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Ways to sell
There are 2 ways to get your inventory in front of buyers on eBay sites abroad: you can choose to sell passively or actively. The table shows the differences between passive and active selling to help you decide which suits your business.
| Passive international selling | Active international selling | |
| Listing method | Set postage costs for international destinations | List directly on international site |
| Additional listing fees per site | ✘ | ✓ |
| Listings shown in main search results to buyers on sites other than eBay.co.uk | not guaranteed | ✓ |
| Listings shown in 'International sellers' search results or if buyer selects to include international listings in search results | ✓ | ✘ |
| Create one listing to be shown across all international sites | ✓ | ✘ |
| Separate listing per product, per site | ✘ | ✓ |
| Set different prices per market | ✘ | ✓ |
| Ability to tailor the listing to the local site | ✘ | ✓ |
You can make items visible to buyers on other eBay sites, including the eBay International Market, simply by setting your postage options to offer international postage. There’s no need to create separate listings for individual countries.
Things to consider:
- You can’t set a different price for a different market. The price will be based on your UK selling price and then converted into local currency.
- There’s limited ability to tailor your listing to the local site and the listing will remain in the language of your original listing site.
- Your listing may only appear when a buyer selects international listings in the advanced search options, or when the number of relevant local search results is low.
- Verify that the item you are selling can legally be sold in other markets.
Alternatively, you can list directly on an international site, e.g. US or Germany. You do this by logging on to the appropriate international site (e.g. eBay.com or eBay.de) using your existing or new eBay ID and then list.
This allows you to price your item differently on each site (not just rely on currency conversions), and tailor the listing content to that specific market.
Things to consider:
- You may translate your listing.
- You may pay additional listing and final value fees. The fees vary from site to site and could be higher than your domestic fees.
- You may be subject to domestic postage caps; for example a UK seller (with stock in UK) listing on US will need to state domestic cost for UK -> US when setting postage.
- Consider dividing your stock across sites to make sure you do not oversell. For example, if you have 15 items in stock and you’re selling on 3 sites, you could list 15 on each site which runs the risk of overselling – if 10 are bought on UK, 5 on Germany and 3 on US. If you’re listing on multiple sites you need to ensure you don’t oversell, because when someone makes the highest bid or clicks on the Buy it now button, you’re obliged to fulfil the transaction. So if you have 15 items, as above, you should list 5 on eBay.co.uk, 5 on eBay.de and 5 on eBay.com.
- Keep an eye on currency fluctuations and adjust your listings to reflect them.
- Verify that the item you are selling can legally be sold in the countries where you are selling it.
You can buy a listing upgrade feature called International Site Visibility to maximise your visibility on eBay.com. This feature guarantees your visibility, but doesn’t allow you to set a different price or tailor your listings. Go to the ‘Review your listing’ page to add this option before submitting the listing. eBay.com sellers can also buy this feature for visibility in the UK and Ireland.
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