How to Sell on eBay in 9 Steps

First and foremost, take some time to study up on eBay’s policies and guidelines to avoid being hit with unexpected fees or kicked off the platform for unwittingly listing banned items.

You can check eBay’s full list of rules and policies on their website. Look into the following items first:

• Seller fees: eBay charges two main types of seller fees: an insertion fee (for creating a listing) and a final value fee (for selling an item). Visit eBay’s “Selling fees” page for the exact fees they charge for products in different categories.
• Restricted and prohibited items: Check if the product you plan on selling on eBay is on their list of prohibited items. Broadly speaking, you can’t sell firearms or other weapons, drugs, counterfeit or illegal items, body parts, or pets or other live animals. However, their restricted list is expansive enough (and there are enough exceptions) that it’s worth checking out the specific class of items you plan on selling.
• Payment options: eBay’s payment method policy forbids sending cash via mail or point-to-point cash services. However, they do accept most major payment methods, including PayPal, Venmo, credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
• Seller performance: You must meet eBay’s seller performance standards (which they detail in their seller performance policy) to avoid facing buying and selling restrictions on your account.
• Tax policy: Sellers are responsible for abiding by any and all tax regulations surrounding their eBay sales. eBay’s tax policies provide some guidance, but you should consult a professional tax advisor if you’re unsure about your tax situation.

Summarizing eBay’s policies in plain English

All of this might seem like a lot to take in, but most of eBay’s policies boil down to common sense. In the end, you really just have to:

• Limit yourself to selling relatively everyday items
• Only sell high-quality products (without serious defects or damage)
• Always ship items promptly when they sell
• Address customer inquiries and concerns swiftly and politely
• Report your earnings as income when you pay your taxes

Make a good-faith effort to do all of that and you’ll probably be just fine. If you still have questions after reading eBay’s policy pages, you can contact their customer service for help.

If you’re considering selling on eBay, chances are you already have a product or service in mind. If so, research whether there’s a market for it.

You can gauge a product’s popularity by searching for it on eBay. See how many listings pop up, then click into some of them and check how many have sold recently. It’s as simple as that.

When we searched for “black cat notebook,” for instance, our query yielded over 200 results (shown above).

When we clicked into many of the individual listings, we saw they’d sold at least 1–2 items in the past few days:

This doesn’t prove that black cat-themed notebooks are one of the most popular products on eBay, but it’s fairly strong evidence that if you list one for sale, there will be at least some interested buyers.

How to get ideas for products

If you aren’t sure what to sell yet, don’t worry. There are several classes of products you can sell on eBay:

• Used items you already have: You can always start by looking around your home for things you don’t need but that may have value.
• Items you made yourself: If you have a hobby that involves crafting, eBay is a good place to offload your creations (although you should also read our guide on how to start selling on Etsy, which is the most popular platform for DIY items). Consider your hobbies: is there anything you’re good at making that there’s a market for?
• Wholesale items for resale: You can also buy items in bulk and resell them for a profit. Although this sounds easy, it’s arguably the hardest path, since a lot of people have already had this idea and most of the obvious niches are occupied by successful sellers. To do this, your best bet is to conduct a lot of product and competitor research. See if there are any popular products that seem surprisingly unavailable on eBay.

You can browse the different categories on eBay and the site’s current trending deals to find inspiration. When you settle on an idea, remember to confirm that the item isn’t prohibited.

Popular categories on eBay

We’ve curated some of the most popular categories below to help you get started:

• Automotive
• Clothing, shoes, and accessories
• Baby products
• Cameras and photography equipment
• Sporting goods
• Jewelry and watches
• Electronics
• Video games and consoles
• Health and beauty
• Home and garden
• Travel accessories
• Pet supplies
• Instruments and gear

How to set your prices

Once you have an idea of what you’re interested in selling, check out the top sellers’ listings in your category. Observe:

• The range of products they offer
• How they price them
• What listing types they usually use (e.g., auction, fixed price, etc.)

Take your cues from your most successful competitors when you plan out your own shop. You don’t need to charge exactly what they do, but you can use their prices as benchmarks to gauge what the market will sustain.

Simultaneously, do your own research on the market value of your items to see if they match the prices you’re seeing on eBay. If there’s a large gap between them, try to figure out why. Check out how much the same items are fetching on other online marketplaces. It can also be helpful to reach out to more experienced sellers for advice, which you can do on online communities like r/eBaySellerAdvice/ on Reddit and eBay’s own message boards.

As you gain experience as a seller, you’ll get a better grasp of how to set your prices. It’s important to stay on top of market trends and adjust what you charge accordingly.

“Fulfillment” is the process of preparing an order for delivery and shipping it to the customer.

Large businesses generally have the capacity to handle their own order fulfillment. By contrast, many e-commerce and small business owners outsource the process to third parties.

Consider whether you have the time and space to store, produce, pack, and ship the orders. If not, look into companies that specialize in this, which are typically referred to as third-party logistics providers (3PL), fulfillment warehouses, or fulfillment services.

We’ve listed several of the most popular companies in this space below:

• Nice Commerce
• FulFillPlus
• Ware2Go

If you want to work with a fulfillment company, make sure to research them thoroughly; not all sellers have good experiences with them, and it’s important to do your due diligence and be as sure as possible that the company you’re hiring is legitimate.

Be sure to compare its fee structure and services to its competitors’. Only you can decide if it’s worth spending extra money outsourcing this kind of work.

Once you’ve picked a type of product to sell on eBay and come up with at least a preliminary idea of what your prices should be, it’s time to create an account. To do so, you’ll need a verified email address and must live in an eBay-eligible country (these include the US, the UK, and Canada).

Head over to eBay’s registration page and follow its instructions to create a personal or business account.

There’s surprisingly little difference between the two types of account. Unless you genuinely are operating on eBay as a business and want to list your company name instead of your own, you can just create a personal account, as shown in the screenshot below.

Whatever you pick isn’t set in stone. You can change your personal account to a business account (and vice versa) later on if you like.

As you can see in the screenshot, the information you need to provide isn’t particularly extensive. To make a personal account as an individual seller, you just need to:

1. Fill in your name and email address
2. Create a password
3. Click “Create personal account”
4. Fill in your contact address and telephone number

Alternatively, you can sign up using Google, Facebook, or Apple. If you do, depending on the method you choose, you’ll have to allow eBay access to your public Google or Facebook profile or enter your Apple ID.

Add payment options to receive payouts

Once you’ve created an account, click on “My eBay” at the top right corner of your homepage, select the “Account” tab, then click “Payments.”

Then, on the same page, scroll down to the “Payment options” section to add your payment details (e.g., your bank details) so you can receive payouts.

Underneath it, you can set your payout schedule, pick which method you’ll use to deposit money to pay fees and selling expenses, and access your payment report.

Now that you’ve created an account with eBay and added your payment option, you can go ahead and create your first listing. Here’s how to do it:

1. Click on “My eBay” at the top right corner of your homepage, and select “Selling” in the drop-down menu

   

2. Click “List an item” on the “My eBay Selling Overview” page

   

3. Enter the name of your item in the search bar under “Start your listing”

   

4. Pick the category that best fits your item.

   

5. Add details about your product and see if eBay finds a “match” (a listing selling the same product, or a very similar one).If you find a match, you can lightly edit that listing’s product description and use it for your own. If you don’t find a match, click on “Continue without match.”

   

6. Fill out details about your item on the “Complete your listing” page (i.e., add an item photo and description, then set the price and shipping options).

   

7.  Lastly, click “List it” at the very bottom to complete your listing. Note that there are two types of listings:
   • Buy It Now: These items have fixed prices.
   • Auction: These are items that people can bid on.

   The latter option is generally better for products without well-defined market values, but you can test both options to determine which one best suits you. There’s something to be said for knowing exactly what you’ll make when your item sells.

How to optimize an eBay listing: advanced tips

Here are four key ways to make your listing more searchable and attract more customers.

1. Use compelling, keyword-rich titles: Try adding keywords (words that describe your item and that you believe buyers are searching for) to your item titles. You can find popular keywords by typing your item’s basic product type into eBay’s search bar (e.g., “watch,” “dress,” “notebook”) and seeing what suggestions eBay autocompletes.
2. Craft detailed descriptions: Be as clear as you can about the details of the product on offer, including its key features, condition, and anything else you’d want to know if you were a buyer.
3. Take high-quality photos: Taking good pictures of your product makes a huge difference. You don’t need to use a professional-grade camera—your phone should be fine—but make sure you have good lighting and a clean lens. Photograph the product from every angle.
4. Add videos to your listings: To give your buyers an even better sense of the condition and features of your product, consider providing a video. This also gives you the chance to demonstrate how to use it, if that’s applicable.

To gauge how you’re doing and whether you need to make any adjustments to your strategy, use eBay’s Seller Hub, which is a free tool that allows you to track various data, including your listings, orders, and overall selling performance.

