ebay tips and experiences

Some key facts about my ebay profile. I have been an ebay seller for over six years. I have not sold new items or used drop shippers, but I have instead preferred to sell from my own personal collections. I believe that when you consider this, then my current feedback rating of 1717 with 100% positive feedback score is quite a good one. Not huge by some standards, but certainly I think a good indicator of a reasonable level of activity (my family certainly appreciate the extra space).

I took great pride in achieving a 100% positive feedback rating - and tool great care to preserve this status at all times. It really is worth the effort as this is probably the single most significant thing about a seller that buyer relies on when deciding whether or not the seller is reputable.

It is a good idea to take the time to have a good look around the ebay site before signing up as an ebay seller. This will help you to become familar with the layout. Try looking at those ebay sellers who are already selling items similar to those you wish to sell, how do they describe the item? What do they charge for postage and packaging? What sort of feedback have they received? Are they selling many items?

Try buying something from ebay. If you are going to sell via auctions, then bid for items. This will give you the chance to see for yourself what it is like as an ebay buyer. Did you recieve good service? Was the product as described? How was it packed? What was the sellers communication like, did they keep you informed at all stages - or were you left to fend for yourself?

Decide on your seller name (or at least have a list of your favourite names) BEFORE setting up your account. I literally spent two hours trying to do this as all my first choices already existed.

You will need to decide at the outset what your status as a seller is. You will be asked to register as a private seller or as a trader. The difference being:
Private Seller - you are only looking to sell your items that you no longer want or need.
Trader - You are buying or making items with the intent of selling them on at a profit. If you are going to operate as a trader, make sure that you keep good records of all your costs and sales from day one.

If you are only going to sell an odd item now and again, then it is probably enough to accept payments by cheque or postal orders. I did just this in the first couple of weeks, but quickly found that it limited the number of potential bidders and could be cumbersome to manage. I would strongly recommend that you sign up for Paypal. This simplifies the whole process of selling, enables instant payments and provides security for both you and your customer.

A picture says a thousand words - so the saying goes - and it is true. Treat yourself to as good a digital camera as you can reasonably afford. You will need to take pictures on a regular basis and it will pay to set aside a corner to act as a studio for your objects. Good lighting and a background colour that enhances the object will help

It is crucial that you make every effort to establish early positive feedback scores. As a new ebay seller you will find it difficult to complete sales if ebay buyers are unable to see that you are trustworthy. There are a number of methods that you can use to establish early positive feedback scores. You could buy a number of items and ensure that you pay quickly. Buyers like this and are very likely to leave good positive feedback.

Always, Always, ALWAYS point out any damage or wear to an object. Your customer will thank you for your honesty. It will help avoid negative feedback and over time will establish you as a seller that can be trusted.

Understand your packaging and postage costs (BEFORE YOU MAKE THAT FIRST SALE)!!!!
This is probably the most difficult of all to get right - it should not be - imagine how frustrating it would be to find an item to sell, to research a little about its history, to spend the time to write a good description, to take good photographs that help sell the item, to wait a week or so for the auction to end, to see the bids starting to come in......only to throw away all or most of that hard earned profit by not having properly assessed the cost of postage and packing. THIS IS PROBABLY THE SINGLE MOST COMMON CAUSE OF PROBLEMS TO THE NEW EBAY SELLER.

Tip 10. If you find yourself in this position. I would strongly recommend that you DON'T try to claw back a few pennies or even a few pounds by trying to reduce the amount of packaging that you would have intended to use. There is a real likely-hood that it may lead to the item being damaged. As a minimum your customer would notice the fact that packaging was substandard and comment on it in their feedback. It would harm your reputation and if you start off this way, attracting early negative feedback, your job of selling will become all the harder for it. I would urge you bite the bullet, package it as well as you originally intended, note what it was that caused you to misjudge the cost, learn from it and move on. So how do you avoid this from happening? Well it is easy really - practice.

Now at that time, I had no idea that you could use tools such as "Turbo Lister" to create and manage listings. I used to enter each item individually. Not much of a problem if you are only intending to sell a couple of items now and again. But if you want to make regular listings as I did, then you can save literally hours of work by using "Turbo Lister" or similar products - and the beauty of this is that it comes free from ebay.

There is no hard and fast rule regarding this. Generally speaking, I found that where I was selling an item through auction, then 10 days seemed to work best for me. I would suggest that you should not be afraid to try a few variations for yourself.

I always found that the percentage of sales and the comparative volume of bidders and therefore prices attained at auction, increased greatly where I timed each auction to finish between Friday evening and Sunday evening. Where I did have auctions ending during the week, I would always try and time them to end between 18:00 hrs and 22:00 hrs.

Another advantage from operating as per tip 13 above was that it fitted well with organising my customer communications following sales. It also meant that I could dedicate particular days of the week to packaging and posting routines. This is an area that the new ebay seller often under estimates.

I found this useful whenever I was unsure about a potential buyer. Sometimes you just get a uneasy feeling from the sort of questions being asked by prospective buyers. Sometimes there will be buyers who will be uncontactable after a sale. It would be easy to find yourself in a situation where tempers flare, but you should always try to remember that there genuine reasons why this might be happening for example the buyer may have become ill, they may have had to go away on business or on holiday. They might even be having a problem finding the funds and be too embarrassed to admit to it. I have seen all of these scenario's from buyers and I have always found it helps to view their feedback ratings and comments BEFORE deciding on how to tackle the issue. Most people are genuine and I have always found that if you are patient, polite and consistent in your approach, then most situations can be resolved without too much fuss.

I have found that buyers generally prefer to be given options regarding how their item can be delivered. You should state clearly what the options are and what the cost will be, the buyer will request the option that suits their circumstances and pay a fair price for this.

Get this wrong and it will cost you. Get it right and there are big rewards. This is not so hard to work out either. If you are unsure, search for similar items on ebay. Compare the prices they are attracting and then check the respective categories that they are in.

It is important to know the fees charged for selling on ebay. You will need to adjust your starting prices and decide when best to place reserves on items at auction in order to get the best possible value out of your selling activities.

Once you have made several trips to the local post office with your sold items, you will soon realise that you will want to avoid peak time queues.

If looking for collectables or in fact anything to re-sell, then I would suggest that need to look for something that represents good value. You may find something special that will give you an amazing return, but more often than not you will come across items that offer you an opportunity to show a small profit with little risk. As a simple rule of thumb, you need to be looking to be able to sell the item for at least twice the amount you paid for it. After recovering your original purchase price, the cost of travel to find the item, the listing fee, the final value fee, paypal commission etc. you will be lucky to clear around 30% profit. Deduct those occassions when an item fails to sell, or attracts little interest and you will soon see that need to looking to at least double the initial purchase price as a minimum to make the activity worthwhile.