Diary of starting a new selling id.

[chameleon54]

Its not often we start a new selling id from scratch and with the major changes to ebay over the last couple of years it is difficult to get reliable information on what to expect from a new selling account.

The intention of this thread is to catalogue what happens when with ebay and how long it takes to get sales happening. 

Background - this is a completely new account set up to sell used books on behalf of a small, local not for profit organisation. The account is not linked to any others so is a genuine new account. I have joined the organisation to assist with establishing an ebay presence and will be volunteering my time. While initially I might need to spend a reasonable amount of time setting the account up and getting a few listings up, the intention is to eventually only spend two to three hours per week on the account.

I expect it to take six months to establish reasonable sales and eventually hope to sell an average of $150 per week.

[chameleon54]

Its taken several months to work through a committee and get things happening but this week we finally got the account live. It is still required to use paypal and is not " eligible " for managed payments.

I listed the first item for sale and " BANG"!!!!  The account was suspended. A couple of hours later we received the " kiss of death " message that the account was being permanently suspended along with any other accounts that might be linked with it, due to the fact that it posed a risk to ebay users safety and security.

No explanation of what the issue might be, but I suspect it was due to the accounts status as a not for profit, along with several different names of office bearers included in the sign up process. Luckily the account was set up at the club secretaries office and so my selling accounts where saved, but it gave me a huge scare. Having heard all of the horror stories on the forums, I thought that account was gone for good and it might be very difficult to register another one.

Half an hour on ebay chat and having been transferred to some-one in ( I suspect ) Australia the account was re-instated. The account is a business account and while we still have to tweak a couple of things, as it stands we are able to list 50 items per month with a sales cap of $5000 per month. Much better than expected considering we are relying on the standard 40 free listings per month for now.

I will be away for much of next week, so no listings until I return in a week or so.

[chameleon54]

Probably worth noting that as expected funds from sales will come under the 21 day hold process. This lasts for a period of 90 days but this can be extended if standards are not met.