When you make a sale, it’s important to deliver the item as soon as you can; this will increase the chances of the customer giving you a positive rating. This, in turn, will help you make more sales—your rating is all-important on eBay.

Unless you decide to outsource your fulfillment process, you’ll need to learn how to prepare and deliver items correctly.

Here’s more or less how you should ship each item, although the exact process will differ depending on what, exactly, you’re selling:

1. Package your item: Pick suitable packaging (e.g., a box, a poly bag, bubble wrap, shipping paper), taking into consideration its size, shape, weight, and how fragile it is.
2. Weigh and measure the package: Purchase or otherwise secure access to a shipping scale to weigh the item after it’s packaged. Record its exact weight; you’ll need this, along with the dimensions, when you contact the shipping company. Measuring the package will be easy: you can just use a regular tape measure for most items.
3. Get shipping labels: You can purchase discounted shipping labels through eBay from the “Sold” screen linked from your “My eBay” page, or the Order Hub in the Seller Hub. Use a printer to print out the shipping label, fill in the required information (e.g., the order number), cut out the label, and tape it on the package.
4. Arrange pickup with a shipping company: Contact an eBay-integrated shipping carrier, such as FedEx, USPS, or UPS, and hire them to deliver the item. They’ll give you instructions on how, when, and where to hand it over.
5. Upload tracking details: If you use eBay’s shipping label and an eBay-integrated shipping carrier, your package and its tracking number will automatically be marked as shipped and uploaded. Otherwise, you can manually enter this information on your My eBay screen or the Seller Hub.

Remember to continuously monitor and manage your inventory and stock levels to prevent overselling. Be sure to take down a listing or update its status if an item completely sells out.

As mentioned, optimizing your listing when you post it will improve its searchability, but you should also actively promote it to attract even more buyers.

To drive traffic to your eBay listing, try the following methods.

• Create markdown sale events: Markdown sale events are only available for eBay store owners. The feature lets you create a sale by grouping relevant items (up to 10,000 of them) to attract buyers, who will see your offers when they view your listing or visit your store.
• Use social media: Social media is a great way to market your eBay listings and store for free. Share information about them on your accounts across all the platforms you’re signed up for to increase sales.
• Use Promoted Listings Standards: Promoted Listings Standards will show your listing to buyers that eBay thinks are likely to be interested. Currently, only highly active “Above Standard” and “Top Rated” sellers can use this feature, so it won’t be accessible right away. Its cost varies depending on the ad rate you select, and you only pay when you make a sale.

Receiving positive customer feedback is crucial to building your business on eBay. Providing excellent customer service is the key to achieving that.

Again, it’s important to make sure your customers get their orders as soon as possible. If the tracking information for an order isn’t uploaded automatically, don’t forget to upload it yourself. Most buyers will feel more comfortable when they can keep track of the delivery’s progress.

Additionally, respond to buyer inquiries and resolve issues promptly and professionally. Even if there was some sort of mishap, a customer might still leave positive feedback if you acknowledged the mistake and resolved it swiftly with a good attitude.

What should you do if you receive a payment dispute?

If you receive a payment dispute—in other words, if a customer claims there was a serious enough problem with an order that they want a refund—you can choose to accept or challenge it on the “Sold” screen in “My eBay,” or “Requests and disputes” in the Seller Hub.

If you challenge a dispute, you need to explain your reasoning and provide evidence to support your claim. The buyer’s payment institution will make the final decision on the dispute’s outcome.

Once your shop is up and running and you’ve sold at least a few items, think of ways you can elevate it and manage it more efficiently.

Improvements don’t need to be big or flashy. They can be as small as upgrading your inkjet printer to a thermal label printer so that you don’t need to spend time cutting out and taping shipping labels. Every little bit helps.

If you start operating your business on a larger scale, you might also want to outsource certain repetitive tasks to streamline things. Consider hiring a virtual assistant to help you field customer inquiries and market your store.

On a similar note, you might eventually want to expand your catalog. Reference your sales performance metrics and customer feedback to determine which products to invest in more heavily and which ones to remove. Just like you did in the early stages, conduct market research to identify new products you can sell.

How to monitor the growth of your eBay side hustle

Throughout this whole process, continue to analyze your performance metrics to maintain your business’s reputation.

eBay offers its own market research tool, Terapeak, which you can access from the Seller Hub’s “Research” tab.

Make adjustments to your operations according to your findings to keep old customers and attract new ones. Pay close attention to what strategies seem to be working; if you put in the time and effort, your side hustle as an eBay seller is sure to take off.