Check out eBay’s seller information pages[1] X Research source . These pages thoroughly discuss eBay’s selling policies. Experiment with eBay’s search features, and browse a few listings. Knowing how eBay’s search function works will help you make better listings. Try changing the search results by changing the options in the “Sort” menu. Keep a good eye on listings that appear at the top of the search results and those that appear to be receiving many bids.
eBay usernames must have at least two characters and cannot contain symbols such as the at sign, ampersand (&), apostrophe, parentheses or less/greater-than signs, nor can they contain spaces or successive underscores. eBay usernames also cannot begin with a hyphen, period or underscore. eBay does not allow the names of websites or email addresses as user IDs, nor does it allow anything with the word “eBay” or the letter “e” followed by several numbers. This avoids abuse by users who want to pose as eBay employees, or redirect customers to other, less reputable sites via eBay. Don’t use a trademarked name (such as a brand) unless you are the owner of it. Names like “iselljunk” or “chickmagnet69” seem unprofessional and can repel buyers. Names that are hateful or obscene can be blocked by eBay. Since so many people are already on eBay, spend some time checking that the name you want is actually available and come up with alternatives when your preferred name is already in use. You can change your User ID later; however, you can only do this once every 30 days, and if frequently done, your repeat customers may be lost. [3] X Research source
eBay will send an email to the address you provided. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your account. If you have an existing business, you can also sign up for a business account. On the sign up page, click the link at the top of the registration page that says “Start a Business Account. " You will be prompted to enter your business name and some additional contact information.
Check eBay’s accepted payments policies to find out what is allowed [4] X Research source . In Greater China, it is possible to receive payouts using Payoneer.
Try buying small items that you want or need anyway, and pay immediately to get good feedback as a buyer. Don’t worry about buying things you can resell. The main thing is to establish yourself as a reliable member of the ebay community. Potential buyers who see a new seller without feedback can be very wary that you’re a “fly-by-night” seller, and they may hesitate to buy from you.
For selling more expensive items, adding more information about yourself is more important, especially if you are a new seller. People do read these to try to find out more about you, so it’s a good place to explain your credentials, such as being a collector, a retailer, a person with knowledge of particular items, etc.
You can start by selling things you have around the house that you are no longer using, or by picking a few items to experiment with that you can either return or keep for yourself. It’s important to experiment before loading up on too much inventory. You may not be able to sell your items at a high enough price to make a profit, or you could end up with a lot of extra inventory that’s hard to move. If you already have some inventory from your existing collections or business, you’re ready to go! Making a few sales can help you figure out the best approach to selling your goods on eBay.
eBay itself can be a good place to find bargains. Some people look for items that are underpriced, badly presented or have misspelled titles. If you enjoy thrift stores or garage sales, this is a great place to start. Just remember that you usually can’t return what you buy, so you may end up with items that cannot sell. Discount, warehouse and outlet stores are good places to find bargains, and often have a return policy you can take advantage of if your items don’t sell.
Try to find things in bulk, or with similar features. That way you can create listing templates for yourself, or even just create one listing for multiple items. Look for items that are easy to describe, photograph, and ship. Look for items that you can easily ship in the same manner, so that you can pack things quickly and get bulk discounts on shipping materials.
Buyers look at the total cost of the item, including shipping, so the shipping cost always has to be factored in when considering if an item can be sold at a reasonable price. Think about space as an important issue. Working from home selling things can reduce overheads but if your stock starts taking over the space, your life won’t be the same. Do you have room for your products and room to wrap, pack and store purchased items?
