Hey Guys,
Recently I wrote a post about my experiences with eBay and I decided to give you some pointers when starting and selling on eBay. I have been a member of eBay for about a week now and currently have 5 items up for auction. 3 of the 5 items are going to sell, but the others have yet to get some bidders.
Here’s my 8 Tips:
- Don’t Worry - When I put my first item on eBay I was nervous, as I hadn’t done it before and didn’t know what to expect, its extremely easy to add things. Also don’t be afraid to lie about your age, eBay is not going to cross-check every user registration, the worst that will happen if they will ban your account - nothing serous.
- Naming your product - Choose an appropriate title for your item, don’t have anything that might mislead potential bidders. Keep the description true, don’t start making out that the item is brand spanking new, when it has little scratches because that’s only going to give you had feedback once item is sold.
- Pictures - Include pictures, eBay allows you to add one picture free of charge, but if you want more then ya gotta pay a small fee, instead of uploading pictures to eBay I just provide a link to a picture page I have created of the product, for example you can use Google Picasa or even your own web space, link to the pictures in your item description. Pictures mean a lot more than words.
- About Page - I just realized this last night, that eBay offer an about page, this will allow potential bidders to see what you are like, and might even provide a little bit of trust. To create an about page, login to eBay and click Personal Information on the left, then scroll down and click Create About Me page. You can include images and a long description about yourself.
- Number of days - The first item I put on eBay lasted for 7 days, now I thought this was a long time, but really its not! For the first 2 - 3 days you might not see anyone bidding, but you can be sure that people are looking at your product, my bidders started to big around 5 days into the 7 day timer. You will be surprised how many bidders you will get when the item gets to 10minutes left.
- Reply to Questions - When I put my first item up, it got a lot of questions and I replied to them as soon as I could, this looks good and helps the user decide whether to bid or not. Reply to your questions as soon as you can, looks good on your and might make you a little more money.
- Postage and Packing - Don’t make this a huge price, eBay offer a service where you can enter the details of your product and it will calculate the postage price, don’t make it to high, or to low and make sure your not paying for it!
- Starting Price - You can either have a Buy it Now price or just a price where the bidding starts, now if you are certain on how much you want to make, then add a Buy it Now price, but its better to let the bidders bid as you could make double the Buy it Now price. The price I start off with is £0.99 as I think it will attract more people. On some of my products I have started the bidding on £1.99 as I think the product is valued more. Do some research on Amazon or other eBay items, to see how much the product your going to sell goes for.
Hope that helps,
WizzKid
In my experience, I always use to put it for 7 days, even though some bidding does take place, i reallize that about 90% of all bidding comes in the final hours.
Want to hear a great tip I once heard that a lot of people don’t know about
When trying to buy on ebay, always try and find the items that are typos, so if I wanted to buy a macbook, I might purchase mackbok (the added k and took away an o). Like mispell your words when trying to buy, that is how you get the best deals because not a lot of pepole view those items
Haha awesome Travis, I am always careful and proof read most things as my fast typing can cause splleing mitkses.
WizzKid
[...] few days ago I put together a list of 8 Tips for Beginners for Ebay, well I thought I would carry on from that and write a few tips on sending an item you have sold. [...]