Ebay is a brilliant auction selling site and is one of the most used internet site's today. Here you can buy bid and sell any items you want whether is be cars, make up, clothing items or furniture, the only thing I've noticed is you cannot sell animals.
Navigation.
Once you've signed in or signed up on the top right side there is a navigation bar saying ' buy my ebay sell community contact us help' This will be one of the two navigations you use the most of when being on ebay. Under nether that there is then a search bar with a category drop down menu to quickly find the things you want such as women's clothing, baby items, verticals, music and collectables. You then have 'my ebay' below which show's a summary page of your account, down the left hand side is 'buy lists purchased history sell' each one of these is a drop down menu which is really easy to use with little categories sure as 'bids/offers. Once you have pressed one of these it will load up on the main part of the screen.
If you're on buy, it will come up with what your bidding on, what' ending soon, similar items and the items you didn't win at the end of the listing. In lists this is where your saved sellers are and the items you are watching. Purchased history is pretty sell explanatory as in there everything you have purchased is in there until you delete it, there you can see that you have paid, it's been posted and whether you still need to leave or receive feedback. In sell there is your active items, if you go on there that will show you what you have up for auction, if it has an bids how much and how long it has left until it finishes. Also there is the sold items and unsold items. Underneath all this there is a short cut to your pay pal, selling, close your account and a few others that are sometimes needed.
Listings.
Listings look really simple and are easy to understand, on the left hand side you have the picture or multiple pictures, if you wish to see it closer just click on it and it'll come up with an enlarged picture, if you want to see the other pictures just simple put your mouse over it and the main picture will change. across the top of the listing is the title, underneath that is the item condition, the date it end,s the time it has left, the bidding box, the postage cost, the delivery times and whether they accept returns or not.
Under that is the item description, this is where the seller gets to tell you about the item, for example if it was a clothing item it would sound something like this. 'Top shop black dress size 6, doesn't have tags but has never been worn, is in really good condition, has a zip up the back and a nice mesh detail around the bust, if you wish to know anything else please feel free to ask' That is at it's simplest description.
To list an item it is really straight forward, first you need to choose a category, so if it's clothing lets say just type in top and click the next option of women's clothing. You then need to put in a title for example ' motel rose and ribbon dress size small bnwt' it's easier to use letters like bnwt which means brand new with tags.
Afterwards is the condition which is a drop down menu, in this case you would choose the new with tags option, then further down there is size, brand, colour, length, occasion and more, you do not have to write in each of these, the only ones you have to type in is the size and brand but the more information the better.
You then get to upload a picture for free, sometimes you get the options to upload all pictures for free under that is the description box, you can have different font's, sizes and colours for your writing, it's best to keep it short and simple but straight to the point. When you've done that you start how you want your listing, whether you want it as an auction so people can bid or a buy it now price, the auction you can have starting from £00.01 if you wanted, anything below 99p is free but there is a charge for anything above, the cheapest buy it now price you can set is 99p and it is 40p no matter how high you put it, so even if you had it buy it now £5 there would be a 40p charge added onto your account, auctions can be up to for 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days, the same for buy it now but can also be up to for 15 and 30 days as well. The last thing to do is set the postage price and whether you are posting first or second class.
Payment.
When people pay it will automaticly go into your pay pal that has to be connected to your account when you first join, this is where you will pay your charges and where peoples payment will be made, they should automaticly pay as soon as they win or buy but if they don't pay within a few days you can send them payment details which sends them a reminder message to pay and how much to. There's two ways you can post your items, to whoever has paid you can ask fro their address and take to the post office, or you can log onto your pay pal and create a postage label and print it off and for for it with the money in your pay pal not the money in your bank which is really handy.
Feedback
If your a buying, it's really handy to leave feedback as soon as you've received, this is so the seller knows you've received and that everything is is tip top shape with your purchased items. you can leave positive neutral or negative you also get to rate their service out of 5 for postage, description and communication. You need to be completely honest otherwise it isn't fair. If you are a seller you can only leave positive feedback to the buyer even if they put a negative on yours, if they do it is up to you to message the buyer and correct the situation, you get 5 feedback change requests a year, if they deny the request it will still count as 1 request sent so be careful to get everything right!
Charges
Ebay does have a large and because you have to use pay pal with it, they also have a charge, altogether you get charged about 25% Ebay charges for listings starting over 99p buy it now items classified adverts which are vehicals and they have another charge of 10-15% of the price when the item ends, so if it ends and it sells for 99p you will ahve a 9p charge to pay.
Pay pal also then charge when money goes into your account, they take roughly 24p for every £1 that goes into your account. Pay pals charges are deducted straight from your money however ebay's charges are added up and taken from your pay pal once a month so always make sure you pay the charges before you spend the money beforehand otherwise the charge will come straight from your bank account.
Cases.
You can open disputes with buyers/sellers. if you are a seller and you wish to cancel an item that has been sold you go to 'resolve a problem' here you can either click ' i want to cancel this transaction' or 'payment has not been received' it then goes to the customer service on ebay to sort out. If you are a buyer and you haven't received your item or the quality doesn't match the description but the seller is not prepared to do anything, you can also open a case about this.
Overall
Overall I think that the charges are to high and it's to irresistible not to spend money on there, it's a brilliant way to get rid of new or old unused unwanted items, the customer service is extremely helpful and they always have deals on free listings almost every month, so if you have loads to list it'll be worth waiting for the deal to come up.
ebay.co.uk 
