You should now have an eBay account and a PayPal account.  And I presume some of you might have also spent some time checking eBay site and try to get more familiar with eBay concept as a whole.  Very good!

Now, here’s a tip which I found to be really important.  Before you start selling items, especially expensive ones, you must make sure that you have at least gathered 20 (some advised this to be 50) or more feedback score.

Your eBay feedback score says a lot about the type of seller/buyer you are. An increased score with a high percentage of positive feedback indicates that you are an honest person and that the transaction will go smoothly.

No doubt, there are few instances where a newly registered eBay member who had been able to sell a product worth $500 or more, on her first auction.  Yet, the logic is this:  Most people in eBay won’t buy from anyone with zero or minimal rating of feedback.  Imagine that you make a payment to someone who is relatively new to you and new in the market, and that someone then closed his eBay account without sending you the item you have already paid for and runaway with your money.  Of course, eBay will refund you the money, but that will only happen once it has completed all its investigations satisfactorily.  Sometime, this so-called investigation takes a month to complete!

So, please do so if you are all eager to start selling things on eBay.  But a personal advice is it would be wiser if you concentrate on getting and increasing your feedback score.

Here is a cost-effective way to boost your feedback rating:

1. Go to ebay(dot)com.  Look for ‘Advanced Search’ which should be at the top section of the site.  Click it.
2. Fill in a relevant keyword or select a relevant category, for example: ‘Books’.
3. Go down further and you will see ‘Price’ section.  Fill in: from $0.01 (or you may leave this field blank) and to $0.01.  This will tell the search robot to only list items with maximum price of $0.01.
4. Go down further and check the section ‘Show results’.  Check for ‘FREE SHIPPING’ under the ‘Shipping options’.  However please re-read the auctions as there are some who state free shipping still add shipping costs.
5. Feel free to experiment with the advanced search.  But I believe the steps revealed above should be adequate to provide you with a listing of items costing $0.01 or so for us to bid.  Remember the goal is to collect feedback!
6. Basically, for a dollar, we should be able to have 100 feedback.  Politely ask the seller to leave feedback for you. If you have bought and received an item and left feedback for the seller, and not received feedback in return, contact the seller and politely ask him to leave you feedback. Most eBay sellers will understand and will give you one promptly.

[ Tips: Based on my on-going experience, it is better to buy only one item from one distinctive seller in one month. This is because, although we bought 10 items and subsequently received 10 feedback from that particular seller, the feedback score will only count as ONE feedback since the purchase is made from one seller.]

[ More Tips: At the same time, try to start by selling inexpensive items first, but BEWARE of the fees involved.  If you don’t do it properly, you may end up incurring losses after deducting the eBay fees involved. But, if you do it right, you will be able to start writing the long awaited ‘goodbye note’ to your boss sooner than you think.]