Suggestions starting on ebay advice for newbie

[pinkiss]

probably not the first post of such kind but want information up to date, ive a plotter and good few designs, not looking to make much just fair price, thou on ebay i have been just buying for years random stuff for household etc, this year got my pops account and he got banned same day - no explanation nothing, took me two days to get to US customer service center as chat was copy paste from india,and once spoke on the phone to US support they lifted ban as explained he never sold on ebay and realized reason was propably they thought account will be used for boosting reviews etc, which is total joke since in 8 years never did i sell anything and finally decided to let him have his own acc, instead of using mine. Thou this raised eyes for me how strict they are. Now im up to date with a lot of common scams, hell you dont even need to scam nowadays ive heard people return item without even opening it, usual not received or damaged.So as a buyer im well aware of protection in place to protect buyer from almost anything.

But as a seller for me it seems like 0 protection, if i sold decals or vinyl signs, id take pictures before sending and would use registered&signed mail but that alone would cost close to 10$ in US + commission to ebay and id be left with few $ at best if lucky, as designs woulld go for 10-15$ thats without shipping costs which could be brought down massively but then id have 0 protection from someone just claiming they never rcvd.

I know i could put in description that no refunds given if vinyl is damaged when applied and dont take responsibility nor offer refunds but knowing paypal it doesnt take much to get screwed over.

As ive dealt with many seller over the years and if encountering issues found that many will write off and just refund you then try to reship- legit issues like item out of date thats easy to over miss, so on my part never wronged anyone but i see theres massive trend that nowadays turn to facebook and other better suited sites.

anyway if someone could give more advice or if i missed anything will be appreciated, as know theres more customers on ebay but then again way to easy to lose actually money for shipping and items if encountering some rogue buyer.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

You can't make $$ selling decals on eBay.

I use ebay as a referral to people calling me about making small personal decals, like in memory of or calvin pissing decals... I tell them they can buy it online from people willing to loose $$.

 

[ikarasu]

Your competing against china. Even if you use original designs... If they sell, a week later they'll be listed for $1-2.you make maybe $3-5 per decal... Sell one every month or so. eBay isn't worth it.

 

[Gino]

Ya gotta start somewhere. Jump right in and do what you can. Otherwise, you'll never know.

 

[ewded]

I sell decals on ebay, have more than 500 designs and I earn $300 monthly, about half of it is profit so obviously it does not worth it, I do it so I can advertise my own website sending out cards and flyers with the purchase.

 

[ikarasu]

$300 monthly, 500 designs... $259 proffit, is that including cut time / weed time / package time?

Unless your an online business I wouldn't see it as great advertising for your business.

I used to try to sell on eBay. Then I sold something to a real client, made $800 proffit for 1 days work... off of one order.

So you can make a couple bucks here and there, or you can spend that time to make another sale and earn 100x the proffit.

eBay is for people with cricuts and people with no jobs and an abundance of free time on their hands.

 

[pinkiss]

well that's crap numbers there ewed, do you have em printed in bulk or do individually, since cost would be hard to justify doing custom each time.Thou my main interest how you protect yourself from scammers or freeloaders.as know chinesse can do 2$ free shipping takes a month and even if you dont get it they will write it off as a lose at very least but they got the numbers where few bucks isnt a dent for them.

 

[pinkiss]

and actually youd have to admire them if i was to look round the appliances it be hard pressed to find anything that wouldnt have made in china logo at home and guess worldwide., got roland plotter- philippines, jap company, heat press made in china uk sticker thrown on top, all the crazy apple people 1k for a phone made in china, as one good comedian said we dont give a s$^t for others suffering until we get it cheap smth in that terms.

 

[ewded]

I do have an online store, I use ebay to draw customers to my own shop where they can buy a bit cheaper and I can pay less fee for money handling as paypal and ebay both take 5-5%. The scammers are not looking for $5-$10 decals, they go for high value items like phones, jewelry etc. I would say 1 or 2 out of 100 parcels are lost or declared lost so that's fine with me.

I do small laptop/car decals some are customized like dog+dog name decal, but most of them are ready to cut.

