The first thing to recognise is that there are about one million people who currently depend on eBay for all or part of their income, so you are going to come up against some stiff competition.

Your first challenge is to identify a suitable product to sell. We all know that you can buy practically anything on eBay, but peddling useless tripe is not going to make you rich. One of the best strategies is to sell unusual, difficult to find items at a discount. This will allow you to minimise competition and focus on a target market.

The next useful tip is to make sure you keep your costs low. Don’t fill up your house with a massive amount of stock, instead begin by selling a small amount to see how you go. At the early stages of your selling career it is very important to minimise your risk.

Many eBay sellers post confusing titles for their auctions. A great piece of advice is to keep it simple and leave the marketing spiel out. This will help serious buyers find your product, because they will type the brand/model number into the eBay search engine.

Don’t worry, you are not alone. Plenty of people feel hesitant when they want to sell on eBay, but with a little guidance and practice you will be up and selling in no time.

Here is a quick guide for how to sell on eBay.

Login to your account.

Click ‘Sell’ at top of page.

Choose ‘sell at auction’ or ‘fixed price’, depending on the method you want.

Choose the category you want to sell the item in. Make sure it is appropriate.

Fill out the ‘item specifics’  - details about the item.

Choose a photo to accompany the listing. You will simply click ‘browse’ and navigate to the photo.

You can now select a theme for the listing if you like – eg a border and design, or you can leave it blank.

Finally, input the postage and handling information.

Click ‘submit listing’ and your auction will go live!

Here is a quick eBay Xbox games buying guide.

First of all, you may want to build an impressively large Xbox games collection, but you probably can’t afford to buy every game you see.

Because of this, you need to prioritise your game shopping. Sit down and work out a list of the top five games you want to buy, and then you can begin shopping. Try to make sure the games you buy are ones you will play for a while, and hence are good value.

Remember that the Xbox Live function is a great tool in finding new games, because it lets you test demo versions of games before buying. As such, you can ‘road test’ games on Xbox Live before buying the ones you like on eBay.

More and more people are becoming aware of the benefits of buying used Xbox games. Because of the fact that many players like to play a game once, complete it and then move on, there is a really strong market for used games in great condition.

When you read a used game listing, make sure it is very clear about the condition of the game. It must say that the game is in full working order, without any scratches or damage, in order for you to buy it.

The easiest way to get access to the most recent and useful set of eBay tools is by downloading the eBay Toolbar.

The eBay Toolbar is simple to use and sits snugly in the top corner of your web browser, ready for use whenever you need it.

Here is a quick rundown of the eBay tools made available through the Toolbar.

Simple search – just as if you were on the eBay website, plug in your search terms and await results.

Alerts – get reminded about auctions you are watching, bidding on or didn’t win with the handy alerts function.

Buying status – keep up to date with the status of items you are bidding on or thinking of buying, and keep track of those you have already bought.

eBay favourites – use a single click to look up your favourite searches or sellers.

The great thing about the toolbar is that it is customisable, so you can adjust it to fully suit your buying and selling needs.

One of the best ways to do this is to make good use of eBay templates.

Put simply, and eBay template is a pre designed web page that you simply need to slightly alter before uploading your auction.

Templates are almost always themed, in other words they use images, patterns, colours and fonts to encourage a certain feeling in the buyer.

If you were selling surfing equipment, for example, you would probably be interested in using a beach-themed template, or one that had pictures of breaking waves in the background.

The good news is that templates are widespread and easy to get hold of. There are many free templates available on the internet, a simple Google search will bring up many.

The best way to start is by testing a couple out and playing with combinations until you find something you like.

Once you become a more adept seller and your business begins to pick up, you may want to upgrade to professional templates. Web designers can build these on demand and you will have to pay for them.eBay templates are a great option for improving the appearance of your listings.

In fact, you will need to have a well planned eBay marketing campaign if you truly want to make serious money out of your eBay endeavours.

