Selling on Ebay
Miserable progress revising the Daily Notes files as I described in my comments for January 2d. See below. But I must remain positive, even in the face of negative work. Sigh. Speaking of being positive, Geoff Fors (internal link) was kind enough to share his conclusions with me about selling on e-bay. This should help many of you:
Selling on e-bay
Hello Tom:
Here are my thoughts about selling on eBay, which I have been doingsince 1999:
You need a PayPal Premier account (external link), the one tied to your checking account. Get a "sacrificial" checking account first which doesn't have much money in it, such as the Washington Mutual free checking account, and use that one to interface with PayPal. That way you won't have to worry about some hacker cleaning out your real checking account, although that's very unlikely anyway.
Accepting money
Taking money from foreign accounts may get you top dollar or get you ripped off. You have two choices:
1. Set your PayPal account preferences to reject payments from foreign accounts, that is, 'accept USA PayPal only.' And set PayPal account preferences, too, to reject payments from people with unconfirmed addresses.
OR
2. Set up an account at BidPay to take money from foreign bidders. This is a Western Union auction payments site, http://www.bidpay.com (external link) Customers pay you through BidPay using their credit cards. No cost to you and BidPay mails you a money order. Otherwise, foreign bidders can pay by postal money order in US Dollars or cash by registered mail.
In either case, foreign or domestic, do not accept personal checks at all. A United States Postal Service money order works best for customers who deal in cash. Require a two week holding period on Circle K, 7-11, grocery store and other unorthodox money orders. This will discourage people from choosing a check or strange money order over a United States Postal Service money order. I have never heard of a forged or fraudulent postal money order, but if you wanted to be sure you could cash it at the post office before you ship the goods.
Shipping
Foreign shipments can be by US Post Office, air mail only. Don't use surface mail, it will take utterly forever and your buyer will be fussing about where his stuff is, if it shows up at all. Put in the auction listing that foreign sales will have no tracking available, and usually no insurance, and that the buyer bears risk of loss if they choose to bid. Also put that you will not falsify customs declarations. It's simpler to put "no foreign sales," but if you want top price for something, you often need to check the "ships worldwide" option at e-bay. FYI, the majority of my deadbeat bidders have been foreign, in fact all but one.
The best method to ship, for me anyway, is FedEx Ground (external link). They gave me an account and a roll of bar code labels and I just drop the boxes off with atally sheet and walk out. They bill me weekly, which helps for income tax recordkeeping. They are cheaper than UPS and far cheaper than the Post Office and tracking is provided automatically. The post office has no tracking, just a delivery confirmation service, but you should always pay the delivery confirmation fee if using US Mail to prove the buyer got his stuff. I give three fixed rate shipping costs in the listing so that buyers know exactly what shipping in the USA will cost. There is also an ebay zip-code shipping calculator that you can set to match your own parameters, but curiously, it doesn't offer FedEx Ground as a choice.
Picture hosting
Don't use eBay's lousy picture hosting. Use the URL of the photos stored on your own server.
That's about what comes to mind at the moment. Hope that this advice is helpful.
Geoff