How to Sell on eBay, Successfully!

miaponzo

Even if you don't have anything to sell there are ways to make money with eBay. eBay has a pretty good affiliate program where you can include their ads onto you own website. You make a per click amount based on how many sales your site produces.

eBay has several ways to add auction items to your site. One of the best ways is to use the rss feed. This method adds content to your site that frequently changes, this is a bonus that can also help your search engine results.

If you don't know any programming, then likely the banner ads is the best way to go. The banner will include images and products based on the search criteria you give eBay ensuring that you are displaying products that will be of interest to you website visitors.

No matter what your website is about, if you are getting traffic then there are eBay products you can display to make a few extra bucks. If you haven't tried it yet you should check it out.

It's amazing to see the growth that EBay has had over the years. In addition to the wildly popular EBay.com, Ebay now owns PayPal which is the best know payment system on the web, StubHub and even a number of classifieds sites specializing in countries around the world, Likely the most well know being Kijiji.com.

Not everything EBay has touched has turned to gold for them though. In 2009 EBay bought Skype. While Skype is extremely popular and is the communication system of choice for many foreigners living abroad as well as people keeping in touch with family and friends (see Magic Jack vs. Skype), EBay just couldn't incorporate it well enough in their system to satisfy their needs and eventually sold it again.

Have you ever stumbled across an auction on eBay for an expensive item that is priced at full price and wonder why the person would put this on eBay? It's quite possible that the answer is as easy as "Branding".

Consider this. You are able to put a full-page advertisement of your version of a product on a site that has the capability to reach thousands of potential clients in a few days. The cost, almost nothing!

The tricky part is to do this and stay within the eBay guidelines. Here are some ideas on how this can work. I do some work for a small manufacturer of custom products. They make a product that is very well known. However, their brand is not yet well known.

Solution: Repeated auctions on eBay. As people start to see this brand name more frequently they start to associate it as a leading brand. Not knowing much about the brand they start doing research on the Internet. Of course because this is my clients brand, they rank the highest for that term.

Result: A sharp increase in Internet traffic to my client's site with a corresponding increase in sales. Did my client ever make a sale on eBay? Doesn't matter! The goal was to increase Internet traffic!

Continual exposure on a large well known website can do wonders in making your brand strongly associated with a product. Will this always work? Maybe not, but you never know until you try.

Lets face it, if you don't have something to sell; the best eBay strategies in the world are going to fall on their face. So, where do you get your inventory?

Having a good inventory takes research, whether you are getting new stuff and reselling or getting your stuff at garage sales you need to have a constant flow of items to sell. To add to the difficulty, you need to make sure you know what the item is worth and what people are willing to pay for it on eBay. For this reason most successful sellers tend to stick with one category of items that they know well and are comfortable with. This keeps you from having a garage full of items you've paid too much for to be able to sell at a decent profit.

Getting your inventory at garage sales can be rather risky. It's easy to over value an item and end up paying too much. Having a good plan before you even start out can help you to keep your new eBay business out of the red.

I stumbled across an article where the person described their entire garage sale inventory acquiring procedure. If this is the method you have chosen, you should be able to find a few good tips on finding the best buys at garage sales. You can check out the article here.

No, I'm not saying don't use pictures of your items in your auctions! However bad pictures can lower your final bid or even keep people from bidding at all. People planning on bidding on your item rely on that picture to help them decide their bid, if it is grainy, poor contrast, taken from too far back even taken from too close, this could keep them from getting the information they need to be comfortable with bidding.

Complicated items may require more than one view. For this you have three options.

1. Pay the extra for each separate view.


2. Link to images you have hosted on some free upload site


3. reate an image with your photo editing software that combines two or more pictures.

While the first option is fine if you only do a few auctions, choosing option 2 or 3 might be good if you are auctioning on a regular basis.

Choice of Cameras
I prefer a digital camera. This allows me to take several pictures of the item and immediately transfer them to my computer. This also gives me the advantage of not having to develop the pictures, which is an additional cost savings.

You don't need an expensive camera to do this. While high pixel cameras with zoom and a ton of features might be great on your vacation, the Internet only requires about 72 dpi because most monitors only display at 72 dpi. This means a much lower resolution camera will work fine.

Picture Taking
This can take a bit of practice. Fortunately with digital cameras that only means time, you don't have to pay for all the developing.

1. First, try to have a plain background. If the item is small use a towel or sheet as the background. Also choose a color that compliments the item without being distracting.


2. Look for the best features of your item and be sure to have pictures of that. Also what would you want to see if you were the buyer? If there is something unique take a close up of that feature.


