How To Have A Happy eBay Selling Experience

Selling on eBay can be a fun and rewarding experience. And profitable! Here are a few tips to help you make it so.

1. Research your product before listing it! Know as much as you possibly can about your item. Use the completed as well as active searches to find all the terms used to describe your product, if people are buying it and how much they are paying. If you can’t find anything like your item on eBay, look for collector groups/forums. eBay has several specialized groups. Ask questions.

2. Describe the item to the tiniest detail. Remember you are the eyes, ears, nose and fingers for the potential buyer. Pictures don’t always show everything. There might be an almost microscopic nick on the bottom, but the buyer needs to know about it. Sometimes the item looks better or worse than the picture. State that.
   If it’s glass or pottery or even fabric, it may have a distinctive sound that collectors look for.
   Many people want to know if an item has a cigarette smell and always mention a musty odor - or if it smells good, tell ‘em!
   How does it feel? Dry or supple? Smooth or rough?
   Give dimensions!

3. Take good, clear pictures and CROP THEM! How many times have you seen a huge picture that takes several minutes to load and the item is a tiny dot in the center? Then there’s the mystery fuzz. The picture is just one big blur. And let’s not forget items in the midst of a cluttered desk and reflective items reflecting……ummm……rather unappealing parts of the picture taker’s anatomy.
   No pets. As hard as it is to believe, most people don’t care to see your fur baby snuggled up to the item they’re thinking of buying. I have a very handsome cat and it is tempting, but I will not let him get in the pictures. OK, except for one, cat related item. I couldn’t resist that, but knew I probably shouldn’t. It could actually cause people who are allergic to cats not to bid.
   Make your pictures load fast. An image optimizer will get those pictures to load fast as lightning. Your pictures can be compressed to an unbelievably small file size without compromising the quality or physical size of the picture. A good, free, online image optimizer can be found at DynamicDrive.

   

4. Do try to use proper grammar. I don’t mean stiff, literary grammar. Don’t write as if your 12th grade English teacher will be grading your ad. That can be a turn off, too. Just try to avoid things like, “I seen it” or “I done it” or “It was throwed out in the trash”. We hear this type of misuse every day and have become accustomed to it, but it really looks bad on “paper”. Do try for a friendly, approachable tone. You want people to feel free to e-mail you if they have any questions. Some people prefer ads that are short and sweet. No fluff. Develop your own style. One that you feel comfortable with.

5. Spell correctly. We all get a good laugh out of the typos like leaving the “r” out of shirt, but most people won’t find that auction if they’re doing a search for a chartreuse and purple shirt. You’ll get a lot more hits if you spell “Homer Laughlin” instead of “Homer Laughtin” or if you type “candelabra” instead of “candlelobber”.

6. Avoid using L@@K and things like that in the title. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that makes them run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. Use that valuable space for a nice, descriptive term. Title space is precious. Don’t junk it up.

7. Please don’t make your terms longer than the item description. If there are too many terms, many people won’t bid for fear that they might do something wrong. I usually won’t. It makes the seller seem hard to deal with. I understand that many sellers feel forced to protect themselves because of unscrupulous bidders/buyers. If you must put restrictions in your auction description, try to keep them short and to the point and see which “rules” you can weed out.

8. Answer e-mails as promptly and politely as possible. Put yourself in the potential bidders shoes. Sure, they might be asking a question that was well covered in your description, but if you make them feel like a fool for asking, they’re not likely to bid. They were probably so excited to find your auction for the exact thing they’ve been looking for that in their excitement, overlooked the whole description. It happens. Well, it does! Remember, too that often those emails do not sound the way they were meant. Sometimes someone can sound like a hateful, spiteful, smarty-pants in print when really they were just expressing their dry humor. Don’t fire off a mean email back to them. Give them the benefit of the doubt. I once had someone email me telling me to look at other auctions like an item I had in my store, to look at the selling price and descriptions. I thought he was trying to tell me my item was priced too high (others like it were selling much lower than mine that month), but replied politely, thanking him for calling that to my attention. He wrote back rather surprised that I’d misunderstood. He was saying, without actually saying it, that he thought I could probably get a lot more if I changed my description just a bit.

9. Know the packed weight of your item and size of the box it will be shipped in. Yes, that’s extra work, but both the Post Office and UPS are using weight and dimensions now. Use eBay’s shipping calculator and always choose the cheapest shipping as the first choice. That’s if you use more than one shipping option, and you should. If you’re selling a lot of 10 books and choose Priority as the first choice, the shipping the potential buyer will see before even going into your auction could be $40.00! If you choose Media as the first option, the shipping price they see will be much less scary - perhaps, $10.00. They’d probably cruise on by $40 shipping, but wouldn’t bat an eye at $10.00.

10. Pack well! Pack well! Pack well!…….I can’t say that enough. Check some of the eBay discussion boards and you’ll see horror story after horror story about people receiving their item so poorly packed it didn’t stand a chance of getting from the postal counter to the back of the post office intact. Fragile items should be wrapped two or even three times in bubble wrap, then cushioned in a box that is cushion packed in a larger box. There are debates about what to use for cushioning. Some people hate packing peanuts, some hate paper, but almost all hate newspaper. Personally, I prefer to pack with packing peanuts, but if I’m out, I’ve found that crumpled, slick, catalog and magazine pages make a good substitute. Books, paper items and fabric should be placed in a sealed bag or wrapped in plastic wrap to avoid getting wet. You might be having a drought, but the box could be dropped and left to sit in a huge mud puddle 1000 miles away.

11. Payment options. Some people won’t buy if they can’t pay with PayPal. Some won’t buy if that’s their only option. Offer PayPal, personal checks and money orders. Credit card merchant accounts are a bit more complicated and have set up fees and percentages, so unless you intend to really have a large, retail business, I’d forego them, at least in the beginning. If you see your business moving in that direction, get one.

12. International sales are up to you, but do consider selling worldwide. People in many countries, Japan as an example, are die hard collectors and have the money to get what they want. International shipping isn’t as complicated as you’d think. Once you’ve done it a few times, it stops being intimidating and you’ll have a new, powerful confidence.

13. To make shipping easier on you, get an account with USPS and UPS. You can print shipping labels in PayPal, which takes the money straight out of your PayPal account and pays the carrier. Then schedule a pick-up, set the box on your front porch and let the mail carrier or UPS driver do the work. You never have to leave your house. No more lugging six boxes into the post office or UPS center, standing in line, watching the customers behind you tap their feet and listen to them sigh and grumble while each of your packages is weighed.

That’s about it in a nutshell. You can’t beat experience, though. You’ll remember the things you learn by trial and error. Mine, through the years, has been mostly error. I’d have no idea what I did right, but certainly remember the things I’ve done wrong!

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Article written by Wanda Craft, eBay member since 1997.