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I agree with you Lighthouse24, Ebay is a great place to buy and sell. One of my recent transaction was to buy ink for my printer, I paid 25% of full price on Ebay. There are some great Ebayers and fantastic deals.

My thought is that scams make up maybe 15 to 20 percent of the ebay sellers (maybe less if you only deal with sellers in the U.S.). It's a business risk in that venue, and risks exist in every marketplace (for example, I've had four scam attempts in ebay -- none successful, and all were far easier to deal with than the two attempted robberies we had at physical locations).

One way to do what CorpCons suggests (i.e., show you are legit) is to demonstrate on your ebay storesite that you are a real business with real people. Most scammers don't display their names, addresses, photos, community affiliations, etc. because they're hiding. Successful small business owners (even owners of e-commerce sites) want to really get to know their customers, and they allow their customers to get to know them. This builds trust, credibility, and a solid reputation.

I know about scams on ebay, I lost more than $300.

The Ebay contradictory is they want you to pay via your Paypal account, but if the things turn bad, you have a poor compensation from them. Now if you pay and with your credit card at least you can dispute the charge.

Powerseller on ebay for over 5 years now. Do it for a living. 8/15,000+ feedback...I buy my products in large quantities and offer them in combination packages not found in retail stores. If you find the product you're selling is all over ebay -avoid it -especially if readily available in retail stores. Whatever your IDEA is that hardly anybody else on ebay is doing is what sells. If not your own creation, do NOT compete on price (only) unless you're buying power is EXTREMELY leveraged to almost the price point of the landed cost of imports. Emerging trend is that SOME retail manufacturers/distributors send in a shill (relative, friend, largest vendee) with a grey market account as an additional revenue stream and kickback to them. You could be competing with your supplier w/o knowing it...

At my current GSR level of about $26k/mo. I am paying combined ebay/paypal fees of over $3k/mo. My customers are returning at the rate of about 15%/mo. (5yr. following). I have to list a product 2.5x for 7 days before it sells at the ebay SP average for that product. If you don't maintain at least a 33% auction closing rate you will lose money.

Use an automated listing tool/management system like Selling Manager Pro or Blackthorne.

Get a UserID as close as possible to your website name. Use ebay as an advertising tool to steer to your website as much as possible while sticking to ebay's rules against it.

Be prepared for cutomer service. Track everything. Be aware of the BUYER 2 for 1 Combined Shipment Scams for mail &/or INTERSTATE/INTRASTATE FRAUD run on the SELLER.

...and be prepared to pay your "dues" to learn all these things for at least the first year. After that, you should begin to have more business than you can handle if you play your cards right...

I'm the owner of a local Washington DC eBay Drop-Off Consignment store since 2005. We have over 1200 consignors and maintain a powerseller rating on ebay with over 4000 items sold since 2005. The other posts in this thread are correct; it can be tricky, unfair at times and yes profitable. Any powerseller on eBay will tell you that using common sense, avoiding suspicious emails warning about your account has been comprismised "click here ot unlock it" and be wary of buyers feedback transaction comments. Ebay has some great tutorials available to help someone get started selling on their site and stores like mine often hold classes for people interested in doing it for themselves. BE CAREFUL eBay will not tolerate the listing of any name-brand items which have the appearance of being a knock-off. The eBay VERO program reviews auctions and can end your listing at any time if the manufacturer suspects your item is a knock-off or fradulent/tampered with such as a DirecTV receivers that have been modified with additional storage HD space or offer an access card in the listing. Happy Selling!

I find that ebay is not always an easy company to deal with. I had a problem with them over charging me on billing. Be careful what you sign up for on ebay. They are not bashful about hidden charges, and they are not very responsive when you question them.