For a couple of months now I have been selling my merchandise on ebay. It is going not so bad but lately it is very quiet. Currently I am selling in Germany only. Maybe now the time has come to expand. So I am thinking about offering my merchandise to the entire EU.

 

Can anyone give me advice on this? What should I watch out for. Pro's and Con's. Etc.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Check to see if they offer the international shipping program there. Over here we can ship the item to ebay and they handle the overseas shipping. They even calculate and collect the shipping fees. It's really easy and has helped my sales. 

In the US they have the global shipping program. I would imagine they would have something similar in Europe. I have had some issues with it but it expands your customer base for sure.

In the US they have the global shipping program. I would imagine they would have something similar in Europe.

 

No, we don't, unfortunately.

 

But expanding from Germany doesn't mean you have to take over the world. You can start with e.***. neighboring countries or E.U. countries. This shouldn't impact shipping too much.

My plan is to do a try-out with one set. Offer it to E.U. countries instead of Germany only. The biggest problem/challenge I face is how to calculate the shipping costs. Or does ebay do that for you?

 

How can you select neighbouring countries only?

My plan is to do a try-out with one set. Offer it to E.U. countries instead of Germany only. The biggest problem/challenge I face is how to calculate the shipping costs. Or does ebay do that for you?

 

How can you select neighbouring countries only?

 

You can manually select all countries you want so ship to.

I assume the German postal service has a website that shows all the prices per region... so maybe the easiest thing to do would be to take e.***. the cheapest region (outside of Germany) from their website and make a selection of countries from that region.

Ok... then maybe I will offer the set twice. One ad for Germany only and one ad for neighbouring countries. Cause why would a german pay the higher shipping rate? 

Ok... then maybe I will offer the set twice. One ad for Germany only and one ad for neighbouring countries. Cause why would a german pay the higher shipping rate? 

 

You can specify shipping rates per country, of course :-)

I've been selling internationally via eBay for years and never had any real problems and about half the items were shipped without tracking. To be honest my only troublesome country has only ever been Italy who do have the worst postal system world wide, I mean items I send from the UK arrive in Italy within 48 hours then just float around the Italian postal service for weeks on end and eventually turn up after the customer has opened an INR case / or slashed my DSR's to hell. But you might as well try it and there's two ways you can approach it, send low value items without tracking to get a feel for sending internationally and if the item goes missing or gets damaged in transit it's a very small cost to you. Or send large high end items, fully tracked from drop off until delivery and then if something does happen worse case scenario is you get your money back from the courier service you used ( be careful some couriers only offer you the original purchase cost, so if you bought something for say

Shipping to other EU countries from Germany is about as easy or as complicated as shipping within Germany. Parcel shipping is a flat 15 Euros to EU countries (up to 5 Kg, insured up to 500 Euros), if you sell smaller stuff you can send it as registered letters (different weight categories, up to 60cm per side, all sides combined up to 90cm), low insurance included, higher may be added (for what it's worth, even if it's obviously their fault they'll try to make it yours). Within the EU there is no additional paperwork.

Two more things:

1st: Paypal. They'll charge you a higher percentage for accepting payments from other countries, which might be an issue if you're operating on tight margins. 

2nd: Paypal. When selling internationally, they'll keep your money for a while, at first usually 3 weeks, often even after receiving positive feedback, which can be an inconvenience.