In particular, you want to track unit cost and final selling price for every auction you list. You should also track all your ancillary costs shipping, PayPal fees, eBay listing and final value fees, and so on. By tracking all your costs and revenues, you can generate an accurate profit and loss statement, and thus determine how much money (if any) you’re generating from your online auction activities.

It also helps to track information about the buyers of your auction itemsname, shipping address, email address, and so on. The name and shipping address are necessary in case an item gets lost in transit; the email address is necessary not only for auction-related communication but also for promotional purposes which we’ll discuss next.

The post Tracking Revenues and Costs first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

Although beginning eBayers can find items to sell by haunting flea markets and estate auctions, power sellers most likely won’t find what they need in those venues. A better strategy is to approach local retailers or wholesalers and offer to buy 10 or 20 (or more) of a particular item. Buy whatever quantity earns you the best price break as long as you think you can move them.

You can also buy bulk lots of merchandise from online wholesalers and liquidators. We discussed some of these sites in Chapter 11, “Determining What to Sell And for How Much.” Check out Liquidation.com (www.liquidation.com) and Wholesale411 (www.wholesale411.com) to see what’s available, or use Ándale Suppliers (www.andale.com) to hook up with suppliers of specific types of merchandise.

If you’re a serious collector, you might have your eBay business right there. When your comics collection numbers in the tens of thousands, or you have thousands of rare coins filed away in your basement, you’re ready for power selling and power buying. Just remember to buy low and sell high, and you’ll be in business.

Finally, consider the selling price of the items you want to sell and the profit you generate on each item. You have to sell a lot more of a $5 item than you do of a $50 item to make the same amount of profit. (Assuming both generate a similar profit percentage.) And, of course, the more items you sell, the more work you have to do. The most successful power sellers do it by selling higher-priced, higher-profit items, for which the revenues and the profits add up a lot quicker.

The post Maintaining Your Sales Inventory first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

For tens of thousands of eBay users, making a living from online auctions isn’t a dreamit’s reality. It’s definitely possible to sell enough items to generate a livable income from eBay auctions. It takes a lot of hard work and it’s as complex as running any other business; but it can be done.

One of the steps to running your own eBay business although not a requirement, by any means is to become an eBay PowerSeller. eBay’s 100,000-plus PowerSellers generate enough business to warrant special attention from eBay, in the form of dedicated customer support, premier tools, and the occasional special offer. Plus they get to display that cool PowerSeller logo in all their auction listings.

To become a PowerSeller, you must meet the following qualifications:

• Maintain a consistently high level of eBay sales
• Maintain a minimum of four average monthly total item listings for three straight months
• Have been an active eBay seller for at least 90 days
• Achieve and maintain a minimum feedback rating of 100, 98% positive
• Deliver post-auction messages to successful bidders within three business days of each auction close
• Be an eBay member in good standing and uphold eBay’s “community values”including honesty, timeliness, and mutual respect

The most important point is the first, because it’s the most quantifiable. There are five levels in the PowerSeller program; qualification for each level is based on average gross monthly sales, calculated over the past three months of selling activity.

Note: To keep your PowerSeller status, you have to maintain this sales rate. If your sales drop below these levels, eBay will give you 30 days to bring your account back into compliance; if you don’t, your membership in the program will be revoked. (You’re free to re-qualify at a later date, however.)

That’s right, there are some eBay sellers who average $150,000 or more a month. That’s almost two million dollars a year in revenues from eBay auctions no slight accomplishment!

Membership in eBay’s PowerSellers program is free. However, you can’t apply; PowerSeller status is by invitation only. Each month eBay sends out invitations to sellers who meet the PowerSeller criteria. You become a member by (1) meeting the criteria; (2) receiving an invitation; and (3) responding positively to the invitation.

The post Make a Living from eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

The pros of opening your auctions to non-U.S. bidders include the following:

• You might be able to attract additional bidders and thus sell more items at (presumably) higher prices.
• You can offset some of the seasonality of the U.S. market; when it’s winter here, you can still be selling swim suits to the summer market in Australia.
• You establish a reputation as a hard-working global trader.
• It’s fun (sometimes) to interact with people from different countries and cultures.

