Selling things on ebay.

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It's not that bad of an idea, really. Most of us do have a fair bit of "junk" around, but people are willing to buy it. I sold a Russian hockey jersey I bought for $8, I paid 50c for it a couple years ago at Salvation Army. This looks like it might be a viable, well, maybe not "career" for me, but certainly will give me some pocket money. One convenient thing, too, I started my own paypal account independent of my mother's, so I don't have to go through convincing my mom to let me use her paypal account/bank account when I wanna buy stuff online. What I'm figuring is, through ebay sales, I can make most of my online purchases self sufficient, if you will. I can sell random junk on ebay, and have it convert into online money.

One thing convenient for me, too, is it'll convert "real life" money into "online" money, which is good for me. Like the jersey I sold, it was $12 for shipping, so I spent $12 real life dollars, but I have $20 in the paypal account. Once I get a bank account, that's all sorta null and void, but in the mean time, the shipping comes out of my pocket, but it converts pocket money I generally spend unwisely into "online" money, which I can spend much better.

So, sell your stuff on ebay. Not a bad way to make a little cash. Maybe I can eventually make a job out of it and save up for a house or two (I want houses in Maine and somewhere overseas, the houses in Maine I want are 20-50K, so paying my mortgage wouldn't be any worse than a car payment.)

I think most people could do with a clear-out from time to time, and making a bit of cash in the process is always nice when it works.

But what you didn't mention is the pain of having to deal with complete idiots, especially those who try to claim they never received the item and want to claim their money back ; fleabay tends to side with the buyers in the event of any disputes.

Here in the Netherlands I'm going through a similar process on another (local) buy/sell site called marktplaats.nl and that is even worse. We've been selling various stuff, people bid on them, and then after winning the bid they then offer to pay only a fraction of their bid. Unlike fleabay, this local site doesn't legally oblige bidders to pay what they bid.

I just can't comprehend that there are people out there willing to outbid each other for my junk

In a word: Fraud.

Hi I have bought and sold hundreds of items eBay all over the world and never had even one problem. My problem is that I can't stop buying things I don't need eg: boats , cars , motorbikes , hotdog machines

I have been doing this for a while. I think it's a great option to earn a bit of extra money for someone who has trouble with face to face interactions with people (which I do, but I'm as user-friendly as can be when I can just communicate with text). I left an awful job earlier this year and have been paying most of my living expenses by selling all the things I no longer need (this included an enormous collection of video games - the special interest I had for most of my life - many of which were rare and valuable, and lots of books and random junk). It has been working out well for me, it feels good to get rid of all the things from my past, clear space and move on, and gives me the means to figure out where I am going.

Honestly, I think the ratio of bad experiences is exaggerated. Despite selling some quite valuable items, many over £100, I have no bad experiences to share - I have sold a couple of hundred things over the last few months and only had to make one refund, which was due to my own mistake. I have come across a few non-payers and had to relist the item but eBay refunds all costs if the buyer doesn't pay so that's only a minor annoyance. The biggest problem I've had with it has actually been regarding shipping prices - sometimes something unexpectedly costs significantly more to ship than I expected so I end up losing money on shipping costs. But I learned from each of those experiences and I'm now more careful about it, weighing my items and calculating international shipping before I list.

I've dabbled a bit with reselling (winning cheap auctions and reselling the items at a higher buy it now price) and made some money doing so. If I wanted to, I could do more of it. If you happen to have a special interest in something which has related items sold on eBay you can really do well at it. For example, I used to love minerals and gemstones, so I know quite a lot about them and also have a good idea of what is valuable and what isn't, so I would hover around the ending auctions in that category to snap up ones which are at a much lower price than their market value (multi-item auctions are the best for this), clean pieces which would scrub up better and take better-quality photographs of them, then resell them at higher prices. It worked quite well.

I've thought about doing this but going to the post office so often to mail things out might be difficult. I know I couldn't now because I got out of the hospital recently and I don't know when I'll be able to walk that far again.

You can get a solution from stamps.com to do mail from home.

I could never do ebay. Too many freaking scams and con artists.

I've never sold on eBay but my brother has and I've bought a ton of things from there. Not once have I ever had a problem and some vendors are simply outstanding! The prices, especially from the United States are insanely cheap and you generally don't have to pay the ridiculous sales taxes on many items if you know how to work the system. I got one particular item from someone in China and the quality and price was out of this world.

It's not hard to tell which buyers are legit and which are not. Just read all the negative reviews someone receives and you can easily see if they are unreasonable or not.

I've used ebay since I was 16, so 14 years now, both as a buyer and as a seller. (Before anyone tells me 16 is against the rules, that was with father's guidance and under his ebay name I'm a good girl).

The positives are, you can make money from things you don't need any more. You can buy things you can't get anywhere else.

The negatives - the hassle of packaging and posting.

I don't think users are necessarily a negative. Ebay has a much stricter set of rules about things now than it used to have, though I hate the current feedback system, it's very unfair to sellers because there are buyers who will negrep for no reason.

In fourteen years of selling, I've sent things all over the world and I think I've only had one customer try to cheat me. That's a pretty good turnover. Sometimes you get a bidder who is slow to pay, or who doesn't pay, and that's a nusiance, but there are procedures you can go to to reclaim your listing fees and to report the bidder. They're very straightforward.

Packing and posting the items is the thing I find most laborious - also photographing, listing, describing.

I would say, if you're listing stuff, look for free listing days. Buy things with your ebay id before you sell, because it's hard for people to know if they can trust someone with 0 feedback - better to get some reps as a buyer before you plunge into clearing your house of junk. Also, take good photos and describe in minute, anal detail. If you're not sure if it matters, put it in the description. State clearly in the description WHERE you ship to, WHAT the postage will be, HOW QUICKLY you expect payment and WHEN you intend to ship items out.

I also strongly recommend you put a note saying all items described as is and please ask all questions BEFORE bidding as all bids are final.

It doesn't discourage all idiots, but if you at least put everything in the item description that you need, you are more likely to get ebay on your side in the case of a problem. And most buyers don't want strikes against them, so will either obey your rules or not bid.

Good luck

So a video camera I sold, I started it at 99c no reserve, and got...99c. So now I have to spend all my pocket money for the week to ship the thing, though it's not free shipping so I'll have $10-20 in paypal. Looking back, too, I could have sold it for more locally on Craigslist or to kids at the local art college, but c'est la vie. However, I won in that I sold an old pair of headphones I bought for $3 for $18, as they're "vintage" and well regarded by audiophiles. I sold a video game cart for approx what I paid for it at Funcoland or Gamestop back in the day, too, 3.75+shipping.

Yay, so the video camera that I would have had to give away for a dollar, the buyer didn't want it anyway, so I get to keep it and try again at selling it. Woohoo. And I don't have to waste ALL my pocket money this week to ship it out.

So in combo with ebay and craigslist, I got something like $115 in my paypal account. In my own paypal account, not my mom's. No credit card or bank account needed. Mind you I can only spend the money online in places that take paypal, but still, not bad. Nothing cost over like $7-10 to mail, too. Some transactions were a bit rocky (ie, one guy took like 2-3 weeks to pay) and I had the guy buy from Russia, too, that was fun, but overall, not bad. The only other thing was, it took around a month without linking my paypal account to a bank account before the $0 limit was dropped. Now it's $500 or something like that. Not bad. I'll probably eventually link it to a bank account, though.

So I highly recommend this. It at least gives you some money to spend online. I even got my dad a birthday present with the money, and myself some new razor blades and razors. Might not be a replacement for a job for most people, but it's something, it'll at least allow you some "pocket money" to use online.