Can (should I) become an ebay business seller?

se2020

I see a lot of threads on here where people are getting stick for being registered on ebay as a private seller when they are actually running some sort of business. 

What is the opinion on a genuine private seller registering as a business?

I am a genuine private seller. Although,  I do currently have about 1200 individual listings on ebay and about 300 of those are multi-variation listings so I've probably got about 2000 items in total. All are BIN.

Before everyone starts yelling at me,
I have been listing/selling on ebay since 2004. 
A good proportion of my listings have been live for over 10 years.  I tend to list items in spurts so may list 20 items in one day then nothing for 2, 3 or 4 weeks.

I have 1800 feedback over the 25 years.

I sell, on average,  2-3 items a week, 2 being fairly common items plus normally 1 that has had no interest at all for 5yrs+!


The items in my MVL listings are generally my best sellers and at the more expensive end of the tat I sell.


Is there any reason I cannot use a business sellers account on ebay?
Is in in breach of any conditions?

Mainly because I want to keep the mvl listings active.
I also have most of my items listed at prices like £29.99 and I think they will all be less appealing to buyers if the prices change to £31.94
Business sellers are also not subject to payment holds and don't have to use managed postage either.

If I can use a business account,  what are the fees?
If I upgrade will I have to pay listing fees on the items I already have listed?
What are the ongoing costs for keeping listings live?

I don't mind paying a % as a final value fee but I don't want to pay monthly fees for the slow (5yr!) selling items either.

At the same time, I don't really want to remove all the slow selling items from the site. When I do get a sale I normally get a message from the buyer saying how happy they are to have found this item. A lot of the stuff I sell is spare parts so it's nice to help the planet by helping a buyer keep an old thing going!

Hoenir

se2020 said:

 I do currently have about 1200 individual listings on ebay and about 300 of those are multi-variation listings so I've probably got about 2000 items in total. All are BIN.

What are you selling? 

soolin

It is not a question of whether you should or should not be a business, it depends on whether you are.

Those 2000 or so items, are they really honestly your own unwanted items or were any bought with the intention to resell? 

The business fees are shown here

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/fees-business-sellers?id=4809&st=3&pos=1&query=Fees%20for%20business%20sellers&intent=Business%20seller%20fees&lucenceai=lucenceai&docId=HELP1443

the main issue for you will be the cost of all those listings renewing at cost once a month . If all the  items are truly all your old items and will look like that when HMRC get your figures this year , then it pays to stay as a private seller and perhaps reduce your prices so when rounded up for the fees they will look competitive. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

If you are selling your own unwanted things then you don't need need to use a business account.

If you are buying to sell then you should declare your income and ideally use a business account.

If a genuine private seller then you are free to use a private account, eBay might ask you to switch to a business account if they think the volume is too high for the average private seller, cross that bridge when you get to it.  

As an aside it's been hinted at that MVL won't be available to private sellers sometime in the (presumably near) future. 

soolin

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

If you are selling your own unwanted things then you don't need need to use a business account.

If you are buying to sell then you should declare you income and ideally use a business account.

If a genuine private seller then you are free to use a private account, eBay might ask you to switch to a business account if they think the volume is too high for the average private seller, cross that bridge when you get to it.  

As an aside it's been hinted at that MVL won't be available to private sellers sometime in the (presumably near) future. 

That last paragraph is a very good point and if/when it happens is seriously going to hamper a couple of ‘private’ sellers that compete in some of my business categories.

ballisticbrian

I'm way too cynical to comment. Let's just say it's amazing timing to suddenly develop a business from a private account.

Spoonie_Turtle

se2020 said:

I see a lot of threads on here where people are getting stick for being registered on ebay as a private seller when they are actually running some sort of business. 

What is the opinion on a genuine private seller registering as a business?

That's because businesses do that to avoid higher fees and certain requirements that they legally should be fulfilling.

It would be unusual for a private seller to choose to pay higher fees than they need to by having a business account, and potentially imposing more requirements on themselves (although I do know some e.g. soolin offer the same returns policy on private accounts as they do on business accounts, for example, so the latter is not unheard of).

winkowinko

If the definition of a business seller is someone who buys things in order to sell for a profit, how would you class someone who acquires things for free and then sells them? And I'm not talking about theft either.

theoretica

winkowinko said:

If the definition of a business seller is someone who buys things in order to sell for a profit, how would you class someone who acquires things for free and then sells them? And I'm not talking about theft either.

If the things are acquired to sell and would not have been acquired otherwise then business.  The organisations that put bags through the door for used clothes and give something to charity for use of their name are businesses.  But helping a relative with a clear out probably not.

se2020

Seems like I'm being stabbed by the masses already!!

The last items I listed over the last 2 weekends are all parts from a range cooker that I have taken to pieces as I was unable to sell it complete locally.

This comes to a total of 44 separate listings, 
4 of these are multiple quantity listings
2 are multi-variation listings
About 70 individual items in total.

Purchased this cooker new about 5yrs ago for my own kitchen and have now replaced it with a new one.

A look at my other listings finds about 22 (again, some mvl and mq) which are parts from the range cooker before this last one that I have listed. Those 22 listings (40 items?) are at least 10 yrs old.
Would probably been about the same amount when originally listed (70 odd items) and I don't bother to list anything for less than £15 so (over time) a decent value is made in sales.


Looking at my 'orders' at the last items I sold,
The most recent (yesterday) was a interior rear-view mirror for a car.
This was my own car that I bought used, drove for about 4yrs then stripped down to sell the parts when the engine blew up. The engine blew up in march 2019 so that would have been when I started listing parts.
This part sold for £115 so worth listing it.
I still have about 180 parts from this car as individual listings live at the moment.  I would guess I probably had 300 so again, a good value of sales from it although it's taken 6yrs or so to shift half of it.

This is what all the stuff I am selling consists of, items I previously owned and used then strip for parts when they break or I get new ones.
Coffee machine, vacuum cleaner, washing machine etc, 
Taking one of those apart and listing each part can quite easily hit 50-100 listings. 

There are a few things over the years where I have sold the parts for more than the cost of the new machine so I suppose you could say I am making a profit from that (discounting expenses)

But, I'm not worried about hmrc as, on the whole, it's a large loss. The range cooker mentioned above originally cost me £800. Since listing parts only a week or 2 ago I have made over £200 of sales but most of these were made very quickly so I guess that's people who have those parts as a saved search and have been waiting for them to appear. 
I'd expect to make £350 within a month or so of listing then probably 1 or 2 sales a year over the next 5+ years.

Looking at the cost links provided above I'd be spending £000's a month in listings fees as a business seller so I'll just stick with being private for now I think!

RFW

winkowinko said:

If the definition of a business seller is someone who buys things in order to sell for a profit, how would you class someone who acquires things for free and then sells them? And I'm not talking about theft either.

Theft aside, it depends what acquiring means.My brother in law used to get a lot of corporate gifts and would sell them on Ebay, clearly not a business. If he had asked clients if they could give him items that he could sell then that's moving into business territory. If you go to a council tip and scavenge items to sell then that's also a business.If you're not paying for items it's generally how they were solicited and your reason behind getting them in the first place. If it was to resell then it's a business, if it was for personal use and you then didn't like/want/got fed up with, then you're not a business.