The cons of selling outside the Unites States include the following:

• You might run into difficulties communicating with bidders from outside the United States.
• You might have to deal with payment in non-U.S. funds, on non-U.S. banks.
• You’ll have to put extra effort into the packing of an item to be shipped over great distances.
• You probably won’t be able to use your standard shipping services which means investigating new shipping services and options.
• Shipping costs will be higher than what you’re used toand will need to be passed on to the buyer.
• You’ll need to deal with the appropriate paperwork for shipping outside the United States including those pesky customs forms.
• If there are any problems or disputes with the item shipped, you have an international-sized incident on your hands.

Just looking at this list, it may appear that the cons outweigh the pros. That might not always be the case, however especially if you’re a real “people person.” Many eBay sellers get great joy from interacting with people from different cultures, sometimes turning foreign buyers into lasting friends. I can vouch from my limited personal experience that most non-U.S. buyers I’ve dealt with are exceedingly polite and tolerant of the extra effort required to complete an international transaction.

If you decide to sell outside the United States, you’ll want to state this in your auctions, along with a line indicating that “shipping and handling outside the United States is higher,” “listed shipping charge is for United States only,” or something to that effect. If, on the other hand, you decide not to sell internationally, state that in your ad also with a “U.S. bidders only” type of notice.

My personal opinions on international sales are sure to invite argument. No offense to non-U.S. users, but I don’t ship internationally, period. I’ve done it in the past, and the hassle factor simply isn’t worth it. Even if the transaction goes smoothly (and it often doesn’t, all things considered), the big issue is that the procedures involved are just too different from what I have set up for my normal day-to-day auction activities. In other words, international auctions are unusual transactions that mess up my normal domestic auction production line. My apologies to buyers outside the United Statesmost of whom I’ve found to be wonderful people to deal withbut I can’t let my normal activity be jeopardized by these high-maintenance shipments. (I do, however, make the occasional exceptionprimarily with small items shipping into Canada that can be handled without much additional paperwork or hassle.)

The post Selling Internationally on eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

If you don’t want to sell your own stuff on eBay, you can let someone else sell it for you. In essence, you let another seller sell your goods on consignment. If the items sell, you pay the consignment seller a percentage of the final price. The consignment seller handles all the eBay stuff for youtaking photographs, creating item listings, managing the auctions, collecting payments, and packing and shipping the items. All you have to do is deliver the merchandise to the seller, and let him do all the work for you.

eBay calls this type of consignment seller an eBay Trading Assistant, and there are lots of them. Many individual sellers operate as Trading Assistants; there are also numerous local and national businesses that operate eBay consignment stores.

If you’d like to become a Trading Assistant yourself, go to the Trading Assistants Directory page and click the Create/Edit Your Profile link. To become a Trading Assistant, you must have sold at least four items in the past 30 days, have a feedback rating of at least 50, and have a positive feedback percentage of at least 97%.

To search for a Trading Assistant near you, go to eBay’s Trading Assistant Directory (pages.ebay.com/tradingassistants.html). Enter your ZIP code and select a category (for what you want to sell) from the pull-down list, and then click the Search button. This returns a list of Trading Assistants in your area; click the link to view the Trading Assistant’s profile. If you like what you see, click the Contact Assistant button to send a message and get the process going.

Not all Trading Assistants are individual sellers. eBay consignment selling has become a big business, with lots of stores opening their doors in communities all across America. Locally-owned consignment stores can be found in your local Yellow Pages. The two largest national chains are iSold It (www.i-soldit.com) and QuikDrop (www.quikdropfranchise.com); visit their websites to find a location near you.

The post Letting Someone Else Sell It for You first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

What makes for good copy? First, you have all the space you need, so say as much as you need to say. Unlike with the title description, you don’t have to scrimp on words or leave anything out. If you can describe your item adequately in a sentence, great; if it takes three paragraphs, that’s okay too.