3. Get good lighting. Don't rely on your image software to brighten a picture; this will cause a grainy picture.
   
   • Outdoor light is the best; often an overcast day will provide the most even light.
   
   
   • Try it with and without using a fill flash to see which one provides the most detail. Fill flash will brighten dark areas but can also cause the item to appear flat. You will often see greater depth without the flash but you can then lose detail.
   
   
   • Sometimes adding a lamp to the side of the item (out of the picture) will brighten on side and allow greater contrast and show more detail

Be honest
If the item has a flaw say so. Taking a picture is also good. This helps the bidder build trust in you and will also ensure you keep a good reputation.

Other Tips
Look at images of similar items in catalogs and magazines, see how close they zoom into the item. Check out the angles they use to convey the most information possible with each image.

Practice, get opinions from others. Remember people like to see what they are buying, the more impressed they are with the image the more they are likely to pay. If you are selling items where you have a lot of competition like electronics, great images will make you look more professional than the other auctioneers. Often that is the difference between the auctions that have many bidders and those with only a few.

Either way, great images will make you money. Poor images may ruin your auction.

Often it's desirable to have more than one or two images for your eBay ads and eBay charges for additional images. One way to get around this is to host your images on free image hosting sites. You can then link to these images with out having to pay the additional price to eBay. This also give an additional advantage of not having to repeatedly upload the same images if you are selling multiple items that are the same in different auctions.

Users of eBay will no doubt appreciate this new add-on for the FireFox browser making it easier to manage your eBay bids and sales. This includes a sidebar that sees the items you have bid on "in real time". It also includes customized status alerts to let you know when you have been outbid or when the auction you are bidding on is about to end.

For those of you who do not yet use FireFox yet. FireFox is an alternative to IE, in most cases it is faster and because of the available plug-ins can be far more convenient to use.

First you will need to have the latest version of FireFox, which you can download for free. You can get FireFox as well as the eBay plugin and other FireFox add-ons at FireFox Add-ons.

Ever notice while searching through eBay that while there may be many exact items for sale, often only a few of them will get the heated auctioning that you are looking for?

There are a number of reasons why this may happen, including:

1. Ad quality


2. Title Quality


3. When the item was added


4. Quality of Pictures


5. Poor Feedbacks

All of these can have an effect on the final auction bid, with a few tips, a little practice, and some trial and error you will be able to increase this number and of course your profits. In future posts I will write about ways you can improve each of the points in the above list. First lets start with ad quality.

While it might be tempting to spend 5 minutes writing a quick ad and uploading a picture, this is seldom in your best interest. Before sending in an ad you should always, proofread, let the ad sit on your desk while you take a break, reread, let someone else read it to make sure it is clear to them, reread, edit out unneeded words, reread.

You are probably getting my point. Good ads take time! But they also increase your bottom dollar so are worth the time.

First the obvious, emphasize the positive points of your item. This doesn't mean exaggerate, just make sure the person knows why they want this particular item. Include key features and features that make this better than other similar items. Add one or more pictures of the item; make sure they are flattering pictures. Give a precise description of the item.

Include any negative points of the item. If it has a scratch or ding in it let them know. Hiding this will only get you a bad feedback, which will hamper any future sales. Honesty in this regard will also increase the potential buyers confidence in you and the produce.

Add Some HTML
Use the HTML editor provided by eBay. Why put up a boring ad with all the same color, size, bold, emphasis etc. of text when you can spice it up. eBay accepts a wide variety of HTML mark up, us it to your best advantage. If you don't know how, you can purchase a cheap HTML pocket guide from a bookstore. Within minutes you can have a greatly improved ad that will get peoples attention. I will post some of the main HTML tags to use in future posts.

Finally, write ad copy that will attract a buyer. There are many ways you can improve your ads by avoiding certain words, capitalizing on others and breaking up the text. You will find a good checklist of ways to improve your ad copy at this site.

Good ad copy will sell your items at a better price, take the time to be sure that your ads are the ones that get those coveted heated auctions, where the buyers are battling to buy your product.

Looking for a place to auction off your car? Here are some good places to consider.

eBay Motors - Of course we have to start with eBay. If your car is something that has a wide appeal choosing eBay will get you a get your car seen by thousand of people, and not just the people in your area.

Russo and Steele Auctions - If your trying to sell a classic car that's been restored, a hot rod or other modified car, or even a sports car, likely this is the place you are going to get the best price for it.

Barrett Jackson Auctions - Another great place to try selling a high end car. Barrett Jackson auctions will help you sell almost any vehicle you want, they're not as restrictive as Russo and Steele.