Selling On eBay - Compulsive Collector.com's Tips For Sellers

Visual Presentation: No different than any other business, it is vital to understand that visual stimulation will be the first factor for potential buyers to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase an item from you. If you visit an online storefront that looks ugly and unprofessional, are you as likely to spend your money there as you are with a site that offers an attractive first impression? Probably not. Things are no different with online auctions. If your item description is full of spelling errors and all-caps text, lacking in paragraph breaks, and short on images, you put yourself at a disadvantage when competing against other sellers. Unless your item is one of a kind, there will always be competition on eBay.

If you don't know some basic HTML, learn it. The fundamentals you'll need for eBay auctions are simple to learn, and you can get a crash course from this free HTML tutorial. Get familiar with the tags used to control font size and color, bold text, separate paragraphs, and insert images.

Never list an auction without pictures, as that's sure to send many shoppers scrambling for their browser's back button. If at all possible, avoid limiting yourself to just the eBay-provided hosting for images. If you don't have a place on the web to host images for free, find one. Most internet service providers (ISP) offer their customers a free hosting account for personal pages and photos. You can show more than just the item itself, too. If you're selling a STAR WARS collectible, an appropriately-sized STAR WARS logo in your listing can only enhance its appearance. If you're handy with a photo editor, and you're feeling confident in your HTML skills, light background images behind your text can make your listing stand out from the rest of the pack. You can lighten the image by using an eraser tool in your photo editor, and lowering the opacity.

To see an example of how one of my own listings looked, click here for a Batgirl action figure auction layout. Feel free to use it as a template for your own auctions, or dissect the code to figure out how tables, font, and images work. You can see the raw HTML code by right-clicking on the page (anywhere except one of the images) and clicking "View Source".
Your Asking Price: The first question everyone has about selling an item is, "How much can I get for this?" Research is a big part of being successful in any venue, eBay or otherwise, and the easiest way to find the answer is to see what other sellers got for the same item. At the top right of the eBay page, click the "Advanced Search" link, check the "Completed listings only" option, and start analyzing the final prices. For best results, begin your auction with an attractive opening bid. Don't fear the reserve price option if you want to open a high-dollar item with a very low starting point, but use the reserve sparingly, and only when necessary.

If you want to offer the Buy It Now Option, there are a couple of ways to approach it. Depending on what I'm selling, the availability of identical items on eBay at the time, and the success others are having with listing it, I might offer a Buy It Now price. Let's say a Gentle Giant bust has sold for as low as $35 and as high as $55 in the last month, with most selling for around $45. A good option would be an opening bid of $35 and a Buy It Now price of $55. Some people want to get things in a hurry, and will fork over the extra ten bucks to purchase your item now, rather than waiting for an auction to end. If you're in a hurry to get paid for an item, you could also choose to set a Buy It Now price of $45, making it very attractive to potential buyers. They get the average price right away, combining convenience with a good deal.

If you set the opening bid at $55 for this one, you won't get many bites, and will likely see your listing end without any bids. A lower starting price attracts the first bid more quickly, and initial bidding activity on an item makes it seem more interesting to searchers, generating more activity.

I always require immediate payment via PayPal when offering a Buy It Now option. This prevents any misunderstandings or deliberate sabotage.
Category Selection: At first glance, this will seem like a no-brainer to some, but you might be surprised at the number of auctions that inexplicably get listed in inappropriate categories. Lots of experienced eBay shoppers search by specific categories, so if you're trying to sell a Batman figure, and list it in Toys & Hobbies> Action Figures> Spider-Man, you're essentially hiding it from some of your best prospects. What might seem like a good category for the same item, Collectibles> Comics> Figurines, isn't as specific (or accurate) as Toys & Hobbies> Action Figures> Batman> Contemporary (1980-Now).

Now let's say you have an item that logically fits within more than one category. As an example, imagine a rare action figure that was available only as an exclusive pack-in with a video game. Is there more demand for the video game or the figure? The latter is likely the correct answer, so listing that item in the action figures category will be your best bet to give your auction maximum exposure to the right crowd.

If you're having difficulty with category selection, do some research. At the top right of the eBay page, click the "Advanced Search" link, check the "Completed listings only" option, and see who got the highest final bids. If one seller got no bids or less money in one category, and four other sellers got top dollar in another, then you have a pretty good idea of where to list your item.
Choosing Keywords: Here's an area where many sellers, even some of the more experienced ones, really don't understand the potential of keywords related to your item. You have to remember that eBay has a "keyword spamming" policy, and violating it can get your auctions removed from the database, even if they already have bids. What you want to do is maximize your exposure while playing within the rules.