When you’re writing the description for your ad, be sure to mention anything and everything that a potential bidder might need to know. Note any defects or imperfections of the item. Include your desired payment terms and your preferred shipping methods. If the object is graded or evaluated in any way, include that assessment in your description. In other words, include everything you can think of that will eliminate any surprises for the buyer.

You should probably put the most important and motivating information in your initial paragraph because a lot of folks won’t read any farther than that. Think of your first paragraph like a lead paragraph in a newspaper story: Grab ’em with something catchy, give them the gist of the story, and lead them into reading the next paragraph and the one after that.

There are certain key data points that users expect to see in your item description. Here’s the bare minimum you should include:

• Name (or title)

• Condition

• Age

• Original use (what you used it for)

• Value (if you know it)

• Important measurements, contents, colors, materials, and so on

• Any included accessories (including the original instruction manual, if you have it)

• Any known defects or damage

If you don’t know any of this stuff, that’s okayas long as you admit it. If you’re not that familiar with the type of merchandise you’re selling, just say so. Better to plead ignorance up-front than to have a more savvy buyer cause problems for you after the sale.

Because other users will be bidding on your item sight unseen, you have to make the process as easy as possible for potential bidders. That means describing the item as accurately as possible, and in as much detail as possible. If the item has a scratch or blemish, note it. If the paint is peeling, note it. If it includes a few non-original parts, note it. Bidders don’t have the item to hold in their hands and examine in person, so you have to be their eyes and ears.

That’s right; you need to describe the item in painful detail, and be completely honest about what you’re selling. If you’re not honest in your description, it will come back to haunt youin the form of an unhappy and complaining buyer.

Although you need to be descriptive (and in some collectibles categories, you need to be obsessively so), it doesn’t hurt to employ a little marketing savvy and salesmanship. Yes, you should talk about the features of your item, but it’s even better if you can talk about your product’s benefits to the potential buyer.

Let’s say you’re selling a used cordless phone, and the phone has a 50-number memory. Saying “50-number memory” is stating a feature; saying instead that the phone “lets you recall your 50 most-called phone numbers at the press of a button” is describing a benefit. Remember, a feature is something your item has; a benefit is something your item does for the user.

Don’t forget to spell-check and proofread your listing. Bad grammar and misspellings can cause potential bidders to doubt your veracity and even to totally disregard your auction.

And if your listing starts to get a little long, you should break it into more readable chunks. Use separate paragraphs to present different types of information, or just to break one long paragraph into several shorter, more readable ones. You can even use eBay’s formatting options to use different type sizes and colors for different portions of your listing description.

Breaking up your description enables you to put a lot more info into your description. When it comes to informing potential buyers, it’s impossible to be too complete. (And if you don’t define a detail, the buyer willin his or her mind.) Don’t assume that buyers know anything; take the time to spell out all the details about payment and shipping and the like.

The very last things you can put into your listing, at the bottom, are some extra words. Remember, not every person uses the same words to describe things. Remember, they’ll be picked up by eBay’s search engine if they’re anywhere in the description area.

The post Writing Good Item Description on eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

• Include the appropriate information so that anyone searching for a similar item will find your item in his search results.

• Make your title stand out from all the other titles on those long listing pages.

Do those two things, and you significantly increase your chances of getting your item noticed and sold.

Let’s tackle the first point first. You have to think like the people who will be looking for your item. Most users will be using eBay’s search feature to look for specific items, so you want to put the right keywords into your item title, to make your item pop up on as many search results pages as possible.

If you’re unsure how best to word the title for your item listing, check out auctions for similar items and “borrow” their wording.

Beyond including as many relevant facts as possible in your title, how do you make your title stand out from all the other boring listings? Obviously, one technique is to employ the judicious use of CAPITAL LETTERS. The operative word here is judicious; titles with ALL capital letters step over the line into overkill.

Avoid the use of non-alphanumeric characters, such as !!! or ### or ***. eBay says that their use is prohibited, although that rule is seldom enforced. More important, eBay’s search engine sometimes ignores titles that include too many of these nonsense charactersand could exclude your listing from buyers’ search results.

