Sell and trade successfully on eBay and other online auction sites

Selling Successfully

Ready to sell? Check out the getting ready to make money page to make sure you've covered the basics, and register here to set up your seller account if you haven't already done so. You should have an account set up to sell through with 100% positive feedback and at least a yellow star - good feedback is the key to success! If you haven't got it, start again AND MAKE POSITIVE FEEDBACK YOUR PRIORITY.
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Getting started

Despite what anyone else tells you, and more importantly tries to sell you, you cannot make £1000's overnight - if it was that easy everyone would do it! That said, with a little bit of planning, knowledge and dedication it is certainly possible - and we are going to try to show you how! The time and effort needs to come at the beginning, so the returns will depend on the time you have available. Don't expect too much too soon, and you will be surprised how quickly £50 turns into £100, and £100 to £500 - hopefully you will be able to make a living salary without noticing success creeping up on you!!!

For those of you who have never sold on eBay before, read on - those experienced ones can skip to the next heading

If you haven't already read it, make sure that you are familiar with eBay's selling guide - this will give you a good solid base.

Next get cleaning that house! Seriously, hunt around the house for unused or unwanted items and instead of throwing it away put it on eBay. Don't worry too much about what you get for your items at this stage - like buying the cheap lots to get a feedback score, this is all about experience and learning how the site works. For some basic selling information, see below.

Basic Selling

OK, you've cleared out the attic, sorted out the kids unwanted clothes / toys etc, gone through your old records / books / cds and basically rounded up a selection of items that you are going to sell. You could just put them on the site and see how it goes, but lets just see if a few simple steps can improve your chances of a successful sale and generate some income!

First use our search tool to establish if there are any items the same or similar to the item that you are going to sell already listed on eBay. If there are any buy it now listings, make a note of the price, otherwise bookmark the page, make a note of when the auction finishes and go back to see what price the item sells for. This will give you a target price to aim for. Examine how the seller has set out the page and examine the feedback score, shipping costs etc. and consider how the seller has presented the item. We are developing and Advanced Selling section, and soon you will be able to compare this item against the Advanced Selling section to establish if the seller could have improved the chances of a larger profit through better presentation of the item. Prioritise your items so that you are selling the cheapest potential item first - that makes it more likely that you have learnt enough to maximise your profit by the time you sell your most expensive item!

We will cover presentation in more detail later on, but above all BE HONEST about your item - if there is damage or defects say so. You want and need your buyer to be happy with their purchase, if they aren't you'll need to start all over again to get a good feedback score. Good feedback will make you more money in the long run!

If you sell the item (don't worry at this stage if you don't - we will improve your chances a bit later!), ship it straight away and encourage the buyer to post feedback - only wait for payment in full if the item is very expensive or if the buyer has a poor / new feedback rating. The buyer will appreciate your trust and will be more likely to give you good feedback, and it is not likely that you will be the victim of fraud given the self policing nature of eBay. Make sure that you always follow the eBay guidance to keep safe, and never be tempted to deviate from safety regardless of the story! If you are very unlucky and run into someone who is determined to rip you off, put it down to experience and LEARN FROM IT. No market place is perfect, and eBay is no different from any other market in this respect, so be careful and don't be put off!!!

Improving Your Chances of a Successful Sale and Generating Profit

Now that you have some experience of the way eBay works, you need to consider three questions:

What products are you going to sell on an ongoing basis?
How are you going to "market" your products?
Where are you going to find a source of product to sell?

What to sell?

This is a tricky question to answer. Initially I would suggest that you sell what you love: but you must be aware that this may not be the best way to generate a good profit. Let me explain………

If you love something you are likely to already know a lot about you subject, and therefore likely to spot a bargain or a desirable item. For example if your interest is stamps, you may spot a stamp worth a fortune that someone like me (who knows nothing about stamps) is selling for a regular sum of money. The second advantage of selling what you love is that you will love your business, and making money will never be a "chore" - and if you love it the chances are that someone else will as well.

The trouble is that if lots of people love your subject, not only will you have lots of customers but you will also have lots of competitors - many of whom also love their subject and may well know a lot more about their subject than you. This will squeeze your profits and reduce your income.

