The two biggest auction sites, eBay and Yahoo, have sites in multiple countries. Paying and shipping between different countries can sometimes present special problems. Decide in advance where you are heading with your Net auction business.
Sometimes items are listed on the sites of more than one country. For example, here is a script from a Paul Newman movie, listed by a resident of Melbourne, Australia.
First, a listing on eBay Australia...
Then on eBay, United States...
• International Payment
“How much do I owe?” The first problem is figuring out prices in another currency. eBay has a really terrific Universal Currency Converter at… http://pages.ca.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/currencyconverter.html
It works beautifully. Simply insert the amount and highlight your own currency on the left. Put the currency you want to know about on the right. Click your mouse and you have an answer.
• Transfer of Money Safely Between CurrenciesFortunately, there are some payment options which are worldwide…
Visa
These three biggest credit card companies accept payment all over the world.
Western Union
Western Union will send money orders all over the world.
In addition, all four of the companies above will accept online payments. So a buyer in Thailand can pay in bahts and a seller in Austria will receive her payment in schillings. What happens with sellers who don’t accept credit cards? American Express will send money orders that are good anywhere. PayPal can also handle international transactions.
Sellers and buyers can, of course, sell on the eBay and Yahoo sites of other countries. A German is certainly free to sell on eBay Japan and depending on his merchandise, may have a strong marketing reason to do so.
Anyone wondering about whether they want to participate in international auctions might want to check out eBay’s International Chat Board at... http://chatboards.ebay.com/chat.jsp?forum=1&thread=41 Australia:
Think through your transaction before you list anything. When you are testing, it is OK to make only a small amount of money at Net auctions or even break even. But that is definitely not the long term goal of participating in auctions. You want a high profit-generating business.
You are on your way to becoming a really sophisticated seller. And with some simple marketing skills, your income…
…will skyrocket! OK. Let’s keep blasting forward…