Tips for selling on eBay

I hear people all the time complaining about eBay, calling it FEE-Bay. Those people are not taking advantage of the fee based structure of eBay at all. Here is a run down of how I sell items on eBay:

First I list everything as a 7 day auction. I sometimes add a "buy it now" option if I think people will snap up the item for the "buy it now" price. After the 7 day auction ends and the item still has not sold I will look to see if the item got any hits (visitors) to the item. If it did and it had some watchers but no buyers then I re-list the item as a 30 day "buy it now", but I lower the price a little to under my previous "buy it now" price.

The cost of the 7 day auctions typically run me about .40 to .45 cents. The listings for 30 days as a "buy it now" costs .35 cents. I figure it will cost me $20 to list 50 items on eBay. If I sell most of them in the course of a month then I could at least make a few hundred dollars.

I also use the free eBay tools from Auctiva. It took me awhile to get use to them but they offer the perfect cross promoting tool you can get on eBay. Auctiva is the one that provides the pictures to your other items listed on eBay on each one of your auctions and listings. The advantage to that is each time someone looks at one of your items they can see photos of what else you have.

I have sold old magazines for $40 and up on eBay as well as vintage clothing. I have not had much luck with books or software on there. At one point I did have an eBay store a few years back but eBay started to exclude eBay store items in their searches so I dropped the store.

To find out the latest news and goings on, on eBay, you will want to visit the eBay message boards where you can read what the eBay sellers are complaining about or what the next new developments are over on eBay.

No comments: