10/5/13

My First 90 Days as an Ebay Seller

My first 90 days as a seller on Ebay has just passed.  Here are some thoughts on those 90 days.

The Good

  1. Things Do Sell.  I was surprised to sell over 70 items in my first 90 days, doing Ebay only on evenings and weekends.
  2. Good Buyers.  All my buyers paid; most were easy to work with.
  3. Fun.  It’s fun to thrift and find items to sell on Ebay, like a treasure hunt.  There is also satisfaction in making the match between a cast-off item and someone who really wants it.
  4. Shipping System.  Printing shipping labels through the Ebay system is easy and tracking is uploaded automatically.
  5. Customer Service.  I had to call Ebay customer service 3 times in my first 90 days.  Each time I was on hold for less than 2 minutes, and spoke to someone that was reasonably helpful.  I hope this is not a fluke; so far I am impressed.

The Bad

  1. Selling limits.  In my first month, I was limited to only selling 10 items each month.  With a call to Ebay customer service, I was able to get that lifted.
  2. Category limits.  At day 70, I hit category limits.  As I would try to list something, at the last step, I got the frustrating message “sorry you can’t list this due to your category limits”.   Calling customer service did not help with this.  New sellers have category limits for the first 90 days, and after day 90, those limits did go away.
  3. Returns.  Three items were returned in my first 90 days.  Communicating with the buyer, processing a return, and getting it relisted took a lot of time.
  4. Work.  Selling on Ebay is so much more work than I expected.  There are multiple steps (finding, cleaning, photographing, measuring, listing, packing, etc.) that need to be repeated for each and every item.

So far, the good outweighs the bad, and I will keep selling on Ebay.  I want to make the listing process more efficient.   As I make progress on that, I hope to share those ideas here.