they are used! You can't sell used makeup though.
Thanks Souly for the information. Let me add some details:
1. SELLING LIMIT: For new sellers, the monthly listing limit is 10. You have to sell for 3 months before updating to 50. Actually I didn't get updated after 3 months. I called ebay and they updated it manually.
After that, there's still limits on your selling- the "category " limit, which means you can't list too many items under certain category during certain time. Usually it's 10 items for 30 days. I'm sure most of your item will under "make up" category so this would be a problem for you. I had this limit for 4 months and just called ebay yesterday about this issue. They told me since I have good credit it will be removed next month. I also asked them under which category is there a limit. They told me it's decided by the system and they can't tell... I think it's true because some times I meet limit in category A and sometimes in B.
2.FEE: there are two types of listing: bid and buy it now and two types of fees for each listing type: insertion and final value. For bid type, insertion fee is usually free unless you list more than 50 items or if you add features to your listing (like more pictures, bold title... ebay labels price with each feature so don't worry about hidden fees). For buy it now type, insertion fee is usually 0.5 per item.
Finally value fee is about the same (I'm not sure) for both listing types. It's about 10% of the item's (price+ shipping).
If your item are not sold, ebay won't charge final value fee.
3.STRATEGIES: It's exciting to see that buyers bid crazily at your item and the final price actually exceeds the original price at which you bought it- but that RARELY happens unless your item is really rare. So don't expect too much on ebay. As a part time second hand seller I'm just selling old items to avoid wasting them and make room for other things.
If you are on a moving and can't wait to clear out your stuff, choose bid type (usually 7 days duration) and set a low start price to attract eyes. Don't be afraid that the final price would be super low- usually it goes up unless the item is really worthless. According to my experience, the average final price is about half of the original price (that really depends on what you sell... hot items sell at higher price of course. My items are not so popular after all).
If you have enough patience and don't want to take risk (your item may be sold at super low price in bid type) and have confidence in your item, list it at a reasonable fixed price. Wait till someone buy it. $0.5 insertion fee is not so much if you are selling a $30 eye shadow palette.
Plus, you can sell multiple items as a "lot" in one listing so as to save trouble. For example if you are going to sell 10 bottles of nail polishes, taking photo of each, listing for 10 times and packing for 10 buyers would be so tiring.
I feel there is still a lot to say but can't remember at this time. So let me take a break.
Hope this can help. If anyone here is going to open a sale on ebay, please let me know- I don't want to miss any deal!