eBay: The Missing Manual

Sell Your Services on Elance

eBay has a category called Specialty Services, where you can auction off your skills; subcategories include Web & Computer Services, Lessons & Tutoring, Music Composition & Poetry, Custom Clothing & Jewelry, Appraisal & Authentication, Packing & Shipping, and Logo Design, to name just a few. You can offer personalized items (from business cards to T-shirts to mugs), jewelry or antique restoration/repair, video editing, shopping assistance, interior design, personal training, and more. Although legitimate services do appear in this category, a lot of what you'll find here is junk, like eBooks and CDs touting get-rich-quick schemes or effortless weight loss. And if you browse the categories, you'll see that most of the auctions here end with no bids.

If you have a skill or service you'd like to market, there's a better place to do it: Elance (the name comes from "electronic freelance"). Elance is a separate site that helps people and businesses looking for professional help find freelancers with a service or skill to sell. Elance is not a part of eBay—though there's a loose affiliation between the two sites. In fact, the affiliation seems to be getting looser. It's hard to find a mention of Elance anywhere on eBay. Rumors have surfaced and faded that eBay is creating a Professional Services category on its own site, but so far that hasn't happened. When it does, expect the last strings between eBay and Elance to break.

In the meantime, if you want to ...