The alternative is to identify a niche in the market that you can exploit - but to do this you need to be prepared to spend time and effort identifying the niche and learning your subject. Now your business is becoming more like work…….

eBay market research can be expensive to buy, but with a little work you can conduct your own high level research. There is a useful, but under-used function on eBay called eBay Pulse. This tells you the most popular searches, and who the big suppliers are. As an example, I chose stamps as the category, then drilled down to Great Britain as the subcategory and then Victoria as the sub, sub-category. This showed me that the most searched item was "mint" with 600 items for sale, with the prices, shipping costs, descriptions etc. The largest shop was Mark Bloxham Stamps with over 1500 active listings, and the online shop that they maintain. Is this a niche worth exploiting? Well I would say no - there is a good supply of power sellers that know their market that you would need to compete against, and any profit margins would be small. That said, if this is what you love then you can compete on knowledge (or will not mind researching!) and survive.

So the answer is difficult - if you want to enjoy what you do and don't mind if you don't make a fortune, stick to what you love. If you want to make money, then you need to identify a niche and exploit it until it is no longer a niche (you will constantly need to be identifying new opportunities). To make BIG money you need to identify a niche in a subject that you love and become the market leader!

How to Sell

As you spend more time on eBay , you will begin to notice that two sellers can be selling exactly the same item, but one seller will consistently be making more profit than the other. There may not be any obvious reason why this may be, but a combination of factors can drive up your profit margins. We will go through each aspect one at a time, but if you get each one of them right, I can guarantee that your profits will go up!

Feedback - I know, you are getting bored with this now! But feedback and your feedback score are the most important factors in determining your success. If you have a score of less than 98%, start again! Keep one account for buying and another for selling - go back to the homepage on advice how to start a new account with good feedback. Always be truthful and you will find that you get repeat business form regular bidders, and you will find that as people trust you more (and your feedback rating improves), the prices that you get for your product increases. Always be HONEST with your descriptions, particularly the condition of the item, and you will soon gain a reputation as a trustworthy vendor. As soon as you have completed your dealings, post your feedback and let the other person know that you have posted positive feedback - they will be more likely to do the same for you. A word of warning though - if you give negative feedback to anyone it is likely that they will retaliate by giving negative feedback to you, whether you deserve it or not. This is why you should have more than one account and separate accounts for buying and selling - once again, here is how to start a new account with good feedback. I'll stop there and hope that I have impressed on you how important feedback is!

Selecting the category and writing your title - people will generally find your item either by looking in categories or by performing a search (either on eBay or using tools like ours). The preference is largely driven by the product, and so your product type will dictate how important selecting the right category is. Generally people will use search to find something very specific or to find a collectable item (i.e. where there may be limited articles for auction), whereas for consumables many people will look by category (i.e. where there are many items and suppliers, and cost comparisons are important). If your product is in the second group, it will pay to invest a little time in making sure that it is in the correct category and thus easily found, because eBay will only let you put your product in one category. If it is obvious where your product goes, no problem. If not follow these steps…Firstly consider the words that you are going to use in your title and enter them one at a time in our search tool. You can instantly see what categories the results are listed in. Does this fit with what you thought? Go down the listings and find items similar or the same as your product - how are they described? If the product is listed in more than one category, which one is getting more bids? Which one has the higher starting prices? Can you even find items similar to yours? If not them you need to reconsider your title - remember the searches generally are performed on the title. Investing time ensuring that you get the title and category right will ensure that people can find your product - remember that if they can't find it, they won't buy it!!

Using pictures - Having got potential customers to your product through the category and title, you need to capture them and hold them. Remember that words will make your product available, but pictures will sell it! If you haven't already got a digital camera, they are now very inexpensive and easily available - have a browse (search digital cameras ) and invest in one! After that the rules are pretty simple - choose an area without lots of reflective surfaces, light the product well and make sure that you show clearly anything distinctive or informative that the buyer would want to see (e.g. hallmarks, signatures, damage / repairs, issue numbers etc. etc.)

Be flexible with shipping costs - be sure to state that the buyer pays the shipping, but be mindful that in a very competitive market if your shipping costs are higher than your competitors, this may reduce your sales. Conversely, you don't want to skimp on packaging and result in the buyer receiving damaged goods and giving you negative feedback (OK, OK, I won't go on about feedback again!). Examine the market and see what you competitors are charging.
Offer a guarantee - a guarantee differentiates your product from your competition in most cases (most sellers do not offer a guarantee), and will make the buyer more comfortable about buying from you. If the person knows they can return a product they are less likely to leave you negative feedback if there is a problem, particularly if they know they can get their money back without any argument. If you are genuinely looking after your customers there are likely to be very few requests under a guarantee, but it improves your credibility enormously!

That's it for now, but make sure that you bookmark the homepage and visit us again soon - this website is in development, and we have only just started to scratch the surface of what is possible!!!!