Put stuff on ebay

This is probably the first thing you need to do before you put your stuff on ebay.

You need to see what the product has sold for in the past on ebay. Here is how you do it...

1. Sign in to ebay, if you don't yet have an account, then you can
click here to open one...

2. Search for the item you are going to be selling.

3. When the results come up click on the item that you will be selling. When you click it will open up the auction details.

4. In the details page look at the seller. The number next to the seller's name is the amount of feedback they have received. If this number is in the thousands, click on it. If not go back to step 3 until you find a seller that is.

5. Now that you have found a seller that sells a lot and have clicked on their feedback number you will be taken to a page that displays all their feedback. It also conveniently displays what items they have sold and how much they sold for. Scroll through the items until you see the item you are selling and how much it sold for. I prefer finding it a few times and taking the average selling price just to paint a more accurate picture.

After you have completed all these steps you should now have a rough idea of what your item will sell for...

With ebay it is crucial that you use a very descriptive title for your item. Since so many users use the search box to search for what they are looking for, it is extremely important that you have all the detail possible that you can squeeze into that box.

So for example if you are selling a guitar amp - you wouldn't want to have a title of "nice big guitar amp." Rather you would want something like "Used Marshall solid state VS100 1 12" guitar amp"

Think of all the details about the product and use as many of those as possible in your title. Try to think about if you were going to search for this product, what would you type? What would your mother or daughter type?

Ebay charges the seller a fee based on the amount of the starting bid. If your starting bid is $10, you are going to pay a smaller fee than if it is at $500. And there are lots of variations in between.

Another benefit of starting lower is that it will encourage more users to bid. Many ebayers are bargain shoppers, so they are looking for a good deal as they are scanning the items. If your price is too high, they will just move on. If it is low enough to get them to bid, you just got a possible buyer who you would have missed otherwise.

And once you have them bidding, you are in good shape. I don't know what it is about the bidding process, but bidding wars very often will cause people to spend more than they originally intended. I am not sure if it is the adreneline or the thrill of the hunt, but it seems to be true.

The best time to end an ebay auction is from 6-10pm EST. By default ebay auctions run for 7 days, so in order to have it end then you need to list it at that time - or you can pay a small fee to schedule it for the time you would like.

Ebay also offers 10 day auctions which will allow you to get more exposure for your item, they cost a little bit more, but if it is not a super popular item it will probably be worth it.

If you are willing to pay the extra for the 10-day auction make sure you start it on thursday evening, this will allow the item to be visible to buyers for 2 weekends.

The item description is not quite as important as the Title, but still very important. Without a good title your buyers will never find your item. But once they find it a good description can mean the difference between a no-sale and a sale and an easy sale and a difficult one.

Make sure you list all the good features of the product and the imperfections (if it is used).
Don't try to trick people into buying your broken computer monitor. If there is a crack in it, let them know upfront - it is a lot better to get less money from the sale than to sell it only to have it returned.

Find all the detail you can about the product and list it in the description. This part should be pretty easy. Go to the product's website and there will likely be lots of good information there and you can check out Amazon.com as well. They often have a lot of product details.

Yes, it is hard to imagine, but some people do try to sell stuff on ebay without using pictures. If you don't yet have a digital camera, go to Ebay now and make that purchase the first thing your do. It shouldn't cost you more than $50(unless you want it to) and it will end up saving you a lot of money and make your life a whole lot easier.

The only thing worse than having no pictures is having only one picture. Ebay allows you to put up one picture for free, but you do not want to just settle for one!

I don't care how popular the item is you should put a bunch of clear pictures up. This doesn't mean they have to be professional quality, just clear enough that anyone can see what is actually in the picture.

Having lots of pictures is a key to getting lots of bids.

Since Ebay will only allow you to list one picture for free you should sign up with Auctiva.com or another service that will allow you to host your pictures for free.

You can take a bunch of detailed and descriptive pictures and put them all on Auctiva's site for free and viola! They show up in your ebay listing and you didn't pay an extra penny for it.

Part of your job as a seller is to answer the buyer's questions. Depending on what you are selling you may or may not get a lot of questions. But regardless you should answer them quickly and thoroughly. There is a very good chance you will be able to sell the item to one of the people asking the questions - they wouldn't have wasted their time asking the question if they weren't interested.