Instead, I advise you to think like an advertising copywriter. What words almost always stop consumers in their tracks? Use attention-getting words such as FREE and NEW and BONUS and EXtrA and DELUXE and RAREas long as these words truly describe the item you’re selling and don’t mislead the potential bidder. (And don’t bump more important search words for these fluffier marketing termsthat won’t help your item show up in bidder searches.)

The post Writing Good eBay Title first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

Take All the Space You Need
What makes for good copy? First, you have all the space you need, so say as much as you need to say. Unlike with the title description, you don’t have to scrimp on words or leave anything out. If you can describe your item adequately in a sentence, great; if it takes three paragraphs, that’s okay too.

When you’re writing the description for your ad, be sure to mention anything and everything that a potential bidder might need to know. Note any defects or imperfections of the item. Include your desired payment terms and your preferred shipping methods. If the object is graded or evaluated in any way, include that assessment in your description. In other words, include everything you can think of that will eliminate any surprises for the buyer.

First Things First
You should probably put the most important and motivating information in your initial paragraph because a lot of folks won’t read any farther than that. Think of your first paragraph like a lead paragraph in a newspaper story: Grab ’em with something catchy, give them the gist of the story, and lead them into reading the next paragraph and the one after that.

The Bare Necessities
There are certain key data points that users expect to see in your item description. Here’s the bare minimum you should include:

• Name (or title)
• Condition
• Age
• Original use (what you used it for)
• Value (if you know it)
• Important measurements, contents, colors, materials, and so on
• Any included accessories (including the original instruction manual, if you have it)
• Any known defects or damage

If you don’t know any of this stuff, that’s okayas long as you admit it. If you’re not that familiar with the type of merchandise you’re selling, just say so. Better to plead ignorance up-front than to have a more savvy buyer cause problems for you after the sale.

Describe ItAccurately
Because other users will be bidding on your item sight unseen, you have to make the process as easy as possible for potential bidders. That means describing the item as accurately as possible, and in as much detail as possible. If the item has a scratch or blemish, note it. If the paint is peeling, note it. If it includes a few non-original parts, note it. Bidders don’t have the item to hold in their hands and examine in person, so you have to be their eyes and ears.

That’s right; you need to describe the item in painful detail, and be completely honest about what you’re selling. If you’re not honest in your description, it will come back to haunt youin the form of an unhappy and complaining buyer.

Stress Benefits, Not Features
Although you need to be descriptive (and in some collectibles categories, you need to be obsessively so), it doesn’t hurt to employ a little marketing savvy and salesmanship. Yes, you should talk about the features of your item, but it’s even better if you can talk about your product’s benefits to the potential buyer.

Let’s say you’re selling a used cordless phone, and the phone has a 50-number memory. Saying “50-number memory” is stating a feature; saying instead that the phone “lets you recall your 50 most-called phone numbers at the press of a button” is describing a benefit. Remember, a feature is something your item has; a benefit is something your item does for the user.

Break It Up
You should include as much descriptive copy as you need in your listing, but you should also make sure that every sentence sells your item.

And if your listing starts to get a little long, you should break it into more readable chunks. Use separate paragraphs to present different types of information, or just to break one long paragraph into several shorter, more readable ones. You can even use eBay’s formatting options to use different type sizes and colors for different portions of your listing description.

The post Writing Good Description for eBay Auction first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

Should you use Buy It Now? The downside is that Buy It Now adds to an auction’s confusion factor, possibly scaring away some users. (The presence of a high Buy It Now relative to the starting price, in any caseis apt to tell some buyers that you’re asking more for your item than it’s worth, or that similar items are selling for.) The upside is that if you set a high enough Buy It Now price and some chump ponies up, you get your money sooner than if you’d allowed the auction to continue to its natural conclusion.

