Once you sell an item on eBay, you get paid for it! Congrats! But how do you actually access your money? Well, that depends on a few things: what payment options you’ve chosen to accept from buyers, how you’ve set up eBay to send money to you, and how experienced a seller you are.

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This lesson will explain the ins and outs of getting paid on eBay.com.

Generally, people who buy your items will do so using a pre-authorized credit card or debit card. However, you can also offer the option for them to pay you from their PayPal account balances. In certain circumstances, you can even simply have the buyer pay you when they pick their order up.

Bank transfers, cheques, money orders, and payments from online payment services other than PayPal are generally not allowed as payment options. There are some exceptions, however, such as for certain categories of listings in eBay Motors, Business & Industrial, Real Estate, and Adults Only. Any other forms of payment not listed here are not allowed at all.

If you want to change how buyers can pay for items that they buy from you, start by logging into your eBay seller’s account. Then, move your mouse cursor over your name in the top-left corner of the home page, and then click Account Settings in the drop-down menu that appears.

Once you’re on your “Account Settings” page, click Site Preferences in the “My eBay Views” box. Then, under “Selling Preferences,” click Show beside “Payment from Buyers,” and then click Edit (NOT the one beside “Use Sales Tax Table,” though). As a security measure, you will be asked to log into your account again.

On the next page, under “PayPal Preferences,” you will see three check boxes that you can click to mark or unmark. If you want to allow buyers to pay for your items with their PayPal account balances, make sure the first and third ones are marked, as the second one just allows you to choose whether to tell sellers that you prefer that they pay you through their PayPal accounts.

Under “Payment and Pick Up Address,” you can fill out the text fields and select options from the drop-down menus to enter a street address. This will allow buyers the option to pick up items that they buy from you in person at this address (and pay you at the time).

You can also click the check box in this section to mark it if you are always going to have items picked up at this address. This will prevent you from being asked which pickup address to use whenever you list an item.

When you’re done making changes, click Submit.

eBay generally pays you for your sales depending on the options you select when you set up your eBay seller account and/or when you list an item for sale on eBay. They may send your funds to an Internet merchant account that you’ve set up through your bank, or they may add your money to your PayPal account balance.

Of course, there are some exceptions. Someone who buys your item may come to pick it up themselves instead of having it shipped to them, and they will pay you when that time comes. Also, depending on the category of merchandise you’re selling, you may also get paid directly via bank transfer, cheque, money order, or non-PayPal online payment.

If you want to move the money from your sales out of your PayPal account and back into your bank account – where you can get at it as cash or other tenderable forms, if you need to – we can show you quickly how to withdraw money from your PayPal account.

When you’re a new seller, it usually takes about 3 days after a buyer receives their order from you before you get paid. Once your seller’s account fulfills certain conditions, however, you can start to get money from your sales immediately after a buyer finishes paying for one of your items.

The time it takes you as a new seller (or one with a “below standard” seller rating) to get money from selling an item depends largely on how you handle shipping the order. If you use a shipping label from eBay or PayPal, which automatically adds tracking information to your order, you’ll get paid about 3 days after your order is confirmed as delivered. The same timeline applies if you use a shipping label from a post office or major courier service, and then manually add tracking information to the order.

If you don’t provide tracking information for an order, but you mark the item as “shipped,” you’ll receive your money about a week after the latest estimated delivery date for the package. And if you don’t add tracking information to an order or mark it as “shipped”, you won’t get your money until three weeks after the buyer has paid for your item.

Basically, these policies make sure that all sellers develop good habits when it comes to fulfilling the items that they sell. This cuts down on scammers looking to just take the money and run.

There are two main things that you can do to make sure that you get the money from your sales quickly:

Ship your packages promptly.

Specify as short a handling time as you can, and try to ship your package within 24 hours of your buyer paying for it. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to offer buyers at least one expedited shipping option on items that you sell.

Provide tracking information for your packages.

Ship with a postal carrier that allows for package tracking, and upload tracking information to eBay when you can. If you use eBay-branded shipping labels, this is done for you automatically, but you can also upload tracking information manually if you need to. At the very least, you should indicate that your package has shipped as soon as you can after shipping it.

For more guidance on how to ship your sold items efficiently, refer to our lesson on how to ship items on eBay.

There are a number of different reasons why your selling money from eBay may be delayed, including:

You can check when your money from any sale will likely be released to you by logging into your eBay account, moving your mouse cursor over My eBay, and clicking Selling in the drop-down menu that appears.

Under the Sell category (click it if it isn’t expanded already), click Sold to see all items that you’ve sold. Near the bottom of each listing, beside “Estimated Funds Availability,” you’ll see the date that you will likely get the money from your sale.

You’ll eventually be able to receive money from sales that you make immediately after the buyer pays for your item. This will generally happen once your seller account has fulfilled three criteria:

That’s about everything that you need to know about getting your money from eBay after you use it to sell an item. In our final tutorial, we’ll look at how to use eBay’s feedback and ratings system, including how to deal with negative feedback in the unfortunate event that you get some.