Now that you know more about online auctions are it’s time to discuss how you can sell your things in an auction. Selling in online auctions is easy but there are a few things you will need. First, you will need to have an idea what you would like to sell. You’ll. need to have a target market in mind as well as a strategy for selling your items. It may sound a little confusing right now but truthfully, anyone can go on eBay and sell just about anything. This section is designed to prepare you to sell more than someone else.

You may think you have nothing anyone could possibly want to buy lying around the house and you don’t have the time or energy to go out and find something. That may be true, but you will probably be pleasantly surprised at what you can find when you look around with a fresh eye. Your house or apartment or storage unit is a great place to look for things to sell. If these places fail, go to yard sales, look in the newspaper or at thrift stores and see what treasures you can find.

Your house isn’t the only source for finding hidden treasures. You are most likely a talented person, either as a fisherman or a basket weaver or in writing or art. If that is the case, you have a product or service that can make money. Find what you are already good at and then decide what to create, write, generate, program and ultimately sell online. Selling things you’ve created is a great way to make money without having to find an outside source or cleaning out even one closet.

The last place to find things to sell is through bulk consumer merchandise. What this means is finding a supplier of something that most people want or need, purchasing a large quantity of items, and then reselling those items on eBay for more than you paid. Buying in bulk saves you money and increases your profit potential by allowing you to deal with a lot of people. All of this translates into more money.

Anyone can be successful at locating things to sell. All it requires is patience, creativity and a good eye for hidden treasures.


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Once you have found some items you want to sell it’s time to dig into the business of selling them.

If you don’t already have a user account with eBay, you’ll need to go to www.ebay.com (click on banner) and sign up. This is important for two reasons. First, eBay will not let you sell items through their system unless you have an account. Second, this will also allow you to bid on and purchase items that might interest you (Buying is discussed in Section Eight).



Once you get to eBay look for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Register” or just click on the “Sign In” tab and choose the option to register. eBay will ask for your name, address, telephone number, and a credit card number for new accounts. They do not charge anything to this account and there are no fees to buy things on eBay. However, there are fees charged to sell things on eBay. We’ll discuss selling fees later on in this section.

Once you are all signed up and logged in you can select the “Sell” tab at the top of the main page. This will take you to the “Sell Your Item” screen with lots of different options. If you haven’t had a chance to look around this web page then it is a good idea to get a feel for all of the options available to you. Your main objective is to decide what category to sell in. For example, if you were selling a camera you would choose the Photo & Optics category.

This will take you to a general category page (i.e. Photography Equipment) and you will need to select specifically what category to place the camera in. Always look at how other people are selling similar items and watch to see what categories they are in and what items are getting bids. Try to select the most popular categories to put your items in. The more people that see your item the more chance you have to sell it for a lot more money.

After you have decided on the category you will need to create the rest of your auction listing. This includes title, description, pictures, type of auction, extras such as listing it as a Featured Item or a Category Feature, your personal web page, accepted payment methods, and so on. There are a lot of elements to properly advertising your item and with practice you will find that it isn’t as hard as it may appear at first. Don’t use too many of the extra options the first few times. Chances are the money made will not justify the cost. Once you get a feel for how well your items are selling you can test some of these special features. From time to time eBay has special free or discounted listing days. Take advantage of these. They will also offer specials on the extra options. Use these lower prices to increase your profit margin while testing out eBay’s special services.

You will also need to decide how much you are going to charge the buyer to mail the item to them, and how you will take their money. You have several options when it comes to accepting auction payments. You may choose to accept checks, cash or money orders through the mail, or credit cards or electronic checks via a service such as Billpoint or PayPal. eBay offers several options for taking payment and it is a good idea to look at these options and open accounts on different sites before starting your auction. Putting your item on eBay may take you a little while your first time but you will get the hang of it pretty quickly and become an expert in no time at all.

There are two kinds of auctions – the basic auction and the Dutch auction. A basic auction is used to sell one unique item while a Dutch auction is used for selling multiples of identical items.

The basic auction is the best place to learn about eBay and selling on online auction sites in general. Once you’ve dug that dusty, old Barry Manilow CD out, log into your eBay account and put it up for sale in a basic auction. When the auction is over the highest bidder (meaning the person who bid the most money for Barry) is the winner and the one you will collect money from and ship the CD to.

Dutch auctions can be a bit more complex than basic auctions. Use the Dutch auction format when you have a lot of identical items. Dutch auctions can also save you a little in listing fees since eBay figures them differently from basic auctions.

Increase your profit margin by listing as many products with the lowest cost to you in the same auction. If you have less than ten identical items, the Dutch auction may not be your best bet. In that case, list the items separately. When you have more than ten items, save yourself some time and money by listing them in a Dutch auction.

Searching eBay and bidding on items doesn’t cost you anything. However, the moment you decide to sell something is the moment eBay will start to charge. These fees are based upon the minimum bid and range from $.30 to $3.30. There is also a fee charged when you select a Reserve Auction. A reserve is the minimum price you will sell your item for even though you started bidding at a lower price. Reserve fees are in addition to regular listing fees but are fully refundable when your item sells.

eBay charges additional fees for listing upgrades. These are special features like Gallery, Gallery Featured, Buy It Now, Bold, Gift Item and the like. The price of these upgrades range from $0.05 for Buy It Now to $99.95 (please check eBay's current pricing structure) to have your item featured on eBay’s home page.

These special features help make items as visible as possible. But not all upgrades make sense for what you are trying to sell. Starting out, you probably won’t use any of these except maybe Buy It Now or Bold. Depending on the value of your item, you may find you make more money if you use the Gallery feature or Gift Icon. Not all items sold on eBay have the selling power to justify these expenses. Watch other auctions and see how similar items sell will help you determine which extra features may work for you.

Finally, there is the Final Value fee. This is a fixed percentage of the final sale price of your item. There may be additional assessments depending on the total value of your sale. For a more complete list of eBay fees and charges see pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/selling-fees.html. It is probably a good idea to keep this page bookmarked as all fees are subject to change.