eBay Seller’s Tips and Secrets

Welcome! This site is meant for both experienced and novice eBay sellers. This page will list all of the hints that I have used to maximize my profit on eBay with a minimum commitment of time, effort, and money. I hope you will find them useful.

For newcomers, eBay is found at http://www.ebay.com. It is an auction site in which almost anything imaginable can be bought and sold, with millions of members making transactions every day.

Accepting many different forms of payment is highly recommended, because a wider range of buyers will be able to pay for your auction, thus giving you more potential bidders. When you sign up with eBay, be sure to sign up for Billpoint as well. Billpoint (sometimes referred to as "eBay Payments") allows buyers to pay instantly with their credit cards as soon as they win an auction. Signing up for Billpoint is a must, because many buyers do not want to deal with the hassle of sending checks. Billpoint takes a small fee, but it’s worth it to be able to accept credit cards. Another instant, online payment option is PayPal, which works like an online bank account. PayPal has millions of users, and is also highly recommended. Sign up for PayPal here (a new window will open). For payments done by check, make sure to wait for the check to clear before shipping the item. It happens often: the buyer pays by check, the seller sends the item, and then the check bounces. Your customers will be annoyed, but you MUST wait for their checks to clear before you send them their item. Encouraging your customers to pay by money order can prevent this hassle. Also, I recommend against accepting cash. A cash transaction leaves no electronic record of its occurrence, and this can cause problems with SafeHarbor (eBay’s section for dealing with scammers) if a dispute between you and the buyer arises.

Don’t use excessive unnecessary adjectives in your auction’s title. If a person wants to buy a small blue vase, they are going to do a search for "small blue vase". Use adjectives like wow, cool, great, and awesome sparingly, because people don’t do searches that include these words, and they will not do a lot to draw attention to your auction. Describe your item as best you can in your title, but don’t waste space with unnecessary words. You can draw attention to your auction by typing the title in ALL CAPS (but don’t type your description in all caps, because it annoys people). If you are willing to pay extra, you can also choose to have your auction highlighted or printed in bold letters.

Always be honest in your item descriptions. If the item has any minor damage, tell people about it. Your auction may finish a few dollars less, but it’s not worth getting a negative feedback. Describe your item in as much detail as possible. Always include a picture, several if necessary. Try to take the picture of YOUR ACTUAL ITEM, don’t just grab a picture off a company web site. Bidders feel more comfortable if they can actually see the real item they are actually going to receive. A digital camera or a traditional film camera plus scanner can be used for this. Learn HTML, which is the language used for web pages as well as eBay item descriptions. Click here to look for a guide on HTML. Using HTML effectively will make your descriptions look much more professional and pleasing to the eye. Also, be sure to complete your description with how much shipping will cost, as well as your return policy. Decide if you want to accept returns before you post any auctions. Accepting returns can cause you to waste a lot of time and lose some money on shipping charges, but not accepting returns can cause you to get some negative feedback. I personally accept returns, because negative feedback must be avoided, but other top sellers disagree, and choose not to accept returns. It’s really up to you.

Most bids on any single item will take place during the last few hours of the auctions. This is because, as auctions move closer to finishing, they automatically move closer to the top of the list when people do a search. No matter how many days you choose to run your auction, it will always end at the exact same time of day that you placed it. Choose the time of day you place your auctions carefully. If your auction is going to end on a Tuesday, DO NOT place it at 10:30 AM, because everyone will be at work, and no one will be bidding! Likewise, it is not a good idea to have auctions end on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday evenings, because many potential bidders will be out eating dinner at a restaurant, partying, seeing a movie, etc. Good times to end auctions are weekday evenings (After 10 o’clock or so, when dinner is done, the kids are in bed, and people have time to use the computer). Other good ending times are weekend afternoons, but not too close to dinnertime. Of course, time zones differ across the country, so when it’s 10 PM in New York, it’s only 7 PM in California. Keep this in mind and post your auctions accordingly.

Often times, shoppers on eBay dislike having to compete for an item. With "Buy It Now", there is no competition between buyers: the first one to see your item and be willing to pay the "Buy It Now" cost, wins the item. Most auctions receive the highest volume of bidding in the last few hours. Because of this, many potential buyers who stumble upon your auction when it still has many hours or days left to run will not even bother to bid, because they may not be available at the time the auction will end, when they need to be ready to place a higher bid if they are outbid. Set your auction’s "Buy It Now" price to whatever you truly believe the item is worth, plus a little extra. There is a small fee of 5 cents for adding a "Buy It Now" price to your auction, but it’s definitely worth it, the extra profit you will make from using it will be far greater than the tiny fee. (Note: You need a feedback rating of at least 10 to post auctions which use the "Buy It Now" feature).

