You are required to pay a small one-time fee before selling but that works to deter scammers.

The have done very well protecting me the one time I had a problem with a seller, their shipping is kept fair and honest for both the seller and the buyer (no $200 items for $1 with $400 shipping). Just a whole lot easier.

As for the whole auction thing, well I have never been a fan of them. Set your price, someone wants it and pays it and its done. I see no point in making people bid up something as long as I get what I want for it that is all I care about.

Try it you may like it. eBay is going the way of the dodo especially with their fees, poor support, hoops you have to jump through when a bidder doesn’t pay not to mention all of the cr@p that is listed by morons trying to make a living selling made in China knickknacks.

This is for those who feel (or suspect) that selling on eBay is hard. If I were new to selling, the article and reader comments would totally scare me off eBay – so I’d like to add a bit of context from my own experience, and hope it helps a few folks.

I’ve bought and sold occasionally on eBay for over nine years. When I started selling, the above concerns about the selling experience were absolutely true. Selling was difficult at best and often infuriating – selling functionality and help were confusing, you had to devise your own recordkeeping process, there was a considerable amount of risk, etc. That’s why third-party services such as Auctiva, Andale and Vendio found such a market. eBay finally wised up, and in recent years has completely streamlined the selling process. They’ve added workflow tools; the ability to create templates; a fulfillment process; payment services (PayPal); seller protection; and integration with USPS & UPS such that (IMO anyway) the average novice can start selling with a minimum of homework. I dropped the third-party selling app long ago, and my selling effort is pretty much limited to marketing my item – i.e., taking a few pictures and writing an accurate description. My saved template takes care of most of the rest. I’d like to offer two eBay selling tips in addition to all the good ones above:
1) Completed auctions are a great resource for description and price – you can see the recent range of prices (successful and otherwise) and see how the higher-selling items were marketed/described
2) If the item is valuable and you don’t want to let it go for a fraction of its worth, use Reserve Price in combination with a low starting bid. Reserve Price does cost $2 and does annoy some buyers (some will even ask what the reserve price is and get cranky if you choose not to tell them) but for me it’s worth knowing that any sale will be at least for the minimum I set.

I have used Craigslist and yes it’s easy, but if I want the best return with the least risk and least overhead, eBay is my choice.

When I’m the seller, I won’t deal with a customer who has unpaid item strikes or other payment issues. When I’m the buyer, I won’t deal with a seller who has a history or no or slow shipments or product quality issues.

Ebay does allow you to filter bids from customers that you’d rather not conduct business with – eg, out of country, those without PayPal, those with insufficient history or negative ratings, etc.

If you look in your text widget, where you pasted the Flikr badge code, you should see something like this:

.zg_div {margin:0 5px 5px 0;width:117px;}

Change that to:

.zg_div {margin:15 auto;width:117px;}

That gives it a bit of room up top and bottom, the 15, and the auto says to give it automatic margins on the left and right. I just tested it in firebug, that should do the trick for you. Keep up the good work.

As always to give good evaluations. I though I was unique in not wanting to bother with eBay. I just put up something on Craigslist. It was very easy to do.

I also like the design of your new blog. Did you notice that today that Blurb Books is accepting PDF from InDesign?

Thinking of places to sell. Have you tried the NAPP forums. They do have the small section. You could always try there first, give it a few days if nothing happens go to ebay.

I’ve had lots of success on Craigslist. In fact I hardly ever use e-bay anymore. When delivering or picking something up, I always have the person come to my office during the day, or meet a neutral, populated area such as Best Buy parking lot. I usually bring someone with me as well. For furniture or larger things, I open the garage and put it out in the driveway when they are on the way. I then close the garage and my dog lets me know when they arrive. The person never sets foot in my house or garage.