The problem with ebay is the follows:

1. High fees (there are online fee calculators - I don't calculate it as it's just disappoints me) (no it's not $259 profit after $300 sold decals, more like $150 when you pay every tax)
2. Copyrights - you cannot sell anything that is not designed by you, otherwise you'll get banned (like superman, mario, pac man etc, I know they do sell copyrighted materials but everybody is caught in 4-6 months but they make new accounts etc.)
3. If one of your design is stolen by chinese ebayers, you can report them and it takes weeks for ebay to decide and act, and you have to report all 12478 chinese seller one by one (impossible)
4. You need to be super nice with everybody as a negative feedback (fair or unfair) will put you on page 9998886 and will result no sells

For some people #4 is just not worth it, if you cannot handle unfair buyers you better not start selling on ebay. If you always need to prove your right just don't sell on ebay. These problems are not that frequent you'd think, people are pretty fair (just avoid selling to some countries like mexico, france, UAE and 3rd world countries) US buyers are always nice ppl, just like most Europeans and Russians.

Hope this helped.

 

[ewded]

I hit enter twice but it looks like I cannot delete my own post... just update... whatever

 

[pinkiss]

nah you got it correct you said 300$ and half in that makes to profit in first comment, but seems overall consensus is correct that its minus selling on ebay, and as buyer i noticed the last 4th point a lot, which skew's up real results in general,as its a bit of broken system.and minus all expenses not much to be made, except as you said trying to get customers into your own site.

 

[equippaint]

I guess Im the outlier here because we make a lot of money on ebay.
Ewed is right about scammers, its always used expensive stuff. Theyre not after a $20 sign.
We run into some whiners though and I cant stand bowing down. Even when you do everything they ask for they still leave bad feedback but honestly its few and far between.
One trick, if they ask you questions and you sense the tiniest bit that they are a pain, check their feedback left for others. If you see 1 unreasonable negative feedback block them before they buy.
We will never give a refund without a return either, I dont care what it costs me...send my stuff back.

 

[pinkiss]

some goods tips there eqippaint, specially with checking persons bio first and then deciding if to sell, im aware to skip red zone countries but looking into feedback of person would be easy to spot if they pulled it before, exception being if person is new and has only couple feeds another red flag.as said never sold before is there any rule that if one presses buy you have to sell, or can you just refund/put in processing first before actually accepting order?

as for returns cant you specify in description that you dont refund due to products nature (guess here where pp protection kicks in and ur screwed either way)- i mean if one wants refund most likely they messed up or didnt prep surface properly and it got ruined. but good tactics making them ship it back to you.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

some goods tips there eqippaint, specially with checking persons bio first and then deciding if to sell, im aware to skip red zone countries but looking into feedback of person would be easy to spot if they pulled it before, exception being if person is new and has only couple feeds another red flag.as said never sold before is there any rule that if one presses buy you have to sell, or can you just refund/put in processing first before actually accepting order?

as for returns cant you specify in description that you dont refund due to products nature (guess here where pp protection kicks in and ur screwed either way)- i mean if one wants refund most likely they messed up or didnt prep surface properly and it got ruined. but good tactics making them ship it back to you.

Doesn't matter what your return policy states... You WILL be forced to take returns.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I have sold over 10,000 items on eBay in the last 10 years.. most of it was electronics and parts (when I was working in IT)

The Good about eBay:

• You can find prices on commodities and value them EASILY. You can see what sold and for how much and for when. Makes valuing common items VERY easy.. so when you are buying those items to resell on ebay, you can instantly know how much $$ you will make. Price it right and you can sell it in 15 mins.
• You can sell odd and one-off rare items to a worldwide market place, that may locally have no value.