Here are a couple of top ways to increase the visibility of your listings.

Pay a little extra to have your auctions appear in the ‘featured plus’ section of search results. This is a special section at the top of the search results, but your auction will also appear in the normal section. eBay says ‘featured plus’ listings are 28 per cent more likely to sell than normal listings.

Purchase keyword advertising, so that certain search terms will trigger your advertisement to appear on banner ads on the side of the search results. You can purchase keywords to carefully match your listings. For example, if you sell Giant bicycle parts, you could purchase the keyword “bike” to bring up your advertisement.

Always make sure you include a thumbnail picture of the item you are selling in the auction. Auctions without photos are far less likely to sell, because people want to see what they are paying for.eBay says including a picture adds about 11 per cent to the final sale price of a product.

Here is a quick eBay book guide.

First of all, make sure you spend a little bit of time browsing different book listings to get a feel for the market before you start buying.

There are massive book stores as well as smaller book sellers on eBay, and most have something good to offer. Don’t be put off by a seller just because he or she has a low feedback count; they will be able to commit more time and personal touch to handling your order if they are a smaller seller.

Be cautious when it comes to listings advertising books “as new”, because many sellers use this term loosely. If you are after a new book, make sure it IS new and not just “as new”. Upon closer inspection, “as new” products are often more like mildly used products and may have flaws on them.

Remember that there are advantages to buying used books, too. Not only are you likely to get a better price on a used book, some people like the rustic charm and vintage feel of a secondhand book.

Keep an eye on postage costs. There is no reason to pay more than about $4 or $5 for a normal sized novel, so stay away from ones priced higher than this for postage and you will send a strong signal t bad sellers.

The popularity of the online auction site seemingly knows no bounds, and to meet the insatiable demand of customers sellers are constantly testing out new technologies.

One of the most successful areas of innovation for eBay sellers is the eBay auction software options, which are becoming more advanced and more widely available all the time.

In order for power sellers to meet the massive customer demand and fill the thousands of orders they process each day, a good system of management is essential.

The best eBay auction software packages focus on a particular element of the selling experience and provide a complete solution for managing that section of the sale.

For example, an application called ShipWorks has been embraced by many sellers because it automatically deals with a number of tedious shipping-related tasks, like printing shipping labels and marking which items have been sent.

Some programs exist that work to oversee a range of functions, and you will need to decide whether you want ‘all inclusive’ eBay auction software or if you prefer to use several small, focused pieces of software.

The phrase refers to the processes you follow in managing your eBay listings from start to finish.

In order to be a successful seller, you need to have an auction management plan that is properly organised from the time you post the listing to the time the buyer gives you feedback.

There are a couple of options available to you when it comes to auction management, and one of the most popular ways to keep an eye on your listings is to use auction management software.

Plenty of software packages designed for eBay are available today, and they range in price and funtion.

Some packages do all the hard work for you and come with templates for loading your listings and for keeping an eye on your auctions.

The most popular software packages used by sellers for auction management are those with customisable levels of automatic management, allowing you to decide which tasks you would like to oversee and which tasks you want the software to carry out.

For example, you may wish to organise shipping labels of your own accord, but you may want the software to automatically notify buyers of your payment details.

Even though authorities do as much as they can to minimise the chances of your personal information, money or goods falling into the wrong hands, you can still do more yourself to protect your eBay account.

The first thing to do is double check that you have selected your eBay user ID, password and secret question very carefully. Make sure your user ID is not the same as your email address, and try to make your passwords different too.

You should try to change your password every 30 to 60 days, in order to keep it fresh and maximise the level of protection it offers.Be wary of phishing scams – those fake emails that ask you to list personal and sensitive information. Remember that all emails from eBay will appear in the My Messages section of your eBay account, so if it doesn’t appear here (and does appear in your email) it is certainly a fake.

Make sure you are equipped with online protection software on your computer. This means up to date antvirus and spyware software should be installed, and a strong internet firewall should be up and running.