Selling on Ebay

Business Money
1

I’ve decided to do a bit of selling on Ebay to try to make a few extra clams.Everything is pretty much set to go except the shipping price.I need to find the most inexpensive ,reliable and fastest way to send off my products.Can anyone suggest a good courier co to use in Taiwan?

Also,are there anyother forumosans selling on Ebay? If so,do you have any tips or tricks of the trade for a newbie Ebayer?

Thanks in advance.

2

Good luck.

So far, I have found EMS fairly fast. The goods usually make it all over the world in 4-5 days, and it’s a fair bit cheaper than standard couriers.

Any local post office can do it, which makes it easier still.

3

List the item for 1 cents and mark up your shipping to the actual retail price. After 10 good review set up Buy It Now. After 30 or so good review upgrade to Store option.

It’s like a silly RPG online game at times.

4

Ha - I always check the postage price and never buy from people who try and scam some extra cash on it. But look around carefully - see how many other people are selling what you want to sell and then look at how many successful auctions they have. Not everything works on eBay - Chinese antiques, for example, don’t seem to do well. Although that could be because most of the guys selling use horrible Chinglish in their ads. :idunno:

5

[quote=“Mr He”]Good luck.

So far, I have found EMS fairly fast. The goods usually make it all over the world in 4-5 days, and it’s a fair bit cheaper than standard couriers.

Any local post office can do it, which makes it easier still.[/quote]

Thanks Me He.Chunghwa post offers EMS with online tracking for about six bucks US.Perfect.

A.C,not a bad idea,but a big no no with Ebay.They will cancel your accnt if you are caught.Your other advice is good,thanks.

6

my only advice is to sell what you say you are going to sell.

don’t send off some crap that some sucker will buy because it looks good in your tiny photos.

sell good, quality products, back them up, and offer a refund if someone is dissatisfied.

postage rates are postage rates. whats the difference? you charge more for shipping than it actually costs anyway, so what do you care.

my point is sell a quality product that people will want to come back for and will refer their friends to.

ebay can work for good, honest, quality salespeople. keep it real gomer.

jm

7

The post office has all the serivices you need. Just tell them you’ll give them a fair quote and then give them the link to the page that you got the quote from.

You can add a few bucks for the handling though.

8

Hi there - Im an ebay whore from years back.

Last time i stayed in Taiwan I sent 8 - 10 boxes full of weird junk back home to sell later on ebay. I found that unusual, quirky things sold really well. For example, back in 2003 some 7-11s were selling cheap LCD games called ‘OSAMA vs USA’ or something… It was basically a boxing game, but the artwork was hilarious.

These cost me about $9 AU and I sold them for up to $60 AU each.

Another tip - find something that you LOVE and specialise in those items. I am a big video game freak from way back, so scoured a lot of smaller video game shops for unusual game accessories, games and novelty items.

I hit the jackpot in a delapidated gaming store in Ching Shwuei(?) in Taichung. Found a whole carton of 1990s game accessories which I bought for a few hundred TWD and a mint condition ‘Knight Rider’ remote control car from the 1980s. That item alone paid for a weekend in a hot spring resort :slight_smile:

So - find something unusual that nobody else is selling, and concentrate on stuff that you have a passion for and generally enjoy hunting around for.

May I suggest memory cards for mobile phones/cameras? These tend to be cheap in Taipei and are small and light (an important consideration)

Good Luck!

9
  • Start your auctions at $0.99, this will get more bids so your auction will look artificially popular and get more views. Even high priced items.
  • Don’t worry all bidding usually will happen in the last hour (even if you list at low price).
  • Shipping should be fair, calculate your shipping price and add $1~2.
  • Add counters to your auction so you can see which are most popular, try to calculate why (ie: time of day, good title).
  • Title, description are key to views… need to use key words, no fluff as characters limited.
  • Timing of auctions key, start them so they finish at specific times of the day, say for example 12~1pm (better closer to 1pm end of peoples lunch time), 7~9pm… don’t have them finish in the middle of the night or rush hour when there will be less people online (travelling to/from work), of course should be tailored to your customers.
  • List auctions to finish every day of the week at your popular times, this can be done by listing a 3day, 5 day and 7 day at the same time so you are only listing twice a week (and 3 times a day).
  • As soon as your auction finishes send a personal email to your buyer giving them the purchase options
  • As soon as they pay send an email telling them you rec’d payment, follow up with an email telling them you have sent goods, ideally include tracking number.
  • Don’t leave feedback until feedback has been left for you, this will increase the chance of positive feedback. To push to get feedback, follow-up with an email after delivery should have ben rec’d to ask if everything was rec’d OK and if any questions. Hint at them leaving email if they were happy with the service.

Hope this helps…

10

Yeah, pubba!

You’ve got it. I remember McDonald’s was giving mini coke cans to people if their order took too long… I asked them if I could buy 1 and ended up buying a box of 24. It had a bunch of chinese on it and ronnie doing backflips or something. The shipping is the problem… I could have made lots of dough if I was pimping from home.

11

I’m also interested in making extra money as teaching is fun, but can be a bit redundant. Does selling on ebay really expand income in comparison with the amount of time one must spend? Also, how does one come across wholesale goods to sell on ebay? I know it’s a lot to ask, as I am new to it, but any insight would be excellent.

Thanks
D

12
  1. Go to local night market
  2. Buy ‘Snoopy’ jumpers for 80NT each
  3. Sell same jumpers on ebay for 300NT ‘Buy it Now!’ option
  4. PROFIT

Replace step 2 with any other western friendly tat (simpsons, powerpuff girls etc)

I tend to focus on Astro Boy stuff, which has a global fanbase. Found some remote control astro boy robot things at the local supermarkert for 200NT and sold them straight away for triple that…

Its just a kind of hobby for me… Seeing how much money I can make on a single item. My record was a kooky ‘OSAMA VS USA’ LCD game that I bought for 200NT and sold for 1600 NT back in 2003. 7/11 stores were selling them back then, and I cleaned up! Paid for a nice weekend away :wink:

There are many auction tools that can help you such as www.auctiva.com . They provide auction listing and tracking tools, and you can pretty much set up an automated system after a few tries…