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eBay just announced in a new announcement in late October, that they will be removing sellers with a detailed seller rating (DSR) of less than 4.1 in any category. So basically if you get burned by a buyer who wants to be a jerk and rate you bad without giving you a chance to resolve the issue, and your DSR falls below a 4.1, you can forget about listing any products for sale! Crazy!

I don’t know what exactly eBay hopes to achieve with all of these policies. If their goal is to upset sellers, and make them leave the site, then I would say they are doing very well at achieving this goal.

Plus, telling sellers which payment methods they can accept seems a bit harsh. Don’t get me wrong- I use paypal almost exclusively on eBay. I tend to get annoyed when people ask to send a money order, because 9 times out of 10, they never do! You wait for weeks, email them, and then finally they say, “Can you just cancel the order.” It is very frustrating. That is why I accept only paypal.

But at the same time, it doesn’t seem fair to other sellers who may want to accept other payment methods other than Paypal or one of eBay’s accepted methods. Oh well.

I guess as the saying goes…We sellers gotta roll with the punches. The only problem is, eBay is punching so hard that I am afraid one day we are not going to be able to get back up!

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Posted under Making Money, eBay

This is a great question about eBay I recently replied to:

I plan on selling a lot (i mean a lot) on ebay and I was curious to the amount of income or the amount of items i recieve/sell to be “bumped up” to a business or retail status. If someone could give me a dollar amount or number of items, i would be very pleased. I have looked over the ebay site and could not find a whole lot on this.

In general, I do not know of any dollar amount that requires you to be a business.

The only time eBay factors in your dollar amount is if they consider your powerseller status. You can be a powerseller whether or not you have a personal or business account, and eBay doesn’t usually differentiate between the two account at all to my knowledge. They never tell you suddenly you need to be a business.

In terms of tax purposes, the dollar amount only matters if you are making income. For example: You sell $10,000 a year of your own personal stuff, but it is all stuff you have already purchased for $11,000. In that case, you only got some of your money back on stuff you already owned and didn’t make income (a $1,000 loss).

However, if you buy stuff and resell (like buy something for $10 and sell for $30), then you have made $20 income or “capital gain”. IRS (and potentially local state business license rules) require you to disclose all of our income to them.

So if you made a $1 profit, technically you are supposed to report it to the IRS (although I suspect most wouldn’t report that amount).

In terms of a business license, check your local courhouse/municipality for income requirements. Most locations require you to have a business license and sales tax registration if you make more than $3,000 in income per year.

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Posted under Making Money, eBay