If you are interested in selling your products on EBay, now is the best time for you to do it. In a recent press release, EBay has announced that it will cut listing prices on its site by up to 50%. This includes listing fees as well as other fees and expenses you may face when selling something on the online auction. EBay's decision was its latest effort to stay competitive against up and coming e-commerce sites, particularly free sites such as Craigslist. The cut in prices will come to EBay on February 20th. Sellers will be able take advantage of discounted auction fees. However, this decrease in fees, will lead to an increase in commission on goods that sell. For example a 5% commission on an item that sells for $100, will now increase to a 7% commission. However, this decreases the risk you have when you list your items for sale on EBay. If your item does not sell, you are not paying such high listing fees, and then losing the money when no one bids on your item.



"A majority of sellers will see their fees go down," said company spokesman Usher Lieberman. "We are basing our success on their success and we want to encourage sellers to list more items with us."

If you live in the United States or Canada then you are one of the lucky ones as these changes will only affect sellers in North America, but EBay hopes to expand these prices changes to the UK and Germany in the next few months.

Because it almost impossible for you to have a face to face transaction through EBay this has led to a slew of frauds and scammers who are only after your money. To help you avoid getting scammed there are certain things you should make sure you do before buying or selling your item.

Firstly, you should always check the person's feedback. In general, I only deal with buyers or sellers with a rating of 95% or greater. You can also see what other EBay members say about the member you are buying from or selling to, so you can be sure that you are informed before you go through with the transaction.

Watch out for new users. Though everyone starts as a new user, some new users are really old scammers who open up new EBay accounts as there old ones gain too much negative feed back. Sellers or buyers from countries like Nigeria or Indonesia are most likely scammers, but don't classify all your buyers or sellers as scammers if they are from these countries, there are still many honest people out there.

There are certain scams you can look out for. One is known as the advance fee scam. This is when a buyer contacts you and claims to be a third party broker dealing with the transaction for his “client.” You will most likely be offered double the price of your item, but the catch is that you must send the “broker” his “commission fees” before you receive the money. After you send the money, you will not hear from him again and you will know you have been scammed.

Though most EBay users are honest, and are truly offering to buy your item, there are a small fraction of users who will try to scam you. The most popular form of scamming on EBay, and on the Web in general, is known as phishing. Scammers try to get you to reveal your personal information, which they then use to make purchases.