How to sell on ebay, a guide for beginners....part two

Continued from

How to sell on ebay, a guide for beginners....part one

make money on ebay

Don't have time to read all of my easy money making advice today? there is so much information that it's on 2 pages, this is the second part, click here for part one. Take a look at the bullet points and links at the bottom of the page and come back later with a cup of coffee to in read more detail....

Putting your listing together

Firstly choose the correct category for your item, you'd be surprised how many items are not put into the correct category, I bet you've spotted a few as you've wandered around eBay.

To understand how buyers will find your listings you need to know the 2 routes that the buyer could take.

The 'browsing' customer will know that they are looking for, say, a womens shirt for work. She hasn't decided on a colour or brand so she's open to ideas. She'll know the sizes that she wants to look at but that's about the only fixed point on her plan.

She'll start by clicking on the Clothing, Shoes and Accessories category and then Women's Clothing. The menu down the left side will help her slim down the number of items that she'll be shown - take a look at it, there are lots of filters for her to select.

Now that she has filtered the results down to a manageable number she'll settle down to browse the photos, titles and hopefully your photo will catch her eye. The title will have to be clear too, now go on to the next paragraph and I'll explain more...

The 'searching' customer will probably have a very good idea of what they want to buy so to save time she'll use the search box and type in what is important to her, maybe it's the colour, the size, the brand? so maybe she'll type NEXT BLUE SHIRT (or TOP) 12. When she is shown the results she can narrow it down even more with the side menu so she can choose the fabric and if she want it to be new with tags etc....

The key to getting your listing found by the buyers is to have a compelling title stuffed with keywords, these keywords are the ones that the customer may type into the search box like the brand, what the garment is (shirt, top, t shirt etc) the colour etc. Don't waste space with words like 'wow' or 'gorgeous' as no-one will type words like these into the search box, just use up all of the 55 characters with useful, searchable words. The title doesn't have to be in perfect English grammar, it's just a bunch of keywords to act as a magnet to draw the customer to you.

The next thing to do is make sure that the spellings in your title are perfect because a 'searching' customer may type in a brand or model name and if your spelling is wrong you won't be found easily - simple as that.

There are even websites that specialise in showing auction listings with misspelled titles (links below) so a canny buyer will seek out these listings knowing that they are likely to find a bargain that hasn't been seen by the mainstream buyer.

Next step is to fill in 'item specifics' there maybe one or two or lots more depending on the size of the category that you're using. A busy category like clothing will have a lot of specifics to complete. These are the filters that I was talking about earlier so the buyer that was selecting a colour, size, fabric etc will be shown items that have the item specifics filled in for these choices. You may have the Next size 12 blue cotton shirt that she's looking for but if you don't complete the specifics she won't find you easily and will probably come across someone else's Next size 12 blue cotton shirt first. And you've just lost the sale.

When you choose the gallery photo make sure you've picked the one that shows all of the item, the photos with the fine details come after your best shot.

Describe your item well

It's up to you whether you talk about the item in a friendly chatty style, a 'straight to the point' style with bullet points, or even a Marks and Spencer 'this isn't just a chocolate pudding.....' seductive style so long as you cover all the things that a buyer will want to know. Describe the flaws honestly, a buyer would rather know the straight facts before they decide to buy then to find out that the flaw is worse than you said after they receive it, you'll end up with some very awkward emails to deal with and your feedback is likely to suffer unless you make amends.

If the item is collectable give as much detail as you possibly can, 30 minutes Googling and searching on eBay's completed items may give you the facts and keywords that will mean a larger audience for the item which is bound to bring in a better price, that 30 minutes isn't wasted time.

If you've hosted your photos with a hosting site like Photobucket you can place the photos (by copying and pasting the photo) within the description so that as you describe a feature you can show the relevant photo. Earlier I mentioned using Auctiva, this is a website that has a lot to offer an eBayer. They have templates to give a professional look to listings (so long as you don't choose their wacky, over the top designs which swamp the listings in my opinion) a scrolling gallery and photo hosting.