If you’re going to use Buy It Now, make sure that it’s worth your while. You definitely don’t want to set a Buy It Now price lower than what you think your item will eventually sell for. For example, if you know that similar items have been selling for $20 on eBay, the absolute lowest you want to set your Buy It Now price is $20. If you set the Buy It Now price at $15, for example, some sharp buyer is going to swoop in and pay you $15 for an item that probably would have sold for $20.

In fact, if you use the Buy It Now option, you probably want to set the Buy It Now price at some point higher than the expected high bid price. Taking our $20 example, you might set the Buy It Now at $25. If somebody wants to buy it now, they’ll pay you a $5 premium for the privilege. If not, bidding will proceed as normal until a (presumably lower) high bid is realized.

The post Sell It Now eBay Option first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

This is a good option if you have to create your auction listings at what would otherwise be a bad time to end an auctionin the morning or early afternoon, for example. It’s better to end an auction during the evening, when more users are at home. So if you can’t launch your auctions in the evening, spend the extra $0.10 so that eBay can automatically schedule the start of your auction for you.

Using eBay to schedule a start time for your auctions may be a necessary evil if you’re not at home, at your computer, at the time of day you want your auctions to end. It may be better, however, to use an auction management program or service that includes this type of listing scheduling at a lower (or zero) additional cost.

The post Choosing Different Start Time on eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

I like setting a price that’s low enough to get some interested initial bidding going, but not so low that it won’t get up to the price I think the item can really sell for. So how do you know what the final selling price will be? You don’t. But you can get a good idea by searching eBay for completed auctions of similar items. eBay keeps most auctions on file for 30 days, so if anything similar has sold in that period of time, you can find it from eBay’s advanced search page.

At the least, you want to be sure you’re not setting the starting bid higher than the similar items’ final selling price. If you do a search for completed auctions and find that Star Wars DVDs have been selling between $4 and $6, don’t put a $10 starting price on the Star Wars DVD you want to sell. Ignore precedence and you won’t get any bids. Instead, gauge the previous final selling prices and place your starting price at about a quarter of that level. (That would be a buck or so for our Star Wars example.)

Of course, you can always go the reserve price auction routein which you get to set a low initial price and a high selling floor. In our Star Wars example, that might mean starting bidding at a penny (very attractive to potential bidders), but setting a reserve price of $4 or so. But when you run a reserve price auction, you run a very real risk of scaring away a lot of viable bidders. If you want to run that risk, fine; reserve auctions do let you get bidding started at a very attractive level, while protecting you if bids don’t rise to the price you’re looking for.

Don’t waste your time searching auctions still in progress. Because so much bidding takes place in the last hour of the auction (that’s sniping, remember?), a mid-auction price is likely to bear no relation to the final pricewhich you can find by searching completed auctions.

…But Don’t Set It So Low That It’s Not Believable

In some instances you need to worry about setting the starting price too low. If you set too low a minimum bid for your item, some potential bidders might think that something is wrong. (It’s the old “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”) Although you might assume that bidding will take the price up into reasonable levels, too low a starting price can make your item look too cheap or otherwise flawed. If you start getting a lot of emails asking why you’ve set the price so low, you should have set a higher price.

Make Sure You Recover Your Costs…

Another factor in setting the starting price is what the item actually cost you. Now, if you’re just selling some junk you found in the attic, this isn’t a big concern. But if you’re selling a large volume of items for profit, you don’t want to sell too many items below what you paid for them. Many sellers like to set their starting price at their item costso if the item cost you $5, you set the minimum bid (or reserve price) at $5, and see what happens from there.

Make Sure You Can Live with a Single Bid

What happens if you set the starting price at $5 and you get only one bidat $5? Even if you thought the item was worth twice that, you can’t back out now; you have to honor all bids in your auction, even if there’s only one of them. You can’t email the bidder and say, sorry, I really can’t afford to sell it for this price. If you listed it, you agreed to sell it for any price at or above your minimum. It’s a binding contract. So if the bidding is low, you’d better get comfortable with itit’s too late to change your mind now!

