eBay Auction Home Business Tutorial: Should You Accept Paypal, Checks, Or Money Orders?
2 min readRunning a successful eBay auction business, like any other business, depends on keeping your cash flow flowing! To do that, you've got to decide how you'll ask your customers to pay for their items after the purchase. You've got quite a few options, one being the acceptance of personal checks.
I accept personal checks for eBay auction payments, so do many other eBay sellers, and it's my recommendation that you do so as well. We live in an electronic age, but many people just are not comfortable sending payments over the Internet. Accepting personal checks means you have more prospective buyers.
If you choose to accept checks, you should do two things immediately. First, decide on your check acceptance policy. Second, make this policy clear in your eBay auction posting.
It's a good idea to hold off on shipping a buyer's item until their check clears. If you do this, make it crystal clear in your eBay posting. This can take anywhere from 7 – 14 days, and you may want to check with your local bank to get an estimated time for check clearance.
If you choose to take money orders, remember that there are a lot of different companies and banks that sell them. I personally find them more of a pain to deal with than they're worth, but many eBay sellers do accept them.
The electronic payment system many eBay sellers choose to use is Paypal. eBay likes that, since eBay owns Paypal. Beyond that, though, Paypal does extend options that other payments do not.
When you accept Paypal, your buyers can pay you immediately, and as eBay sellers, we love that idea! Paypal is not free, though. They're going to charge you a fee, and the fee is a percentage of the sale. This fee is a little higher for international orders as well.
My personal experience with Paypal has been good overall, and I'd estimate 80% of my buyers use it. Since I sell ebooks on eBay, my customers know that they can use Paypal to pay for the item immediately, which means that they can access the ebooks that much faster, which in turn means they're more likely to buy. It's a good deal all around.
Paypal has its detractors, and I'd like to see eBay allow sellers to use other electronic payment systems such as Google Checkout. I admit I'm not holding my breath for that to happen! With all its drawbacks, I find Paypal an indispensable tool for successfully making money with eBay auctions.
Some eBay sellers do not accept electronic payments, but the majority of them do. A good's it idea A visit to https://www.paypal.com and . Read about the various fees they 're take from each sale. Once you do that, you can make an informed decision to the question, "To Paypal or not to Paypal, that is the question!"