1. Set competitive prices. Do your research to find out what similar items are selling for on eBay. You don’t want to price your items too high, or you won’t make any sales. But you also don’t want to price them too low, or you’ll lose money.
2. Offer free shipping. Free shipping is a great way to attract more buyers to your listings. Most buyers are more likely to buy an item if it has free shipping.
3. Pack your items carefully. Make sure your items are well-packaged and protected from damage during shipping. You don’t want to lose any customers because their items were damaged in transit.
4. Ship your items quickly. Buyers expect their items to be shipped quickly, so try to ship them out within 1-2 business days of payment.
5. Provide excellent customer service. If a buyer has any problems with their order, be sure to respond to their messages quickly and help them resolve the issue. Good customer service will help you build a positive reputation on eBay.
6. Get positive feedback. Positive feedback is essential for building a successful eBay business. When you get positive feedback, it will show potential buyers that you are a trustworthy seller.
7. Respond to negative feedback. If you do receive negative feedback, try to resolve the issue with the buyer as quickly as possible. If you can’t resolve the issue, you can always try to get the negative feedback removed by contacting eBay.
8. Be patient. It takes time to build a successful eBay business. Don’t expect to become a millionaire overnight. Just keep working hard and be patient, and you will eventually see your business grow.
9. Be consistent. One of the most important things you can do to be a successful eBay seller is to be consistent. That means listing new items regularly, shipping your items on time, and providing excellent customer service.
10. Learn from your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but successful eBay sellers learn from their mistakes and don’t make the same ones twice. If you make a mistake, don’t dwell on it. Just learn from it and move on.

Following these tips will help you be a successful eBay seller. Just remember to be patient, consistent, and learn from your mistakes.

The post 10 eBay Seller Tips first appeared on Tips For Sellers & Buyers.

The primary purpose of an eBay photograph is to enable a prospective buyer to easily make a detailed inspection of an item. Such an inspection
is one of the best ways a prospective buyer has to evaluate an item. Therefore, make it easy for prospective buyers. Provide clear and sharp photographs of the items you sell. Another purpose essential to eBay photography is to save you time, effort, and money in doing a necessary chore. You have other important things to do in running your eBay business. You need to spendtime taking photographs of items, but you don’t need to spend any more time than absolutely necessary. You need a workflow that’s efficient; that is, one that provides the highest quality for the least time, effort, and resources.

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There are people who buy items that are accompanied by poor (or no) photographs on eBay, take good photographs of these items, and then resell the same items on eBay for a profit.

Of course, this isn’t cost-effective with $5 items. It’s much more likely to be successful with expensive items where the profits can be counted
not in dollars, but in tens of dollars, or even hundreds or thousands of dollars. But any way you look at it, this seems to me a shocking practice,
one that catches your attention. Don’t let this happen to you.

The post eBay Product Photography first appeared on Tips For Sellers & Buyers.

• If you’re selling more than $1,000 per month, you may be eligible for eBay’s PowerSeller program.
• To turn your eBay hobby into a money-making profession, you need to start with some detailed business and financial planning.
• Most power sellers specialize in a specific type of itemand buy it in bulk.
• Successful eBay businesses keep detailed records and perform regular analyses of their auction activities.
• The more auctions you list, the more value you’ll get from third-party auction management sites and services.
• Opening an eBay Store is a good way to sell various fixed-price merchandise through the eBay system.
• When you start making a living from your eBay auctions, be sure to engage the services of a qualified accountantto manage your tax liabilities, if nothing else.

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

Another benefit of selling merchandise in an eBay Store is that eBay will automatically advertise items from your store on the Bid Confirmation and Checkout Confirmation pages it displays to bidders in your regular auctions. These “merchandising placements” help you cross-sell additional merchandise to your auction customers.

Setting up your own online storefront is surprisingly easy to do, thanks to a service called eBay Stores. An eBay Store is an online storefront where professional eBay merchants market fixed-price goods, in addition to their traditional auction items. If you’re a heavy seller thinking of making the move into real honest-to-goodness retailing, eBay Stores is a relatively painless way to start.

You access the eBay Stores home page at stores.ebay.com

Do You Qualify?

Just about any seller can open an eBay Store. All you have to do is meet the following criteria:

• Be a registered eBay seller, with a credit card on file
• Have a feedback rating of 20 or more, or be ID verified
• Accept credit cards for all fixed-price sales

Given that accepting credit cards can mean using PayPal, you can see that you don’t actually have to be a big traditional retailer to open an eBay Store. Any individual meeting the requirements can also open an eBay Store, thus making eBay Stores a great way for entrepreneurial types to get started in retailing.

Why would you want to open your own eBay Store? Well, it certainly isn’t for casual sellers; you do have to set up your own web page, and keep the store filled with merchandise. But if you’re a high-volume seller who specializes in a single category (or even a handful of categories), there are benefits to opening your own store. These include being able to sell more merchandise (through your store) than you can otherwise list in auctions; being able to display a special eBay Stores icon next to all of your auction lists; and being able to generate repeat business from future sales to current purchasers.

eBay Stores are great for small merchants who don’t otherwise have a Web presence. They’re overkill for the casual seller, however and probably not worth the effort for larger retailers.

You also have to pay eBay for each item you list and each item you sell just as in a normal auction. The difference is you’re not listing for a (relatively short) auction; you’re listing for longer-term inventory.

eBay Stores also offers a full assortment of listing upgrades, just like the ones you can use in regular eBay auctions. These enhancements gallery, bold, highlight, and so on are priced according to the length of your listing. You can also offer multiples of the same item in Dutch auction format.