Many people, myself included, will not usually bid on "Reserve Price" auctions. Some information on Reserve Prices, from the eBay help guide:

The reserve price is the lowest price a seller is willing to sell an item for. This amount is generally higher than the minimum bid. In order to win the auction, a bidder must meet or exceed the reserve price and have the highest bid. If a bidder's maximum bid meets or exceeds the reserve, the bid will be automatically raised to meet the reserve. If no bidders meet the reserve price, neither the seller nor the high bidder are under any further obligation to complete the transaction.

The reserve price is used to draw attention to your auction by having the minimum bid very small compared to the value of the item, but having the reserve price in place as "insurance". The reason people hate Reserve Price Auctions is that no buyer knows how much he/she will need to bid to even have a chance of winning the item. The bidder has to beat TWO opponents: the reserve price, and the other bidders. Many people just wont bother and click the "Back" button.

This happens a lot: a seller will set the minimum bid price of their auction at $0.01, thinking that, by the time the auction is finished, enough bidding will have happened to bring the price of the item up to it’s real value. This is a common misconception. You don’t know how many times I’ve seen an item end at six cents or so, when it was worth 10 dollars or more. This often happens when the seller makes some other kind of mistake as well, such as ending the auction at a bad time, not choosing a correct title, or another mistake which would cause the item to be noticed less than what it should be.

Well, you put up an auction, sold an item, but now you realize that you lost the item that you want to sell, the item is broken, or something else happened that the buyer will NOT be happy about. What do you do? The answer is, whatever the buyer wants. Refund all money, including any applicable shipping charges. To compensate the buyer "for your wasted time", I add an extra 10% to the refund. Honor any other special requests from the buyer, and ask if you could be given no feedback. Make sure to give the buyer positive feedback as well, because YOU screwed up, its not the buyer’s fault. The whole idea is, if you mess up, do whatever is necessary to avoid getting negative feedback. There will always be jerks who leave you bad feedback for no reason, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent that. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK KILLS. You could have 100 positive feedbacks and just 2 negative feedbacks, and buyers would still think twice before bidding on your auctions, because people tend to notice the bad things in your feedback profile, not the good things. Another way to avoid negative feedback is to never leave any yourself. If you’re a buyer, and a seller tricks you or otherwise rips you off, don’t leave any feedback at all. If you leave negative feedback, then he will definitely give you some back. If you leave positive feedback, his feedback profile is intact and there is no risk in him leaving some bad feedback for you. The same thing goes with neutral feedbacks. If you get scammed, just don’t leave any feedback. Report the cheater to Safeharbor, try to get your money back thru eBay or credit card refunds, but leave the feedback alone. If you don’t give him any, he will think twice about leaving you some, because then you will give him some back. It’s ugly, but thats how it works.

Always tell your customers the shipping charges in your item description. Because customers lives in different areas of the country, you should be prepared to charge them the maximum amount for shipping that could possibly be needed to send the item anywhere in the lower 48 states. For example, if you live in Boston, and the cost for shipping your item from Boston to Los Angeles is $8, then set the shipping charges at $8. Your customers will probably end up overpaying a little bit on shipping, but you really need to give the shipping charges up front. This is because many dishonest sellers make money on shipping, they sell items for very low prices but then charge the customer $40+ for shipping, sometimes not even revealing this in their item descriptions, sometimes hiding it in tiny print near the bottom. These sellers often end up with a lot of negative feedback. Keep your shipping charges reasonable, and state them up front at a fixed price. Also, be sure to package your item carefully, many sellers have received negative feedback because their item was damaged during shipping. Bubble wrap can be bought in bulk for low prices on eBay, it’s a good idea to buy a roll or two.

This is possibly the most important tip. Be polite with your customers, always thank them after they pay, and ship them their item as soon as possible. After the transaction completes successfully, be sure to leave positive feedback. This shows professionalism and courtesy. Don’t expect to have many repeat customers if you’re rude, slow, and unprofessional!

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