The post How Should You Price eBay Items? first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

There are many places to find quantities of items to sell on eBay. We’ll discuss a few of the more popular ones herealthough it’s likely you have a few ideas of your own. Just remember that you need to buy low and sell highso be on the lookout for places where you can buy stuff cheap.

You should also be on the lookout for trends. Just because something’s hot today doesn’t mean it’s going to be hot tomorrow. You wouldn’t have wanted to be the proud owner of a garage-full of Pokemon cards just as the Poke-bubble burst, would you? So when you’re hunting for merchandise you can auction on eBay, try to stay on top of the coming trendsand don’t buy in at the tail end of an old trend.

Of course, it’s difficult to stay on top of the trends in thousands of different categories. For that reason, many eBay power sellers specialize in a half-dozen or fewer types of merchandise. You can track the trends in a handful of categories (by watching the current auctionsand the current selling prices); you can’t be as aware of the trends in a larger number of categories.

So specialize, stay on top of trends, and keep your eyes open!

Garage Sales and Yard Sales

If eBay is like a giant garage sale, you might as well start with the bona fide original source. Many eBay sellers scrounge around their local garage and yard sales, looking for any merchandise that they can sell for more money on eBay. It isn’t difficult; you can pick up a lot of stuff for a quarter or a dollar, and sell it for 5 or 10 times that amount online. Just be sure to get to the sale early, or all the good bargains will be picked over already!

Flea Markets

Flea markets offer merchandise similar to what you find in garage sales. The bargains might be a little less easy to come by, however, but if you keep a sharp eye you can find some items particularly suited for eBay auction.

Estate Sales

Not to be insensitive, but dead people provide some of the best deals you can find. It’s the equivalent of raiding somebody else’s garage or attic for old stuff to sell. Check out the weekly estate sales and auctions in your area, be prepared to buy in quantity, and see what turns up.

Live Auctions

Any live auction in your area is worth checking out, at least once. Just don’t let yourself get caught up in the bidding processyou want to be able to make a profit when you resell the merchandise on eBay!

Vintage and Used Retailers

Head down to the funky side of town and take a gander at what the various “vintage” and used-merchandise retailers have to offer. These are particularly good sources of collectibles, although you might have to haggle a little to get down to a decent price.

Thrift Stores

Think Goodwill and similar stores here. You can typically find some decent merchandise at low costand help out a nonprofit organization, to boot.

Discount and Dollar Stores

These “big lot” retailers are surprisingly good sources of eBay-ready merchandise. Most of these retailers carry overruns and closeouts at attractive prices. You can pick up merchandise here cheap, and then make it sound very attractive in your eBay listing. (“Brand new,” “last year’s model,” “sealed in box,” and so on.)

Closeout Sales

You don’t have to shop at a cheap retailer to find a good deal. Many mainline merchants offer terrific deals at the end of a season or when it’s time to get in next year’s merchandise. If you can get enough good stuff at a closeout price, you have a good starting inventory for your eBay sales.

Going Out of Business Sales

Even better, look for a merchant flying the white flag of surrender. When a retailer is going out of business and says “everything must go,” that means that bargains are yours to be hadand don’t be afraid to try to make a lower-priced deal.

Classified Ads

This isn’t as good a source as some of the others, but if you watch the classifieds on a regular basis, you might stumble over some collectibles being sold for less than the going price online. Just buy a daily newspaper and keep your eyes peeled.

Friends and Family

You can sell stuff you find in your garagewhat about your neighbor’s garage? Think about cutting a deal as a “middleman” to sell your friends’ and family’s stuff on eBay, especially if they’re ignorant of the process themselves. (And remember to keep a fair share of the profits for yourself; you’re doing all the work, right?)

Liquidators and Wholesalers

There are several websites that specialize in selling liquidated merchandise, typically in bulk lots. These items might be closeouts, factory seconds, customers returns, or overstocked itemsproducts the manufacturer made too many of and wants to get rid of. If you’re interested in investing in some liquidated merchandise to sell, a good site to check out is Liquidation.com, which offers various goods from many manufacturers.

The post Where to Find Items to sell on eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.