Is selling on e-bay worthwhile for small items?

[Hulababy]

I have some items of toddler clothes that I though I might try selling on e-bay. But I haven't done it before.

How much does it cost? When do I pay?

Is it worth it?
Is it simple?

Any experts who can give me the low down?

TIA!

I find bundles more cost effective but then it depends on what you want to sell, anything like Boden gets higher prices.

It costs a basic fee dependent on the start price and then more for whatever services/kind of advert you want.

You can set up a dd with e-bay and pay once a month.

I just have 3 items of toddler clothing (2 Quiksilver, 1 Osh Kosh) - no one seems interested on here, which was my first port of call. So wondered about trying e-bay.

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IME, it's only worth it if the clothes are designer/ desirable and in VGC, or if you are prepared to bundle them up and sell them dirt cheap as a lot. Postage depends on weight, so gets quite steep if you send a lot of things, so I found that no-one wanted a bundle of 15 or so VGC babygros from 0-12 months, as the postage would have brought the cost up so much.

If you do decide to have a go selling, then the instructions are pretty simple to follow. I can't remember what proportion of the selling price you pay, but my fees get taken out of my bank account once a month. Every now and then they have a free listing day, which reduces costs a bit.

I'm sure you'll get more advice from hardened sellers- I'm just an amateur!

HTH

Cheers Galaxy.

The clothes are designer, for a toddler though and in excellent condition. Only 3 items. Quite light weight stuff.

Give it a try then!

If you can include a photo of each and be as accurate/ honest in your description as you can. I tend to be wary of sellers with one line descriptions. Always calculate postage in advance and put it in your listing, so the buyer knows how much it will be- wiegh the item on the kitchen scales, look it up on the Royal mail website, and then add a bit more for the cost of the packaging. If you look at completed items, you should get an idea of what sort of price your things will fetch. I pitch the starting price quite low to get people interested, but you have to be prepared to sell your stuff for that price if you only get one bidder!

Age 2 and over sells better than baby stuff IMHO

Have a look on ebay and see if anyone's selling anything similar to your items (must be same make). Click on 'Add to Watch List' and then you can see what they finish for. Sometimes I have items which I think would go for a lot and actually sell very cheaply, just because it's a label which isn't searched for very often (unlike the aforementioned Boden!). Hence, see what others get first before you put them up for auction. Also, the size affects the price you will get: small baby sizes do not sell nearly as well as older children's clothes!

Posts crossed!!

My clothes are aged 2 years. Hmmm.

In the past I have nornmally given clothes away or some of the better things (like these) I have managed to sell on MN.

I think age 2 would sell ok - it's the under 12 months that I sometimes found a problem with.

Could I have a quick description, and indication of how much you'd want for them? Might be able to save you the trouble of ebay...

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here they are on MN

Willing to accept less than on there, especially if wanting more than one item.

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Yorkiegirl - that would be great. I'd rather sort them on MN to people I "know" IYSWIM than give them to strangers. I can post them to you or keep them until another meet if you like. Can normally do postage for free through DH's work though ;)

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CAT sent. Or for faster response e-mail me at claireandrich(at)beeb(dot)net

Just to mention re the suggestion of describing item as 'not Boden etc.' I did this to start with but then suddenly had an item cancelled by ebay as you're not actually supposed to do this. They described it as spamming...
They give you a warning and say if it happens again they will suspend your account or similar. Bit annoying because practically everybody seems to use it as a selling technique and only ocassionally does a random seller seem to get targeted for it.
(It also happened once on an item I was bidding on).

GenT (who posts on here now and again) does a lot of ebay selling and one of her big tips is to include the postage cost in your starting bid figure so it isn't extra - she finds people will buy something with postage included even if it actually costs more that way. (I suppose if you word it as "free postage" it sounds more of a bargain.)

I've just sold lots of baby stuff on Ebay. Designer stuff sells better but then again most of my stuff shifted much to my surprise.

Re the postage I always add a bit to the postage but say what it will be on the item advert thus covering the costs a bit. Ebay charge approx 15p to place the item and an additional 15p to have a 'gallery picture' where it will appear on the browse section. Finally they take their percentage of the final selling price too. I still find it worth it because the stuff would just be lying around otherwise or be off to a charity shop (conscience prick here because apparently one charity shop estimates losing around £50k per year because people sell stuff on Ebay instead). Still I take what is not sold to the charity shops.

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