Shipping Overseas Shipping overseas is definitely more of a problem, but many businesses ship a considerable amount of their products outside the United States. So, unless it’s simply impractical—for instance, you’re shipping guns, or those marble and granite slabs we mentioned earlier—you should probably consider it. A few things to watch for include the following: ■ This probably won’t be a surprise, but it’s more expensive to ship outside the country. It’s still viable for high-value goods, but not so much for low-cost goods. ■ It can take a long time to ship to the other side of the world. To get a general idea just how long, take a look at the post office’s International Priority Mail and International Express Mail services, which provide fairly quick shipping times at a reasonable cost. ■ Don’t forget customs declaration forms. This is one more step needed before you can ship overseas. And also be aware that some countries want to charge a custom’s duty on items. Buyers must be aware that they are responsible for these fees; there’s no practical way for you to deal with them. ■ Some third-world countries, such as Canada, have a tendency to stop everything crossing their borders and try to extract a fee. ■ Consider fraud. Though not a shipping issue, fraud is still an important concern. Western Europe has very low fraud rates, but some countries (we might mention eastern Europe) have very high rates. This is something we talk about in more detail in Chapter 18. The major shipping services provide customs forms online. For instance, to find the U.S. Postal Service custom forms, visit http://webapps.usps.com/customsforms/. You can even fill in the form online and print out the completed document. Finally, we’re done! We’re now ready to sell through eBay. In the next chapter, we’ll look at exactly how to go about listing your products on the site. Chapter 5 Listing Your Items Effectively I n this chapter you’re going to learn how to submit an item for sale in eBay. There’s a lot to cover. We’re going to discuss how to create your photographs, the different ways in which you can list items, how much eBay charges, how to enter information and pictures for your listing, specifying payment and shipping, and so on. This chapter is not intended as a quick step-through process. We’re going to show you the process step-by-step, but we’ll be stopping and explaining various concepts and issues in detail as we go. So, we advise you read through this once before you begin listing your first item, otherwise eBay may timeout and make you start again. Creating Your Photographs You’re going to need photos of the products you’re selling; you can try to sell without pictures, but you’ll regret it—in general they’re unlikely to sell well. In many cases you can get product photographs from a supplier; in many other cases, you’ll have to get the photos yourself. That’s not necessarily difficult. You don’t need the very best digital camera for your pictures. Digital photography has advanced tremendously over the last few years, which means the top-end equipment is amazing . . . but it also means that good equipment, good enough for taking pictures to post on a web page, is cheap. The basic requirements are pretty simple: ■ 2.0 megapixels Get a camera that produces images with 2 megapixels or more. ■ Optical zoom Optical zoom is more important than digital zoom. ■ Macro mode Macro, or close-up, mode, lets you take photographs very close to the object, allowing you to get fine details.
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