Becoming an eBay member is relatively hassle-free – and this simplicity is one of the reasons almost £750 worth of goods change hands across the site every second.
To set up, you’ll first need to register; this can be done quickly and easily on the eBay website. Once your registration is done, click on the drop-down menu labelled ‘Sell’ found in the top right-hand corner of most eBay pages, and follow the step-by-step instructions from there. You may wish to upload a picture from a digital camera, or one off the web, to illustrate your product.
The next steps are creating a business account, and setting up an online shop. To start trading under your business name, set up a business account with eBay. To do this, you’ll need to provide a UK postal address, or landline telephone number, and details of a bank account capable of accepting Direct Debit instructions.
Those registered for VAT should also disclose their VAT registration number – by doing so, they won’t have pay VAT on their seller fees. (If you don’t have a VAT registered number, register with HM Revenue & Customs.) For all VAT-exempt sellers in Europe, eBay offers VAT at the Luxembourg rate of 15%, meaning your fees will rise slightly.
To be able to open a shop, you need to have a PayPal account, plus a minimum score of five positive feedback reviews. Alternatively, if you don’t have a PayPal account, you need a minimum feedback score of 10; these are based on the reviews you receive from buyers for each item you sell. You also need an automatic payment method on file to pay seller fees (credit card, debit card, bank account.)
Then go to the eBay stores site and click on ‘Open a Shop’ on the right-hand side of the page. Your customers will then be able to add your shops to their ‘Favourite Shops’ list in ‘My eBay’, and you can choose to set up and receive reports that analyse your sales.
There are various options to make you stand out from the crowd, such as premium listings and titles in bold. Although these options do not cost much by themselves, it will add up if you are listing a number of items. Work out which items need pushing by trial and error – you can always take action in the future if an item needs to stand out more.