Chapter 23

Setting up your business operations

Before you begin selling on eBay, take the time to set up your business for future success. While some of these operations may not seem important now, you may regret not having established them prior to getting busy selling your products and dealing with your customers. Even if you have an existing business outside of eBay, some of these steps should still be completed now.

Register as an eBay business

In chapter 1 we completed registration together. You’ll notice we included the option to register as an eBay business. One of the main advantages of this is that you are able to add your business name to your account, which means correspondence from you to your customers appears more professional and your invoices from eBay will be addressed to your business name, making it easier for tax calculations. In some eBay markets, registration as a business is mandatory if your sales turnover exceeds a set amount. While this is not yet the case in Australia, it’s something to bear in mind for the future.

If you have already registered as a seller on eBay and want to convert your account to business, this can be done by clicking My eBay at the top of any eBay page. Hover your mouse over the Account tab then click Personal information (if you are registered as a business it will appear as Business information). Click Edit next to the information you want to change.

Register as a PayPal/ Paymate business

If you haven’t registered as ...

Get The New ebay: The Official Guide to Buying, Selling, Running a Profitable Business now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.