Your Tips For Selling on Ebay

[Cheetahwoman7]

This thread stems from the Paypal thread I posted a couple of days ago. I've only been selling on Ebay since the end of January, spurred on by Jeffery's $20 Challenge. It's been educational, to say the least, but I'm sure there are many things that I should be doing that I don't even have a clue about.

So far, I've just been selling things from around the house. I've been surprised at what some of the things have gone for, some low, some high compared to what I thought I was going to get. One of my biggest surprises was my Nancy Drew collection of books. I was just going to Freecycle them when a friend said, "NO!!! Put them on Ebay!" Well, those went for almost $70!!!! I was amazed. Guess some of the older ND books I had were worth something.

What are some of your tips (and maybe tricks) to selling well on Ebay? Do you think having a fancy background and layout makes a difference? Should I learn HTML? Are there any free sites that let you put your pictures on them so you can have them available for your auctions? Do you include an extra "handling" fee in your shipping? Are you like me and don't have a PayPal account (yet)? Any other tips?

Thanks in advance,
CJ

[Crystallas]

Clear pictures and full, detailed description of the item. Thats all you need to be successful. Trying to be a salesperson on ebay with all the cosmetics and gimicky lines arent going to help you much since people are pretty immune to them.

[Cheetahwoman7]

Thanks Crystallas,

Do you have any suggestions on a site to host the images? I checked with my ISP, and they don't give me any storage space. I don't really want to pay a monthly fee as I only sell a couple of things a month. Is there a site that allows you to pay as you need the space?

Thanks

[Jewelsmom]

I sold on eBay 4 yrs ago for about a year and got burned out.
Sold last year for about 9 mos and made enough money buying at garage sales/thrift stores to purchase two home desktop computers with flat screen monitors for the kids. But it got old and stressed me out.

Whiny customers who were too cheap to pay for priority mail and complained they didn't have thier items sooner; eBay and Paypal fees taking the lion's share; most lunch breaks at the post office, e-mailing customers before work and late into the night, etc.. Not for the casual seller if you want to do it right.

I decided after looking at my storage room full of "unsold" stuff I bought to sell & a garage full of empty recycled boxes, bubble wrap and tape, that it just wasn't worth it. Unless it's a free item I am selling for a huge profit, I dont' think I will ever sell on eBay again.

It's just cheaper to be frugal.

[Hypersion]

I started selling on eBay this year and initially it was a lot of fun but like Jewels I got burned out after 6 months. I was making about $200-$300 net after fees ect but I had to work a lot of hours to make that $250 a month. Now I won't sell an item unless I know I can get at least $20-30 after fees.

Some good tips are:

* Watch out for fees. EBay hits you three times with fees. Once to list, once to sell and third when you get paid. (PayPal) EBay will only give you a PARTIAL refund when you re-list an unsold item.

* Only ship to confirmed PayPal addresses. Change your settings in PayPal to accept payment from confirmed addresses only.

* Don't waste time. Unless the item I'm selling is used or unique I usually just copy and paste the picture and description from amazon.com or a similar website.

[abowers]

Photobucket is free photo hosting.
You create an account, but it's free. www . photobucket . com

[Jaynen]

I actually had wanted to get a raffle going for the power ebay sellers.... I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to get rid of, but didn't feel like going through the angst of selling it all.... basically I was thinking they could all pay me $5 per raffle ticket via PayPal, I'd limit the raffle to only 500 participants, give each person their number when they bought one, and then maybe upload a video of the raffle taking place via youtube or something so no one would think I rigged it, and the winner would get all my stuff for only $5 (which is like a couple thousand dollars in stuff). Do you guys think it would be a good idea? If so, how would you suggest I market the idea, because I don't want to go spamming people saying "hey, hey come do this raffle I'm holding."