Check out eBay’s hot items page [6] X Research source pages. ebay. com/sellercentral/hotitems. pdf. . Items commonly listed here include brand name clothing, electronics, gold jewelry, fashion accessories and football shirts. Look at completed listings. This allows you to see how many of a particular item has sold, when they were sold, and how much they sold for. If you have the eBay app on your mobile device, this can be particularly useful if you’re at a store or garage sale and are unsure about whether to buy something. Type your query into eBay’s search box, then check the boxes next to “Sold listings” or “Completed listings” in the “Show only” section of the menu on the left of the page. For the mobile app, enter your search words, then tap “Refine. " Check “Completed listings” or “Sold items only” under “Search refinement options. " You can use products built specifically for seller research, but you’ll need to pay for these. Popsike. com is a free version dedicated for music sellers. Be aware that if something is popular, there will be many sellers selling the very same things as you. It can be difficult selling in a category that is already saturated because it’s so easy to get lost in the sheer number of search results, and prices are already so cheap that it’s nearly impossible to make a profit as a small seller. Also, your low feedback rating puts you at a disadvantage. Popular items attract scammers who prey on inexperienced sellers who do not know how to protect themselves.
Take note of what sort of information or photos you find most helpful to you as a potential buyer – the same type of information will be helpful to your potential buyers. Consider what makes you think a seller is trustworthy and how you will manage to convey that same sense of trustworthiness through your sales and profile.
Include all relevant words and spell them correctly. Insufficient information in a title will attract a far smaller number of potential buyers and/or bidders; consequently such an item will either not sell, or go for a much lower price than it would otherwise. Keep the words relevant. Exclude fluff such as “cool” or “excellent”. You have very little space, so use it for what people are searching for (nobody is going to be searching eBay for items titled “L@@K” or “AWESOME!!!!”). Include alternative spellings and phrasings if you have space. For example, if you’re selling an iPod, put “MP3 player” in your title. However, eBay’s search will automatically account for variant phrasings; it will also sometimes check category names in addition to the auction title. Do a search on specific terms and look at the titles of the auctions that come up.
Use good lighting. Where possible, turn off your flash and use natural light. Go outside, or take a photo by a window. Rotate or crop any photos that might need it for a better appearance, and use photo editing software or eBay’s photo editor to improve the picture. Get as many photographs as your buyers will need. Take photographs of your item from every angle that you think someone will find useful. eBay offers 12 free photos on each listing. Get photographs of any unusual feature, any defects, and so on. The extra confidence that this will give buyers is almost always (except on the lowest-valued items) worthwhile. Of course, some items only need one photo; use your judgment here. Don’t use a distracting or dirty background and get rid of any nearby clutter. A simple sheet of white paper may be used to provide a clean, neutral background for smaller items. Don’t copy photographs from other listings or anywhere else on the Internet, ever. Apart from being dishonest and fraudulent, this will almost always be copyright infringement; nearly everything on the Internet, and elsewhere, is copyrighted, whether it has a copyright notice or not. See how to take better product photos for free for more ideas on producing good photos for eBay sales.
Be careful when adding too much information. A buyer can skim through information they do not need to know, but will likely hit the “back” button if they don’t see the information they want. Extra information can also help search engines find your listing. Put the most important information at or very near the beginning of the listing. Keep the design simple, if you see the need to design a listing at all. Some sellers clutter their listings with unrelated elements that that it makes the listing itself more difficult to read, and display improperly on mobile devices. Let the pictures and your text speak for themselves. Choose moderately large, easy to read text fonts for your listing and don’t overdo animation, clashing colors and other distractions. Remember some buyers have poor eyesight and prefer large print. Think of “large print books” as an example of text size. Be clear about any defects in the item. Buyers will find this out anyway, so let them decide for themselves what is a significant problem and what is not. Clearly describing an item’s flaws helps protect you from Significantly Not As Described (SNAD) claims. However, if your item has flaws, consider not selling it at all on eBay. You don’t want to get a reputation for selling junk. On negative feedback can seriously hurt or even destroy a small seller.
The online auction. Auctions last from 1-10 days, and can sometimes allow you to get a higher price for your item, because it encourages buyers to become competitive with each other, and enjoy the thrill of winning an item as much as the item itself. This is good when you have something to sell that people frequently search for and seem inclined to fight over, such as a rare piece of sports memorabilia. The auction format is also useful when you’re uncertain as to what price you should sell at, and can help you determine the price for similar items in the future. Buy It Now items are fixed-price items. They allow the buyer to buy something and have it shipped to them immediately, rather than having to wait for the auction to end. This is great for items that people either buy routinely or on impulse, or for items where the supply already outstrips the demand, and where you want to offer a competitive price. Items which people need immediately are unlikely to attract many bids in an auction.
