The First 5 of 10 Real Tips for selling on the Bay Leave the Hype at the door!
If you got up the nerve to sell on eBay and are ready for the hard truth on the subject, let me give you a few tips from my experience.
1. Realize- eBay will not be there to support you as a company, should you run into a problem. Their system is set up to be run over the net, the problem however is with so many members, their CSR base can not handle the thousands upon thousands of emails/complaints they receive due to the lack of investment into the same. This means very little REAL customer help will be provided by eBay themselves. This is not how a business should be run and personally I find that fact repulsive. The members, people like you and me, however will give their arm to help you. Go to the forums and get help. Save yourself some time.
2. Pictures- If you accept the above and still want to find out for yourself, your next step is to build a picture area. The area should have a background of white. My favorite is plain white paper on a 3’ roll. The white background enables you to blend the product into the eBay background, which is white as well. The lighting would depend on your camera selection. Having used 36 different types of camera’s over the years the Sony Mavica is the one I keep going back to when taking pictures of general merchandise. For all you photo buffs, there is reason for this. The area is very inexpensive to assemble and only consists of an area, a table, the paper, light and the product. The reason for dedicating an area is to allow you to focus on one point. The most important point. Pictures. A Picture as you know is worth a thousand words, your words, words you will be typing when your customers are asking questions. Lighting is always a pain, use natural light when you can. That’s why bulb companies spend so much money on UV lights, cause it works. If you set up your area at a window, that helps but it’s a window, only some light comes in. Use mirrors to control where to put the light, you don’t want shadows. Mirrors are used in Japan to light 16 story buildings with four under ground. That gives you an idea of how you can direct sunlight. It is important to have light available from other sources. This helps with cloudy days. The more pictures you take the lees you have to type. There is a downfall to having several pictures, you have to put them in the ad. eBay will charge for each picture you put on there. So get a host for your pictures and use that instead.
3. email- Next set up an email account for eBay/PayPal, one that is separated from you entirely, all notifications from eBay itself and your customers should go to this address. This is for all of their spam and canned responses to your complaints, as well as correspondence between you and your customers, for you to refer to later. You’ll need it. Keep it all. You can add the address to PayPal so payments and correspondence regarding your business and money can go here as well.
4. Product- The number one sellers are DVD’s & CD’s, along with several other new items, but to be a success in this area requires a low cost dropshipper that may let your customers down, or you purchasing the product outright. Forget it! There are several doing it. Let them have that area of the market. Secondhand goods sell. You can buy them cheap and everyone wants them. Why? Because it’s fun! It’s what an auction is about. At a real auction, and eBay admits to not being a real auction, since no auction rules apply, if your bidding on a DVD, they are probably part of a “lot”. If you win, you’ll drive away with a trunk load of 300 copies of “I lost my shoe in Texas”. Secondhand goods require you to take money out of your pocket, however, you know your buying sellable product for the most part. Selling eBooks and other NEW product should be secondary. Use your highly sought after secondhand goods as a draw to your new stuff. The profits from those items is chump change.
5. Sell- Set your ads up to be rhetorical. Make each ad point to the other and to your business in your description. Use lost leaders (product you won’t make money on) to draw attention to your other items. Set the ads up accordingly. Take into consideration even though eBay charged you a final value fee, that does not mean the transaction is finished. Make your customer happy, keep his email and correspond with him.
