Tips for selling on eBay

(potential increase in earning: hundreds
to thousands of dollars)
The online auction house eBay is
a great place to sell second-hand
items to gererate some extra cash. Use
the tips below to help increase your
earnings when selling on eBay.
Look at what already sold. The best
way to get the most money for your
listing is to know your market. Before
you list your item, do a quick, title-only
search on eBay for items similar to
yours. Then, click on Completed items
(under the Display heading) and sort
the results by price (highest-priced fi rst).
Keep in mind that any item is worth only
what others are willing to pay for it, so
ignore listings that never received bids.
Examine the most successful sales and
see how the sellers have described and
promoted their items in order to earn top
dollar.
Price your items to sell. When you’re
ready to list, set your “Buy-It-Now” price
in the neighborhood of what you expect
your item is worth. Set the starting
auction price (the opening bid) much
lower - anywhere from a dollar to no
more than half the item’s value; this will
encourage healthy bidding, which will
raise the perceived value and the fi nal
price. If you’ve done your research, you
won’t have to worry about your item
selling for too little.
Don’t use reserves. Don’t use a
reserve price for your listings. The
reserve price is a secret dollar amount,
below which you’re under no obligation
to sell. It is useful only if you don’t know
the value of your item. Reserves tend to
dissuade bidders and accomplish little
else than lowering the closing price.
Even worse, is the use of a “Buy-It-
Now” price alongside a reserve price, as
bidders easily confuse the two and give
up any hope of getting a bargain.
Watch your spelling. The success of
your auction relies almost entirely on the
likelihood of it being found in searches
and in eBay’s category listings. Auction
searches are seeded by the words
that you place in the auction titles, so
include as many relevant keywords as
possible. Don’t use goofy punctuation
like L@@K or any other terms which
your customers won’t be searching.
Since eBay uses exact-match searches,
the words in your titles must be spelled
correctly in order to show up in search
results. But if you have the space,
be sure to include some intentional
misspellings to accommodate your more
spelling-challenged customers - just
make sure the correct spelling is also
there.
Since you only have 45 characters with
which to work, there’s not a lot of room
to spare in an auction title. If you’re
inclined to highlight the special aspects
of your item, do so in the subtitle.
Although subtitles are indexed only
in title-and-description searches (not
the more common title-only searches),
they do appear in all search results and
category listings and are effective in
getting extra attention. A subtitle does
cost some money, so don’t bother for
any item worth less than about $25.
Use color and HTML to make it look
good.
A little color in your auction will not only
make it more inviting and professionallooking,
it will also help emphasize
the important details in the auction
description, and the payment and
shipping details, which are unfortunately
buried far beneath the photos in eBay’s
page design. The clearer and simpler
your selling terms are, the less likely
you are to have confused, disappointed
or deadbeat bidders.
A simple editor is part of eBay’s Sell
Your Item form (Internet Explorer
only), but it only offers basic control
over the font size and appearance.
For the best-looking and most feature
rich descriptions, including such
things as in-line images, tables, and
even JavaScript, you’ll want to turn to
your favorite Web page editor. The
problem with most editors is that they
generate complete, standalone pages,
not insertable HTML code that can be
pasted into a Web form. Fortunately,
Creative Element Power Tools
www.creativelement.com/powertools
comes with an Extract HTML Page
Content tool, which bridges this gap
for less than $20. Type and format
your auction description in your Web
page editor (or MSWord) and save it
as an HTML fi le. Then, right-click on
the fi le, select Extract Page Content,
and paste the formatted text into the
description fi eld of eBay’s Sell Your
Item form. Finally, click on Preview Your
Description to double-check your work.
Make it easy to pay. The easier you
make it for customers to pay, the
more likely they’ll be to give you their
business. The most popular payment
method is PayPal, which lets members
send money to anyone with an e-mail
address. The cost is assessed only to
sellers, in the order of about 3 percent
of the amount the seller receives. The
extra bids you’ll get with the PayPal logo
in your auction will more than make up
for the 3 percent fee.
Use a good photo. Nothing helps sells
your item better than a good photo, and
you can improve your photo-taking skills
with a few simple tricks. Shoot your item
at an angle to give it more depth and
body. Light your item from two different
sources (including your camera’s fl ash)
to reduce shadows and enhance detail.
Make sure it’s in focus. If it isn’t move
farther away from your item to help your
camera focus on the whole thing, and
crop out excess background later.
Auction Tools. Creating new eBay
listings can be cumbersome and
time-consuming, especially if you’re
listing a dozen or more items at once.
Automated listing software lets you
create templates into which you can
insert item-specifi c information. You can
save the listings on your hard drive,
which makes selling similar items or
relisting the same item easy.
You can also use listing tools to
schedule your listings without additional
fees (a service for which eBay otherwise
charges a dime per listing). You can also
take your time to compose your listings
at 1:00 A.M. and then upload them to
eBay later in the morning. Auctions that
begin and end during the daytime (by
your customers’ clocks) may pull higher
prices than those that close while your
customers are asleep.
eBay’s own very capable Turbo Lister
application for Windows is available
for free from http://pages.ebay.com/
turbo_lister (although normal listing fees turbo_lister
still apply). Another free tool is Auction
Submit (www.auctionsubmit.com), which
adds post-auction record keeping, such
as the fi nal price and high bidder of
each successful auction. Both tools help
you list more items in less time.

Scrooge