Welcome to the Beginners Guide to Buying and Selling on eBay. eBay is an online auction where you can buy and sell almost any item you can think of, whether you're looking for a new digital camera or you want to sell your old pair of skis. eBay gives you a place to connect with people who are selling what you want or you who want to buy what you have. You can search for items on eBay without signing up for anything but in order to actually purchase something or put something up for sale, you need to create an account.

Entering your personal information like your name, location, phone number, email address and then select your eBay username. This must be unique, so if it’s not available just choose a new one. Create a password and then choose and enter a secret question that will be used if you forget your password. Entering your date of birth, entering the security digits and after you read and accepts the user agreement and privacy policy check this box and click on register, that’s it. You now have your very own eBay account.

Let’s get right into performing a search for what you're hoping to buy on eBay. You can simply enter in what you're looking for here like a digital camera. And eBay will automatically search all categories. This may give you too many irrelevant results though, so you can scroll down and select the category it belongs in like cameras and phones and then click on Search. Here, you'll see a long list of results. You can narrow down your results by refining it, by selecting subcategories that it fits into. In this case, it’s digital cameras. You can also add a price range, a specific condition like new use or not specified and if you know of a specific seller on eBay, you can enter in their ID here and choose to only search through items they’re selling.

You'll also see related searches here of what you can choose as well. The advance search option allows you to enter in exact words that you want included in your results or even excluded. They're also price options, buying and shipping options and you can do a location base search to look for items within a certain distance from your zip code. If you're looking for something specific, make sure you narrow down your results, it will make things better and easier for you in the long run. In the second episode in the series, I covered how to make searching for items on eBay a little easier. You can customize the way your search results appear. Right now, we’re viewing results in a list view but you can change that to a gather view or a snapshot view.

You can also sort it by time left in the auction, price, distance, and payment options. You can also select certain items you don’t want to show. Just click on what you do want and then move it over into items to display, do the opposite to remove it. You can also reorder them by moving them up or down. And choose how many items you want to appear in your item view and snapshot view. You can also customize item information, seller information and view advanced options. When you’re all through, click on apply changes. If at any time you want to go back to the original settings, just click on Restore Defaults.

Once you find an item you’re interested in on eBay, click on the item to view more information about it. Here, you'll see more of a description and if the seller has added any photos. You may also see something that says Buy Now. This means that you can purchase the item now at this price and not have to wait for the auction to be over. You'll also see information about the seller. This is important because you want to make sure your purchases are from people who can be trusted to send you the item you’ve bid on. You can also see how many things they sold and the percentage of positive feedback they have received as well as how long they’ve been a member of eBay. You can view a detail feedback page with ratings and comments.

You also have the option of asking the seller a question about the item. You can add them as a favorite seller, so you can find their items again later. And you can view other items they're selling on eBay. If you're unsure if you want to bid on something, you can choose to watch the item, so you can view the biding action and decide if you want to place a bid later. When you’ve decided that you want to place a bid on an item, there are a few steps you need to go through. On the items page, you'll see the current bid price if there is one, you need to obviously bid higher than this bid if you have any hopes in winning the auction. You'll see the minimum price you can bid here, enter on the amount and click on place bid. Make sure it’s the item you want to buy and make sure you look at the shipping cost and payment method the seller accepts. Once you clicked on confirm bid, you're basically signing a virtual contract but if you're the highest bidder, you'll be responsible for paying the seller for the item. So, make sure you want to purchase the item before you confirm your bid otherwise you'll be known as a bad buyer and sellers won't want to accept your bids in the future.

In the first five episodes in this series, I covered searching for items and placing your first bid on an item on eBay. Now, I'm going to show you how to place an item up for auction on eBay. Click on start selling, enter in at least three keywords that describe what you're going to be selling, I’ll do camera, electronics and Sony or you can click on browse categories and select from this provided categories and then click on continue. Now, enter in more information about your item. I’ll enter in my camera brand, the product line, the resolution, you can click search from here or you can skip this step can choose a form. If you want a lot of options and then choose the first option. These include ways to attract sellers and the option to add a lot more photos. But there's an upgrade to do this since you're a beginner, let’s go with the simple form.

