E-Bay Tips for Sellers and Buyers

Start selling on E-bay and let this be the start towards achieving financial freedom?

We can all remember that first bid we placed on e-bay. I recall those last few seconds when I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Was I about to become the next successful bidder on e-bay?

That feeling of excitement is still there, sometimes! I rather suspect this is the reason why so many people still continue to use e-bay.

My first intrepid steps into e-bay were taken on my own. I can say now, that there can be definite benefits to having someone hold your hand when you are first starting out. I learned the hard way and that was on my own and I was about to discover that a few hard lessons would also have to be learned along the way.

My initial goal was to own a digital camera! I still have it today! It is perhaps now a relic of the past as I cannot find a replacement battery for it! Digital technology sure has moved on a pace in the last few years! Little did I know that this small Canon Ixus 11 would be instrumental in teaching me to love photography, It would give me the perfect tool with which to take great product shots for e-bay. I had overnight graduated to a seller instead of a buyer simply because I now had the tool to make it happen. My next goal would be to own a digital SLR and this would be the Nikon D200.

I started out selling small items of little value. I figured that as long as I did not need them, someone else should have the benefit from them. And so, it was, I began selling odds and ends on e-bay.

I then hit pay dirt, when I noticed that someone was advertising an old film camera & lenses to go with it. All of this equipment was to be’ free to a collector’.

The one great thing about e-bay is that you can call up on an advanced section of the site, a way of finding out which items have recently sold and also how much they sold for. It is a fairly accurate way of estimating what one might expect to get for an item! As I typed those items into this 'advanced' section of e-bay, I knew exactly what I might expect to realize for them!

I called to the Advertiser to ask him if he was serious about ‘giving them away’, He reluctantly told me that the advertisement had been placed by his girlfriend as ‘she was sick of them hanging about the house’. He now felt obligated to ‘give them away’ as stated and I drove around to his house to pick up my treasure. I might add in my defense that I too felt obligated to purchase a tripod which I did not need! It seemed churlish of me to refuse. It was a very small price to pay! I knew exactly which items would be appearing on my e-bay in the next few days. The rest is history. I have owned my Nikon D200 for several years now. It has been instrumental in giving me a completely different outlook on the world on a whole, hence my love for macro photography.

What exactly did I learn from this whole experience? Well, I learned the little Canon Ixus 11 was a great little camera. I learned the inn’s and out’s of e-bay. I learned that not everyone is as honest as I am! I learned that sometimes it is possible for someone to infiltrate your e-bay account and actually end up getting the money you have worked so hard for. I learned too, that sometimes people say that they have not received the goods when they actually have!

All in all, was it worth it? Yes, a definite yes! I learned too that there are far more nice folk out there than bad ones! I learned that with the help of the internet, you can teach yourself anything without it costing you anything except an internet connection. I learned to edit photos and how to write a decent listing and more than that, I learned how to treat customers the way I would like to be treated. I learned that nothing is impossible if you have a goal.