eBay.com.au for Beginners

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Welcome to eBay.com.au for Beginners

This site is designed to help Australian users start bidding, buying and selling on ebay - the worlds largest auction site.

Inside you'll find tips on:

  • What you should know before signing up
  • Making your first few bids
  • Putting an item up for sale
We also have some tutorials that go through the buying and selling process in more detail, links to useful resources and a help page in case you get confused.

Introduction to eBay

eBay was founded in September 1995 and now has almost 50 million registered users. In 2000 the value of goods traded on the eBay site was over US$5 billion.

The eBay website is so popular because it offers something for everyone. There are millions of items listed on eBay in thousands of categories. eBay can be best described as an massive electronic trash and treasure market.

How eBay Works

The basic idea is that eBay creates a virtual environment for millions of buyers and sellers to come together so that they can access a huge market for their goods and their money.

Here is the basic process of buying and selling items on eBay.

Sellers list available items: The seller pays a small listing fee (from 35 cents) to list their item, fills out a quick form, posts a picture of it, and that's it. Additionally, the buyer can pay extra to have his item listed in bold print or get it on the list of "Featured Auctions" at the top of the page.

Buyers search through items: From there, the buyers search for the item they're looking for in over 4,000 categories and place their bids.

Bidding process: Like a traditional auction, the bidder who places the highest bid in the allotted time wins, except that, unlike a traditional auction, the bidding does not extend at the end of the time period regardless of how many people bid right at the end of the auction.
A lot of the bidding on eBay is called proxy bidding. This means that when bidding, a buyer can enter the maximum amount he's willing to pay for an item. But instead of instantly putting your high bid on the item listing, eBay will list your lower bid. If anyone makes a higher bid, eBay will automatically increase your bid for you until it hits your maximum.

After the auction: the seller and the buyer contact one another by email and arrange for delivery. The buyer sends the seller a payment by one of a number of ways set out by the seller. The seller sends the merchandise. At that point eBay charges the seller's account a small percentage of the final sale price.

After delivery: the buyer and seller give feedback on the transaction at eBay, which serves as a reference for future buyers who might want to get other things from the seller. High ratings are very important for future sales.

Next: Signing Up