The Bad

• You mostly can't control who you sell to. This is flat out the worst part of the whole ebay deal. In the sign world, we can REFUSE service to someone we don't want to work with, but you can't on ebay. They won't let you block people with no buying history on ebay... or who leave too much negative feedback or have a high rate of returns... They can leave you negative but you HAVE to leave them positive... Uber, AirBnB, Lyft and most other platforms, the SELLER CAN LEAVE NEGATIVE to warn others...not on ebay.
• International Buyer are BIG problems. I wouldn't sell to ANYONE outside the USA. Had tons of problems with scammers from the third world country's. Even on $30 items they would scam. eBay will side with the buyer no matter what. I sold a $250 electronic TV board to the islands and the buyer claimed it didn't work, returned a board that had different serial number. I sent ebay photos and they still forced me to refund $$. They made me go to my local police station and file a report and have an affidavit notarized before they would refund...do you know how much time I wasted on that order? I banned anyone outside USA, and banned payments from people outside USA because even people overseas use Freight Forwarding companies to buy stuff.
• eBay will never side with the Seller. No matter what you have in your listing, no matter what your return policy, ebay will not side with you in a dispute.
• Calling eBay about a dispute is absolutely pointless. Your situation about how ebay is wrong in a decision or situation can be 100% crystal clear for a 4 year old to understand and ebay will not listen to it.
• eBays rules are set against you. They reward "top sellers" yet they make the rules more difficult and more difficult to obtain that. Every time ebay changes the rules for sellers it's NOT in the seller's favor. I'll admit they did loosen up on "top rated" I guess after so many people complained. Funny how their policy STILL doesn't stop scam sellers, just seems to keep hurting legit sellers.

If you DO decide that you want to enter the world of ebay, learn from what I have about the process. I am someone who will stand up for myself when I am wronged.. but with ebay you just have to accept that you will get screwed from time to time and it is absolutely POINTLESS to do anything about it...it's the cost of business on ebay. There is $$ to be made, but you have to factor in the loss you will have dealing with ridiculous, scamming sometimes stupid, ignorant, illiterate buyers. Not ALL buyers are like that, but you will come across them.

As for selling signs/ decals.. I never found any profit to be made selling those things. I do sell religious decals for a decent amount of $$, but I think they only sell because I donate 100% of the "profit" to our community's ministries. I make the decal, mark it up 100% and donate all the profit.

 

[equippaint]

some goods tips there eqippaint, specially with checking persons bio first and then deciding if to sell, im aware to skip red zone countries but looking into feedback of person would be easy to spot if they pulled it before, exception being if person is new and has only couple feeds another red flag.as said never sold before is there any rule that if one presses buy you have to sell, or can you just refund/put in processing first before actually accepting order?

as for returns cant you specify in description that you dont refund due to products nature (guess here where pp protection kicks in and ur screwed either way)- i mean if one wants refund most likely they messed up or didnt prep surface properly and it got ruined. but good tactics making them ship it back to you.

You can cancel an order after someone buys but once they purchase they can leave feedback and at that point its guaranteed to be negative. You need to stop it before they buy.
If theres a question after delivery and I sense potential negative feedback Ill just call them to fix the problem (numbers under order record) It makes it more personal and people are less inclined to be nasty on a personal level.
For refunds, even if no returns are allowed, all they have to do is say that it is not as described and you have to accept the return.
I dont ship outside the usa simply because its a logisitcal hassle. We have a few times to people that contact us directly though. We use the free priority boxes and ship usps. Boxes arent cheap. We never have had usps lose or damage a package either.

 

[equippaint]

I have sold over 10,000 items on eBay in the last 10 years.. most of it was electronics and parts (when I was working in IT)

The Good about eBay:

• You can find prices on commodities and value them EASILY. You can see what sold and for how much and for when. Makes valuing common items VERY easy.. so when you are buying those items to resell on ebay, you can instantly know how much $$ you will make. Price it right and you can sell it in 15 mins.
• You can sell odd and one-off rare items to a worldwide market place, that may locally have no value.