To see how to finish your eBay add, check out the seventh episode in this series. In the sixth episode in this series, I covered how to get started placing an ad for an item you’d like to sell on eBay, let’s get right into finishing up placing your item for auction. Create a descriptive title for the item you’re selling. Next, you can add photos which is always a good idea. The first photo is free but after that there’s a nominal fee, click on browse and select a photo from your computer. And then click on upload. You can also add a gallery display but there's also small fee for this as well.

Now, enter in a condition of item you’re selling and add more information like the type, the brand, the resolution and so on. You can also add items that come with it, check yes, if you have a warranty to go along with it and you can add more descriptions here. Now, set a starting price for ht auction and how long you’d like it to last. You can offer free shipping by entering in zero here or enter how much you want the buyer to pay for shipping and select your shipping method. You can also offer to allow the buyer to have seven days to return the item. Now, enter in your PayPal ID so the payment can be sent directly into your PayPal account. PayPal is s service that is widely used to send and receive money. To setup a PayPal account, go to www.paypal.com and create an account. And here, you’ll see the fee for your listing and when you're done, click on save and preview. And this is a preview of the auction.

From here, you can edit your listing or continue. And then enter in your payment method PayPal, credit or debit card or bank account. Well then receive a confirmation call to confirm you identity, this will only happen the first time you place an item up for auction, after that you're all set. The ‘My eBay’ section allows you to keep track of all your eBay activity. You can customize it to make it work best for you. If you go to your page options you can choose what yo do or don’t want displayed on your page. You can choose to display things like what you’re watching, biding on, auctions you didn’t win and auctions you did win.

You can also active items your selling, things you’ve sold or things you haven't sold. You can also choose to display your profile, messages, buying and selling reminders etcetera. And then choose how many of these auctions you want displayed. You can also choose the colors of your page click on edit and select the color you like best. You can also reorder these sections by moving them up or down, or by clicking on them and dragging and dropping into a different order.

You can also collapse the modules by going back to the edit and clicking on collapse. Do the same to expand them. You can do that with these modules as well. The general settings options allow you to choose what page of my eBay will be displayed by default. You can choose a summary of all of your activity which is what were looking at now or choose what you're buying, selling, save searches and so on. This is your page on eBay so make sure you make it look just the way you like. All of your activity on eBay is sort in your My eBay section. You can access it by hovering over this button and selecting what you're looking for. You can find the summary of all of your activity on eBay, items you watching, binding on, selling and your favorites.

The messages tab allows you to be in your inbox as well as your sent and unread messages, your flag and your saved messages. You can flag messages by clicking on the flag and view messages from a particular time period. Your account tab is where you can update your personal information. You can change your registration and shipping addresses. And setup your various notification and site preferences. You can also access your PayPal account and so on. You can navigate through different parts of your My eBay that you’ve gone through by clicking on the navigation links up here.

The eBay community gives you a place to connect with other buyers, sellers and eBay staff. You can search for other eBay members by entering in their eBay ID here. You can browse through the eBay neighborhoods which is place to find light minded people to connect with. For example, if you were a coffee lover and then you could choose to join the coffee lover’s neighborhood. You can join in discussions and check out other members of the neighborhood.

You can also customize what's called My eBay World. After you start using eBay for a while, you'll start to see your activity here. You can add in image that represents you either from your computer or one of the provided icons. You can add various modules, like the neighborhood you belong to and your favorites. You can even choose to create a first blog entry. You can change the theme and the lay out by selecting a two or three column page and then using the arrows to place the modules where you like. Make sure you click on save, the community section is also where you can take part in discussion boards, join groups, ask and answer questions from other eBay users, find other members blogs and even take part in chat rooms. If you become an active eBay user, the community is a great way to make your experience better and maybe get some great tips and advice on buying and selling goods.