1. Selling on Axebay
To sell an item on Axebay you first need to register. If you register with silver or higher membership you will get credit towards placing your advertisements (please see the member level table). If you register as a standard member, which is free, you will need to purchase your advertisements (please see the advertisement pricing table).

It is best to register with PayPal before placing your ad so you can receive payment. PayPal is not the only method of payment that you may choose; however, it is quicker and easier to receive payments if you have a PayPal account. You may decide to accept payment via check, money order, direct deposit into your bank account or cash if meeting the buyer in person.

2. Planning your sale
There are certain items that cannot be sold on Axebay, please read the items you can and cannot sell document first.

Each sale needs some planning and preparation. You should do a little research before you place your ad. You need to find out how much your item is worth and what the going market rate is. You could research on the internet by looking at other sites that sell guitars and guitar related products, check music magazines, trading post magazines, or even visit your local music store.

You also need to think about whether the item you are selling will be picked up in person by the buyer or will you have to transport it to the buyer. For items like guitars you may find the buyer will want to play the instrument before purchase but for other items the buyer may be happy to have you ship the item to them.

If you think that you will have to ship the item then you should weigh and measure it before contacting a transport company. You will then have to source a transport company to ship the item. You can use our shipping and handling link to get quotes from several major international shipping companies.

3. List your item for sale.
To advertise your item on Axebay, you will first need to decide which size advertisement you will place (See the advertisement pricing table). You will then need to provide certain information about your item: A title, a subtitle, brand, model, description, price, shipping, your return policy and a photo. When selling a guitar it is important to include the year of manufacture, color, condition and any special history that the guitar may have had. Also put the brand and model in the title, sub title and description as the brand and model fields are only used for programming purposes and are not displayed on the ad.

To place your ad, simply click on the sell link in the left vertical navigation menu. You must then select a category for your item. If a category does not exist select one that is closest to your item’s description.
Then choose the size of the ad you wish to place. Please note that the size of the ad is not the physical viewing size but a limit on the amount of words and pictures that you can display. Please see the advertisement pricing table for more detail.

Then simply fill in the form, upload your pics, update the price and shipping fields and decide on a reasonable return policy (I said a reasonable return policy, if you are shipping a pedal effect from the US to Germany don’t think you can ask the buyer to return it in 1 day if he is not happy with it).

After you have completed all fields click on the “Continue” button. Your ad will then be displayed to you with an option to edit the ad, accept the ad as it is by clicking on the “Confirm this Ad” button or cancel the ad if you have changed your mind or want to start over. Note the ad will not be displayed to other members and you will not be debited for the ad unless it is confirmed.

Note on pictures: Axebay will only accept a picture with a size of 25 kb or less, a simple way reduce the size of a picture is:

  1. Open the picture with paint (write click on the pic and select edit)
  2. When the picture is open in Paint, Select Edit->Select All
  3. Select Image -> Stretch/Skew
  4. In the horizontal and vertical boxes type 20. (20% of 1 Mb file will give you approximately a 20k pic. If the original size of the pic is larger you will have to use a value less than 20%. I know that 20 Kb is not 20% of 1 Mb – if you divide 1024 by 5 you get 204. But paint works on pixels not on file size, so this is not an exact science.)
  5. Select Edit->Copy
  6. Select File->New and say no to save changes.
  7. On the new blank file select Edit->Paste
  8. Select File->Save and give the pic a new name other then the name of the original file.
  9. Check the size of the new file by right clicking and selecting properties or in some views you can just mouse over the file.
  10. You may have to re-do this from scratch if the file is still bigger than 25 Kb. If you have to re-do it always use the original file.

You may have a better way to reduce the size of your picture files with better software than Paint. That’s fine. We are including the above method because it works and all MS Windows operating systems have Paint.

If your membership is silver, gold or platinum then you can view our selling tips document.

4. Manage your advertisements
You can manage your ads from the “My Axebay” link from the left vertical navigation menu or from the top drop down menu select “My Axebay”.

You can see all your bidding, selling and watching activity from the “Activity” page. If you click on the title of your ad under the “Active Selling” heading you can view then edit your ad. Or you can select “Advertising” from the Selling menu on the left navigation menu to edit your ad.

You can change any part of your ad including the price (except with auctions you cannot alter the reserve price, starting bid or time limit. Please see Auctioning Your Items document). You can also see how many views your ad has had or if it is an auction, how many bids it has received and the highest bid.

 5. Negotiating with the buyer
Once a buyer is interested in your item they might contact you via Axebay’s messaging system to ask questions about the item. If you are selling a guitar they may want to play the guitar before they purchase it. In that case you will have to organise to meet with the buyer. All negotiations would be done at the meeting. Please see our security document before meeting with a buyer.

If you are selling an item with which the buyer is happy for you to ship to them unseen, then any negotiation would be done via Axebay’s messaging system, email or telephone if you decide to exchange email addresses and phone numbers. Axebay will not give out any of your personal information including your email address to potential buyers.

6. Completing the transaction

Standard Advertisement

If you are completing the transaction in person you are responsible for placing a sold status on your item. The item will remain listed until the end of the month with a status of sold. This is so if the sale falls through for some reason, or the item is returned you can remove the sold status and have your item listed for the rest of month.

If your item has been sold via a standard ad and you are shipping the item to the buyer then the buyer is responsible for providing their shipping address to you. Once you have received payment, via either notification from PayPal, bank transfer, check or money order. It is then your responsibility to ship the item to the buyer and mark the item as sold.

You are then asked to fill out a buyer rating form. This is optional however it is an important part of ensuring each member’s responsibility in the transaction process.

 Note: Do not ship or give an item to anyone until payment has been received and verified.

Auction

If the item has been auctioned you will receive an email from Axebay stating that you have a message from Axebay. Click on the link in the email and you will be taken to your Axebay messages inbox.

The message from Axebay will contain the item id of the item auctioned, the bid on the item and the user id of the buyer. At this point you should contact the buyer through Axebay’s messaging system to organise payment and delivery of the item.

The buyer will receive a similar email and message.

Once you have received payment we would like you to fill out a buyer rating form. This is optional however it is an important part of ensuring each member’s responsibility in the transaction process.

Note: Do not ship or give an item to anyone until payment has been received and verified.

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