You can change the price at any time with fixed-price items, or before the first bid is placed for auction items. Lower starting bids attract more bidders and interest in your item, and may well result in your item selling for more, but if an item doesn’t generate enough interest or isn’t visible enough, you may get a very low final selling price. There is an option to set a “reserve” price for your item while offering a low starting bid, but eBay charges extra for this and some buyers find it annoying. Don’t overcharge for shipping and handling. While it’s sometimes helpful to tweak the shipping price a bit to be able to offer a lower price, and account for handling and supplies, most buyers will be put off by obviously inflated shipping charges. These days, buyers expect free shipping, and eBay boosts items’ visibility in the search if they offer free shipping. Unless your item is particularly heavy, increase your opening bid or Buy-It-Now price and offer free shipping. Keep an eye on the invoices that eBay sends you and be a timely payer. You will owe commission fees and other fees over time from listing and you need to make regular, full payments in order to be able to continue listing your items for sale. While the fees might initially surprise you, treat them as very much a part of your business expenses and soon you’ll remember that these need to come off the costs of your products and efforts.
Auctions ending on weekends tend to catch high traffic, therefore increasing the chances of better end prices for your items. [7] X Research source Many items are also seasonal, and so there are better times of the year to be selling these than other times of the year. For example, beach gear does better in summer while skis will do better in winter. You can check out eBay’s planned promotions for certain categories [pages. ebay. com/sell/resources. html here]. Check this out and plan your sales for when these categories will be highlighted.
If you must include additional information on your policies, ensure the length is shorter than your item description. Consider offering a return policy. Not only does this help you to qualify for discounts on eBay, some sellers believe it makes buyers more likely to commit to buy. Very few buyers actually return their purchases, so you are likely to profit more from letting buyers feel secure than to lose money from returns. On the other hand, the discounts eBay gives to Top Rated Plus sellers who offer discounts is small enough that a single return can cost more than the monthly discount for small sellers. If you offer a return policy, all buyers are allowed to return everything they buy from you for any reason; you can never refuse a return, even for buyer’s remorse. If you officially don’t offer returns, you can still take them on a case-by-case basis. Answer questions from your buyers as the auction runs its course. Be prompt about it, and always be patient, clear, professional and friendly. Buyers don’t like to see unanswered questions and it impacts your professionalism, so don’t hesitate to respond.
Check your spelling. This won’t make up for a bad listing in other respects, but it still goes some way. Proper capitalization and punctuation makes listings much easier to read. Fix any mistakes. You can continue to fix mistakes in an auction until the first bid has been placed, after which, it is what it says!
End an auction if needed. You have the ability to end an auction up to 12 hours before it’s due to end. This should be used very sparingly though, as watchers may well have been excited about making bids and will be disappointed to see this as habitual. Keep it for exceptional circumstances such as broken, lost or stolen items. Once you have listed products for sale, keep them in a safe place. Lower the reserve price. Prior to the last 12 hours of an auction, it’s possible to lower the reserve price if you find that you’re not getting bids. Keep an eye on buyers. It is possible to block some buyers for certain reasons such as buyers who don’t have PayPal, buyers who are in countries you don’t ship to and buyers with two or more unpaid item strikes. And you can also set up Approved Buyers lists that automatically allow some buyers to bid.
Describe your item as if there were no pictures, and photograph your item as if there was no description. Read a book on selling before you get started. eBay is not a get-rich quick scheme. At best, eBay is a get-rich-slow scheme. Unfortunately, many new sellers get scammed and find it’s a get-poor-quick scheme. Do not open an eBay account to sell your iPhone or designer handbag. Professional scammers are looking for new sellers offering popular items, and they will take both your item and your money. It’s best to sell items like this though craigslist, letgo or another app that facilitates face-to-face cash transactions.
