Tips for selling on eBay
Following are recommended strategies to get more money for your auction items on eBay:1. Research the item you post.. Dig through eBay to find what similar items are sold for and how often they sell. Check other places (Amazon, abebooks.com, other forums) to see what they charge for the item.
2. Use low starting bids. Low starting bids cost less to list, and they encourage participation.
3. Start your listings on Thursday afternoons and evenings. Run ten-day listings. Time your auctions to end on Sunday evenings between seven and ten Eastern (four and seven Pacific). This gives two weekends to attract bids.
4. If needed, pay the extra ten cents to prepare listings in advance and schedule them to start on Thursday evenings. Prepare a group of listings in advance, then schedule them to start within a couple of hours of each other. (Don't have your listings end closer that within two minutes of each other)
5. Offer free shipping and delivery confirmation. You could charge for these, but free shipping builds goodwill. Delivery confirmation gives you peace of mind. Free insurance is of dubious value, however you could offer it on expensive items. You might offer it as a customer paid option.
6. Offer money back guarantee, but only for when the item is not described (Not for when a person changes his mind or makes a mistake)
7. Craft your auction title with care. For example, I recently sold a book entitled The Hidden Game of Baseball by John Thorn adn Pete Palmer. I could have put all that into my auction title, but it would have been a waste. My title was geared toward keywords that I believed interested buyrers would use: HIDDEN GAME OF BASEBALL Thorn Palmer SABR Bill James. Bill James had nothing to do with the book, but fans of Bill James would be likely to purchase it. You want many people to see your items in their search results.
8. Write a good description listing the strengths and flaws of your item. Write things like "I think this book is in great shape, but be aware that the cover has a small tear and the previous owner's name is on the flyfeaf", etc Try to place additional keywords in teh description, but sprinkled into conversational sentences.
9. Be thorough. Many people advocate short descriptions. Use long descriptions, bold text and underline to emphasize the important aspects of your auction.
10. Refuse to accept bids from headaches: people with negative feedback, and people who haven't been paying.
11. Take photos and post them in the description. Use teh 35-cent gallery feature so that your photo appears when people browse listings. If condition is a concern, use many photos to convey the state of the item.
12. Answer questions. You will receive many questions about your items. Some of the questions will be very straight forward, some obvious. Answer all questions no matter how simple because others may have the same questions.
13. Be friendly ! A friendly, easy going person is going to receive better response.
