Its very easy to say when you start a new venture 'well I'll just kind of pick it up as I go along, and that can be fine with some things but not really with eBay. And I'll tell you why.

• If when you start with eBay you use your own name when signing up (and I don't mean in the 'user name' box) but when they want to know who they are dealing with (its private) then if you kinda mess up in the beginning it just kinda gets you off to a bad start from the beginning.

So lets try and avoid that shall we? Good, then here goes:

This first bits important. There are basically two procedures on eBay.

1. One is selling stuff, and the other is guess what?

2. Buying stuff. Well done.

Now heres the important bit.

After a transaction takes place it is customary (not mandatory) for the Seller and the Buyer leave feedback about each other. But, and this is a big 'But'

1. The seller is not allowed by eBay to say anything bad about the buyer

2. But the buyer can say anything they want to about the seller.

Yes I know that its not fair but don't blame me I didn't write the rules.

So to cut a long story short;

If you start off as a seller and you are not quite sure what you are doing (which lets face it you probably will not be at the beginning, right?) and you mess up a bit and get bad feedback that is going to be difficult to overcome from the get go right?

So do this instead

Start off as a buyer.

Just buy a few small things and wait for the seller to leave you some nice feedback for two reasons;

• You get some credibility, because the seller is going to say nice things about you so that he is sure that you will say nice things about him, right?

• You learn how the system works so that when you do start selling you do not mess up and then get bad feedback (which trust me will in no way help your future with eBay).

The Second Tip

If you are going to buy stuff on eBay to resell on eBay do this two things;

1. Have two separate accounts. One to buy on, and one to sell on, so that people who are considering buying that $50 purse cannot look at your recent purchases and see that you bought it last week for $15

2. Try if possible not to resell recent eBay purchases straight away but if possible don't resell for 15 days because anyone can search eBay's latest sales of any sort of items that took place within the last 15 days, so again you don't want them to see that you only got it within the last 15 days do you?

Good Luck,