Selling on eBay – A Quick Guide
Today we are going to consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of developing your business on the world’s largest online marketplace – eBay.
Advantages
Massive Customer Base With 212 million members worldwide, there can be no doubt that eBay is the largest online marketplace in the world. As a seller this is a great situation to be in as you have access to a huge customer base which is active and ready to buy, compared with a small amount of buyers at an online car boot sale.
You can sell anything Some online marketplaces like Amazon Marketplace and Play Trade are quite limited in what you can sell. eBay on the other hand, allows you to build listings for whatever item you have to sell, meaning you are not limited in what you can buy.
eBay fees eBay’s fees are still considerably lower than those of rival marketplaces like Amazon and Play Trade, making it a cost effective platform to sell on. They are much higher than eBid and other smaller marketplaces, but those generally get little buyer traffic and poor sell through rates.
Flexibility With some car boot items you might not know it’s true value. This isn’t a problem on eBay as you can choose the auction format. That way buyers will decide exactly how much your item is worth. Cheap starting prices can really help get your listing noticed too.
Disadvantages
Listing Items This is one of my biggest bug bears with eBay, it takes too long to list my car boot sale items. Amazon Marketplace is much quicker to list on I can probably list 4-5 items in the time it takes to do one on eBay.
New Policies eBay is continually making changes across its platform. 2009 saw the introduction of compulsory free postage, Top Rated Seller’s (TSR’s) leaving many sellers disappointed and frustrated.
Fees While we have established that eBay is still cheaper than Amazon Marketplace, they are getting more expensive, and quickly. You also have to pay fees several times (listing fee, final value fee and PayPal fee) which can make it difficult to work out profit margins.
PayPal The PayPal dispute resolution process is open to unfair claims, and sellers are often left out in the cold with their outcomes.