You can place up to 24 supersize photos into the listing without any extra eBay fees and even schedule the listing to start at a later date and time for free too. This is really useful if you can only find the time to write up your listings at the 'wrong' time to have an auction close. There is a small charge of a few dollars per month for all of this useful stuff so it's well worth considering. My guides to using Auctiva for the first time are linked to lower down the page.

When you're happy that the description is going to give the buyer the information they need move on to decide if you are selling the item as an auction for up to 10 days or as a 'buy it now' listing for up to 30 days. Both have their place. Because I don't know what you're selling I suggest that you use the research that you did earlier to guide you. You might have seen that the similar items were all sold as Buy it Now sales so do the same.

If it's a sought after collectable it's worth selling as an auction, and make it a worldwide sale too unless the shipping costs are prohibitive. Have the auction end at a time of day when people are likely to be at home as the majority of serious buyers don't like to bid until the last few minutes for fear of drawing attention to an item that they hope to quietly bag for themselves. This end time is harder to judge if your buyer is likely to be overseas but you can't get it right for all prospective buyers so just make it so that your UK bidders will be in front of the screen when it closes, avoid popular TV programme timings and major sporting events - you can't compete with TV!

If you're selling as an auction sale you can be very brave and start the bidding at less than £1 but you'd have to be very sure that there are at least 2 buyers out there that will bid against each other otherwise you'll sell for just your opening bid. If you've done your research you'll know that previous similar items sold for £X and you can chance it. If you've done as I suggest with your titles, keywords, photos and description you may even get £XX for it.

If you're a bit more cautious start the opening bid at the lowest price you'd be prepared to take for the item and then the worst that would happen is that it doesn't sell the first time, at least it didn't sell for pennies.

It's always a very good idea to check what your ebay and paypal fees will be before you finish your listing. Use this ebay calculator to give you clarity on what your likely profit will be

List the postage costs

Take time to check how much the item will cost to post and enter this on the sale form, do it for the whole world too so that if it does sell to an Australian you know that he knows what the shipping cost is and he won't back away in surprise when you tell him. It also saves you having to answer 'what's the shipping' questions every day and some buyers will walk away when they don't see EVERYTHING they need to know on the page, they'll go on to another sellers listing instead.

Make sure that you understand the difference between the postal services so that you get the insurance cover that you need for the item's expected value.

You can check the prices on the Royal Mail website (link below), you only need 2 prices for a worldwide sale - Europe and the Rest of the World.

Safety first

If you are selling items of any value you must take steps to protect yourself from being scammed. I'm afraid that there are a tiny percentage of buyers that aren't nice. Whether you meet one seems to depend on what you're selling.

Take me for example, I've been selling on eBay for over 10 years now and I've never had a bounced cheque or any funny business with a buyer trying it on over a teapot or pair of soup bowls. I sell in a quiet little backwater on eBay that is all sweetness and light and long may it remain so.

On the other hand if you are selling an electronic item or mobile phone for example there is just the small possibility that your 'buyer' might claim that the item didn't arrive and expect you to refund. The only way to protect yourself is to make sure that you use postage services that have to be signed for on receipt.

I'm not going to dwell on the snags and difficulties that you may come across on eBay because I feel that the problems you'll encounter are few and far between and I don't want to sour it for you.

Hopefully if you followed some of my tips and advice you'll have a very successful sale, so good luck!

In a nutshell

Spend time buying a few items first, scrutinise the listings and work out what you liked (or didn't like) about the listings, use these observations when you write your own listings
Build your feedback up by buying some items to give buyers confidence when you start selling
Only sell items that you'd be happy to buy, don't waste your time and money on stuff that is too shabby to sell
Research eBay to see if similar items to yours are selling and what price they sold for, look and learn from other sellers listings
Take your time with the photos, even the nicest item can look like rubbish with a poor photo - take plenty and use plenty
Make full use of Keywords and Item Specifics, I can't stress this enough! no 'one word' titles please....
Describe your item well, don't miss out any details that the buyer will want to know, some buyers don't bother to ask questions so they move on to someone else's listing if they don't see what are looking for
Make sure that you take care to post the item with the safeguards you need to cover it's value if it gets lost.