Listing your item Expanding your selling options Communicating with buyers Maintaining buyer satisfaction

If you're new to selling on eBay, learn about getting started selling on eBay. Whether you're new or an experienced seller, consider using these tips help you succeed.

Listing your item

• Make sure the item is legal and allowed. If you’re not sure that your item is allowed, check eBay's policies on prohibited, questionable, and infringing items. Make sure your actions on eBay are in line with eBay policies.

• Take one or more pictures of your item in a well lit area. Effective pictures that are sharp and bright will help sell your item. Evenly distributed artificial or natural light is better than a camera’s flash for most items. A tripod steadies your camera and ensures your picture will be in focus.

• Choose the most specific category available to help buyers find your item.  For an additional fee, you can list your item in a second category to maximize your item's visibility.

• Help buyers find your listing with a title that is clear, complete, and descriptive. Say exactly what the item is even if the title repeats the category name and include details such as brand, product name, size, or artist. Imagine you are the buyer when you prepare the title and description for your listing. What would you want to know about the item? What are its most appealing characteristics? What words might you use to search for your item?

• If your item is associated with a product in our catalogue, use product details and a stock photo from our catalogue for your listing description. By including product details you can save time, create a more complete listing description, and make your item more visible to buyers.

• Use our advanced Selling Tools to save time creating and managing your listings.

• Plan your pricing strategy. Search completed eBay listings. You can also visit online stores that sell similar items to help you choose a price for your fixed price or auction-style listing, and decide whether you'd like to set a reserve price.

• Consider using calculated shipping and decide which shipping service you will use. Pack your item for shipping so that you can weigh it and measure the length, width, and height so you have this information when you begin to list it. When you use calculated shipping, you won't need to guess the amount it will cost to ship the item.

• Consider creating your seller's account before you begin listing your item.

• If you want to open your own eBay Store, learn more about selling with an eBay Store.

Expanding your selling options

• Explore listing upgrade features to distinguish, promote, and enhance your listing. Listing upgrades include making your title bold, adding photos, and featuring your items at the top of search results.

• Use multi-quantity listings to list multiple identical items all at once with a Buy It Now price.

• Sell multiple similar items in a single listing by creating a listing with variations. For example, you can list a T-shirt in various sizes and colours in a single listing instead of creating separate listings for each variation. Manage your market. eBay is a global community and you'll need to decide where you want to sell your item and if you want to add buyer requirements to your listing. Learn more about the benefits and processes of selling internationally.

• Offer PayPal as a payment method. We recommend offering PayPal as a fast, easy, and secure way to accept credit card or chequing account payments on eBay. To keep eBay a safe place for both buyers and sellers, new sellers are required to offer either PayPal or a merchant account credit card as an accepted payment method. You can sign up for PayPal before you list your first item for sale, or when you list your first item.

• Use our selling tools to list more items and automate seller tasks. If you want an easy way to manage your growing eBay business, or just need to list a lot of items at once.

Communicating with buyers

• Ensure that you attract the ideal buyer for your item by selecting buyer requirements and using buyer management tools including the blocking buyers feature.

• Check the buyer’s Feedback profile, including detailed Feedback comments from other sellers. See Knowing your buyer.

• Be sure that your contact information and email address are correct and up to date. Check your personal information to make sure it is correct. Also, check that any spam blocking software you have installed doesn't prevent a buyer from communicating with you.

• Plan for alternate computer access. If you have computer or connection problems, or need to be away from your computer, you can access your eBay account using any computer with Internet access. For example, you can monitor your items through the My eBay page using any computer.

• Use My eBay to track of your listings. See Managing your selling activity.

Maintaining buyer satisfaction

• Establishing and maintaining buyer satisfaction will help you build a solid reputation as a trustworthy seller on eBay. Ultimately, a good reputation will help drive your sales activity.

• Sellers are expected to consistently perform in a manner that results in a high level of buyer satisfaction. When a seller lists an item on eBay, and a buyer bids for and wins that item, the seller and buyer have entered into a contract that both members are expected to honour. If the seller doesn't live up to this agreement, it leads to a bad buyer experience that can result in negative or neutral feedback for the seller.

• High buyer satisfaction will help your listing appear in a higher position in our search results when the results are sorted using the default "Best Match." Sellers with high detailed seller ratings within the last 30 days will get higher visibility in Best Match search results than sellers who have lower rates of buyer satisfaction. If your buyer satisfaction level falls below the recommended standard, you will be in violation of the Seller Non-Performance policy.

• Good practices that help you promote buyer satisfaction include:

  	Accurately describing the condition, size, and quality of the item
  	Honouring original terms when you accept payment for an item at the end of a successful sale
  	Promptly shipping the item with appropriate packaging after payment has been received
  	Responding promptly and courteously to questions from the buyer
  	Communicating with the buyer about when the item will ship
  	Issuing refunds in a timely manner if you accept returns or when there are problems with delivery