Setting Up Your eBay Store

Opening your own eBay store is as easy as clicking through eBay’s setup pages. There’s nothing overly complex involved; you’ll need to create your store, customize your pages (otherwise known as your virtual storefront), and list the items you want to sell. Just follow the onscreen instructions, and you’ll have your own store up and running in just a few minutes.

When you’re ready to set up your store, go to the eBay Stores home page and click the Open a Store button. When you accept the user agreement, the store creation process begins. On seceding pages you’ll be asked to choose a store theme, enter a store name and description, provide a logo (or choose from supplied clip-art), and then choose a subscription level. On the last page you’ll click the Start My Subscription Now button, and then eBay will create your store. It’s that simple!

The post Supplementing Your Auctions with an eBay Store first appeared on Tips For Sellers & Buyers.

Probably the most important type of promotion, however, is word of mouth based on your good reputation. You want to encourage repeat bidders and drive buyers into your online store (if you have one) for additional sales. That means treating your buyers fairly and with respect, and going the extra mile to ensure their satisfaction. It also means sending previous buyers emails when you have items up for auction that they might be interested in. (Which argues, of course, for keeping comprehensive records of all your eBay auctions.)

The post Promoting Your Online Auctions first appeared on Tips For Sellers & Buyers.

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 Sellers & Buyers.

The more auctions you list, the more it behooves you to automate as much of the auction process as possible. For most power sellers, that means signing up with one of the big websites that offer bulk listing and post-auction management, such as Ándale (www.andale.com), SpareDollar (www.sparedollar.com), or Vendio (www.vendio.com). Be sure to factor the site’s fees into your cost structure, and let them help you manage all your auctions.

You should also try to automate your physical auction activity. That means creating some sort of auction “office” or workspace in your home. This workspace should include everything you need in order to create auction listings (including your digital camera and scanner) and to pack and ship your finished auction items. In addition, you’ll need space to store all your excess auction inventory; this may be your basement or garage, or even a rented storage locker.

Automating your processes also means establishing some sort of auction-related schedule. Pick one or two days a week to launch all your auctions; pick one or two days to visit the post office. Stick to your schedule and you’ll avoid running around like a chicken with your head cut off; after all, dead chickens aren’t known for their business efficiency.

On the subject of shipping, you should try to simplify your packing and shipping activities as much as possible. This means limiting the types of items you sell to just a few so that you can standardize on packaging. It’s much easier to stock just one or two different-sized boxes than it is to store a dozen or more sizes. If you sell a limited variety of merchandise, you’ll also be able to better estimate your shipping costs ahead of time.

When you reach this sales volume, you should also investigate the pick-up services offered by many shipping services. Dragging hundreds of items to the post office every week is a lot of work which you want to eliminate, if you can.

Although it’s important to keep detailed records regarding your eBay auctions, generating a few reports is no substitute for engaging an accountant especially when taxes enter into the equation. Remember, any profits you make on your auctions must be reported as income, and you must pay taxes on your income. Unlike in a “real” job in which taxes are deducted from your weekly paycheck, the taxes you owe from your self-run business are paid to the government as quarterly estimates. Trust me, you don’t want to handle this tax stuff yourself. It’s definitely worth a few bucks to have an accountant handle all your business taxes for you and he can probably help you find a few extra deductions, besides.

The post Automating Your Auction Activities first appeared on Tips For 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 Sellers & Buyers.

Let’s consider an example. Caitlin has found a source for iron-on transfers for T-shirts and sweatshirts. She can buy these transfers for $1 each and (based on her experience and research) can sell them on eBay for an average price of $5. That’s four dollars profit for every transfer she sells.

Caitlin has huddled over her copy of Quicken and determined that she needs to generate $30,000 in profit (not in revenues!) to make her eBay business worthwhile. Assuming that she works 50 weeks a year (everyone needs a vacation), that means she needs to average $600 in profit each week. At $4 profit per item, she has to sell an average of 150 iron-on transfers a week each and every week.

Because only about half of all eBay auctions end with a sale, Caitlin knows that to sell those 150 items she has to launch 300 auctions each week. That’s a lot of work, as you can imagine.

Can Caitlin make a go of it? It depends. Can she physically manage 300 auctions a week? Can she pack and ship 150 items a week? And, more important, can she realistically sell 150 items a week is the market big enough to support that sort of sales volume?

If Caitlin answers yes to all those questions, there’s still more planning to be done. To begin with, this example greatly simplifies the costs involved. Caitlin will need to figure eBay’s costs for all those auctions the listing fees for 300 auctions, and the final value fees for 150 completions. If she accepts PayPal payments, she’ll need to determine what percentage of her buyers will use PayPal, and what her fees for those transactions will amount to. Assuming that she uses a third-party website to help her launch and manage those auctions, she’ll also need to figure those fees into her cost structure.

All totaled, these auction listing and management costs can add up to 5%10% of her revenues. That means increasing her cost per item from $1.00 to $1.50 or more which reduces her profit per item to just $3.50. With this reduced profit margin, she’ll need to sell even more items to hit her profit dollar targets an extra 20 or so successful auctions each week.

All this needs to be factored in before Caitlin launches a single auction. And at these volume levels she’s definitely running a business, which means reporting the income to the IRS and paying taxes. There’s also the matter of sales taxes, which she’ll need to collect on all sales made to buyers in her home state.

The takeaway here is that making a living from eBay sales is just like running a business, especially in its financial complexities. Anyone contemplating this type of endeavor should do some serious business planning, which should include consulting an accountant or another financial planner.

If the numbers work out, you need to answer one more question: Is this something you’ll enjoy doing every day of the week, every week of the year? Even if you can make money at it, managing hundreds of auctions a week can wear down even the best of us. Make sure that you’re up to it, and that you’ll enjoy it, before you take the leap.

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