The Bad

• You mostly can't control who you sell to. This is flat out the worst part of the whole ebay deal. In the sign world, we can REFUSE service to someone we don't want to work with, but you can't on ebay. They won't let you block people with no buying history on ebay... or who leave too much negative feedback or have a high rate of returns... They can leave you negative but you HAVE to leave them positive... Uber, AirBnB, Lyft and most other platforms, the SELLER CAN LEAVE NEGATIVE to warn others...not on ebay.
• International Buyer are BIG problems. I wouldn't sell to ANYONE outside the USA. Had tons of problems with scammers from the third world country's. Even on $30 items they would scam. eBay will side with the buyer no matter what. I sold a $250 electronic TV board to the islands and the buyer claimed it didn't work, returned a board that had different serial number. I sent ebay photos and they still forced me to refund $$. They made me go to my local police station and file a report and have an affidavit notarized before they would refund...do you know how much time I wasted on that order? I banned anyone outside USA, and banned payments from people outside USA because even people overseas use Freight Forwarding companies to buy stuff.
• eBay will never side with the Seller. No matter what you have in your listing, no matter what your return policy, ebay will not side with you in a dispute.
• Calling eBay about a dispute is absolutely pointless. Your situation about how ebay is wrong in a decision or situation can be 100% crystal clear for a 4 year old to understand and ebay will not listen to it.
• eBays rules are set against you. They reward "top sellers" yet they make the rules more difficult and more difficult to obtain that. Every time ebay changes the rules for sellers it's NOT in the seller's favor. I'll admit they did loosen up on "top rated" I guess after so many people complained. Funny how their policy STILL doesn't stop scam sellers, just seems to keep hurting legit sellers.

If you DO decide that you want to enter the world of ebay, learn from what I have about the process. I am someone who will stand up for myself when I am wronged.. but with ebay you just have to accept that you will get screwed from time to time and it is absolutely POINTLESS to do anything about it...it's the cost of business on ebay. There is $$ to be made, but you have to factor in the loss you will have dealing with ridiculous, scamming sometimes stupid, ignorant, illiterate buyers. Not ALL buyers are like that, but you will come across them.

As for selling signs/ decals.. I never found any profit to be made selling those things. I do sell religious decals for a decent amount of $$, but I think they only sell because I donate 100% of the "profit" to our community's ministries. I make the decal, mark it up 100% and donate the profit... I do it to contribute my sign skills to help our community. Thankfully, all of the people that buy "Jesus" decals are some of the most pleasant people I have ever had the pleasure to sell to... tells you something about that type of customer.

Another trick, dont leave money in your paypal account. Disputes are awarded based on the path of least resistance. If you have a 0 balance and nothing for ebay to grab from your paypal then they will rule in your favor. If you do have money, they will take it back and tell you that you lost because you have no recourse.
I went trough it with a $10k dispute and won... Only cuz of this

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

If theres a question after delivery and I sense potential negative feedback Ill just call them to fix the problem (numbers under order record) It makes it more personal and people are less inclined to be nasty on a personal level.

I used this method too! Calling and talking to a buyer can be a good tool. ebay gives, or used to give "defects" points based on the SLIGHTEST problem... and the way it was presented to the buyer, they often didn't know they were "hurting" us. I would personally call them and get them to reverse what they did and promise to take care of whatever problem they had. I also got negative feedback removed by calling and talking (nicely) to the customer and reason with them.

DEFECTS policy = more ways to screw sellers out of getting the top-rated discount by manipulating buyers into unknowing hurting the seller.

 

[pinkiss]

well im based in EU and same logistical issue outside EU i wouldnt be able to sell-ship just to expensive and to much hassle and prob nor would i.also thought since paypal is linked to bank account in case of dispute ebay would be able to take it out,as example i never keep money in pp account but always process trough my card and its instant since two are linked together so pp takes it out of my account when purchasing smth.

I do agree that with ebay paypal everything is linked against seller, im no saint and had disputes in the past with paypal purchases not even ebay and each time ive gotten cash back eventually.

Anyway seems its all down to simple maths, once you pay all the fees and selling smth its a low ball number that prob takes up more time then its worth, do agree on electronics and stuff its handy as you can get good feel and deals CPU's what not, yet still funny with regulations ebay imposes as ordered olfa cutting knives, all arrived no issues, but needed spare baldes and even thou its allowed to advertise its forbidden to sell to uk/ire under gun act or whatever, in other words if seller puts item down as olfa cutter its fine, if its written spare blades for cutter no go to much control and rules for my liking.

will try to hit local ad sites and facebook pages at least takes out the nonsense part and keeps cost affordable.

 

[ams]

I was an active seller on ebay many years ago. It used to be a great site, now it's been taken over by scammers and dirt cheap people wanting to make a penny. You can't compete. Most people would rather wait 2 or 3 weeks and pay $2 then pay $15 and get it faster. It's not profitable and neither is amazon. You'll be killing yourself and wasting all the hours of your life to just barely make enough to live on if that. I suggest avoiding ebay.