Before You Sell on eBay
Naturally you want to create your listing right away, but there are a few key things to consider before doing so. Looking at these steps first can save you time and money.
Establish a Good Reputation on eBay
- Buyers are less likely to buy from sellers with no eBay history.
- You will get positive or negative feedback on your eBay transactions, both buying and selling.
- eBay also now offers detailed seller ratings. Buyers can give sellers 1 to 5 stars on four criteria: item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping & handling charges.
- Having a high (4.6+) score in these categories makes you eligible for listing discounts and better listing placements, both of which can make a big difference to your bottom line.
- Sellers have found it particularly difficult to get high ratings in the shipping category.
- You can start creating a positive eBay history by purchasing items from other sellers and paying promptly and selling small items that you describe accurately and ship promptly.
- Buyers often pay higher prices to sellers with more positive feedback.
- Establish a reputation as a reliable eBay seller before offering a high-value item. Most eBayers will be reluctant to offer a high bid to an untested seller.
Check What Can’t You Sell on eBay
- Review eBay’s list of prohibited and restricted items to learn what you cannot sell on eBay. For example, the only live animals you can sell on eBay are tropical fish and domestic aquatic snails. You don’t want to set up an eBay listing only to learn that your item is prohibited or restricted.
Research the Price of Your eBay Item
- Before you go to list your item, you should check what similar items have sold for. You may not want to sell your prized Spider-Man action figure if others have only sold for $4.
- To find sale prices for earlier auctions on eBay, click on eBay’s advanced search option and check the option to search “Completed Listings Only.”
eBay Advanced Search. - Enter the name of the item you’re planning to sell on eBay. You can also select a category to search in.
- Sort the results by price. This lets you approximate the going rate on eBay for similar items.
- Also check sites like Amazon.com to see what their prices are.
- If the prices you see are lower than what you want to accept, perhaps because there are multiple similar products selling, consider holding off on selling the item or reducing your price.
- If your item is seasonal, you may want to create a listing when it is most in demand.
- For example, baseball merchandise sells for more during the season and coats fetch higher prices during cold weather.
- Also consider what it will cost to ship your item. A large item, like a chair may cost so much in shipping that you get fewer auction bids.
Take Photos of Your eBay Item
Take clear, well-lit photos. (Photo by Daniel Wildman)
- Every item you list on eBay should have photos to attract, and inform, potential buyers.
- Basic items, like CDs and DVDs, may only need one photo.
- Most of the time you should take multiple shots of your item, from different angles and showing different sides.
- Show any flaws, dings, or dents in your items; do not angle your photos to hide them.
- Make your photos as clear and well-lit as you possibly can.
- Clean your item before photographing it.
- Only have one item in your photograph, unless the items are all selling together. You do not want to confuse potential buyers.
- Try to shoot your photos in a bright area, preferably in natural light. A blurry, shadowy photo takes time for you to upload, but does not help any potential buyer with useful information.
- If you are unsure how to stage the photos, look at similar items already listed on eBay. Emulate the style and framing of the photos that are most appealing to you.
- eBay recommends uploading photos that are 1024 x 768 pixels. Your photos will be re-sized to the standard 400 x 300 pixels, so you can re-size them yourself before uploading them to see how well your item is represented.
- You can re-size a photo with the program Photoshop, with an online service like Snipshot, or with any other image re-sizing tool.
- It’s also good to sharpen your photo. This can be done with the adjust menu on Snipshot, or by accessing the sharpen submenu of the filter menu in Photoshop.
- Save your photo as a high-quality JPEG (.jpg). This will maintain photo quality after it’s on eBay.
- For a fee, you can also add a Gallery photo to your listing, which places a thumbnail photo to the left of your listing when it comes up in search results.
- Gallery photos are 96 x 96 pixels; at that size you may want to take a separate photo to use instead of cropping your auction photo.
Duration of Your eBay Listing
- You also want to think about the best time for your auction to start (and therefore end). You can choose the number of days your listing will be on eBay. But, unless you pay an additional fee, your auction will end at the same time of day you begin it.
- The highest bids often come in during an auction’s final moments, so you do not want your auction to end when most people are asleep.
- People disagree over the best time to end an auction. Some feel weekend mornings are the best end times, but remember that many people go out during the day and leave their computers. Others believe that between 6 and 11am Eastern time is a better end time, but that excludes many people on the West Coast.
- Sometimes ending an auction during peak hours is less likely to result in a sale, because the market is crowded with too many auctions.
- To pick an optimal end time, consider what you are selling:
- Laptop computer: end the auction at night, when most people are not at work.
- Video games: end the auction in the afternoon, when kids are out of school.
- Also think about where your primary market is. If you sell internationally and find that most of your items go overseas, choose an auction end time when people in your target time zone are awake.
- You can experiment with different auction end times and see what works best for you.
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