Okay, so let's have an example, and we need a specific one for the purposes of this exercise. We'll go with the Clone Wars Yoda Maquette from Gentle Giant. Looking at the listings on eBay, I see this specific item with a title of: STAR WARS GENTLE GIANT CLONE WARS YODA MAQUETTE IN HAND. Here's another: Star Wars Gentle Giant Clone Wars Yoda maquette OOP. What's wrong with these titles? Well, "in hand" and "oop" aren't going to drive any searches to your listing. There is a 55-character limit for your auction title, so that's wasted real estate. Something else wrong is that an item-specific keyword is completely missing: animated.

Now here's where we begin to apply logical thinking to our choice for the title. Due to the 55-character limit, we can't just remove the unnecessary "in hand" or "oop" and replace them with "animated", as we would then have 56 characters. So what can we do to get our listing in front of more potential buyers? Well, how many companies produce Yoda maquettes? STAR WARS Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette allows us to work our missing keyword into the title, but it would exclude us from searches for "Gentle Giant Yoda", which is specific enough that we want to show up there. Here's an alternative: Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette gets us back into the Gentle Giant searches, and most serious buyers aren't going to include the words "star wars" in their search. A search for "star wars yoda" is extremely vague, and not the kind of targeted traffic that we're looking to get. Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette leaves us with some extra characters, so you can play with that. Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette StarWars (notice the lack of a space) is one option, but Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette Statue is even better. Just be certain that any keywords you choose are genuinely relevant to your item.

An example of keyword spamming showed up in my search, too: star wars YODA MAQUETTE(gentle giant)clone wars(vader). The word vader has nothing to do with the auction, but the seller included it in an effort to attract unrelated search traffic. It doesn't work, and it's stupid to even try, as it actually annoys many experienced buyers (those most likely to make a purchase). Never put anything in your title like LOOK!, Must See!, Wow!, Awesome!, HTF, RARE!, or NEVER OPENED!. Not only does this waste your opportunity to include more keywords, but you're never going to sell the item with your title. You do that with your auction description, which we'll cover next.
Auction Description: This is an essential aspect of selling on eBay. First, make sure your description is accurate. Don't bother trying to get over on someone by employing a misleading description. Not only will that result in the inevitable negative feedback on your profile, but you are legally responsible for delivering the item as-described. Believe me, federal mail fraud charges are something you never want to encounter.

The description is also an opportuinty to use even more keywords, as many shoppers take advantage of the "Search title and description" option. For our Yoda maquette example above, you might want to mention Genndy Tartakovsky, the artist whose work inspired the design. Have another look at my Batgirl action figure auction layout to see how I incorporated more keywords into the description, such as DCAU, Bruce Timm, Batman, Justice League Unlimited, and Barbara Gordon.
Gallery Images: This is pretty simple. The extra thirty-five cents for a gallery image can make all the difference in the world. Remember the importance of a visual presentation? This is your chance to get a head start. Some buyers don't even bother reading the title; they just skim the gallery photos. If you provide one, your link is more likely to be clicked by shoppers with short attention spans. This obviously wouldn't apply if you were selling fifty-cent trading cards, as it wouldn't be worth the expense.

UPDATE: As of February 20, 2008, eBay offers free gallery images on all listings. Since it no longer costs anything, be sure you take advantage of this feature! Your auctions will be at a serious disadvantage otherwise.
Auction Schedule: Here's a factor most sellers never consider. The default for eBay searches is to show items nearing the end of the auction duration. In other words, if you search for Transformers, the first listings you will see are those on the verge of closing. If you list your auctions at four in the morning, when are they going to end? At four in the morning. How many people are shopping at 4:00 am? On the other side of that coin, if you list your auctions right after lunch, what are people doing when your auctions end? They're working. Some people can access eBay from work, but many cannot, and even more cannot devote enough to time to getting in on an item at the end while being distracted by their job tasks. That means we need to list our auctions to end during peak hours, when most people are less busy with other things.

7:00 pm is a good starting point, but when it's 7 on the east coast, it's 4 on the west coast. I like to list my auctions to end somewhere between 7:30 and 9:30 pm EST. Listing on the weekends could help with your potential buyers being at work, but other activities keep a lot of people away from the internet on Saturday. By Sunday, your buyers might not have anything left from their paycheck. Most people get paid on Thursday or Friday, so I like to end my auctions Thursday evening. Even if your buyer gets paid on Fridays, he can win your auction Thursday evening, and pay you the following morning.
PayPal, & Why You Need It: Most eBay shoppers not only use PayPal, they actually prefer it. It's just a fact. Your shopper sees two identical items from two different sellers. She can pay your competitor from her computer without ever getting out of the chair, but she has to go get a money order or write a check to pay you. Any guesses as to which auction is getting her bid? What's the point of saving a dollar in fees if it costs you ten in the final price of your item? Seriously, it's 2008, and if you're still requiring a paper payment, you're way behind the times.
To Insure, Or Not To Insure: This is an area about which many eBay members, both buyers and sellers, seem to be confused, and for good reason. We've all seen these auctions, and some of you may have even listed your own this way. At the end of the description, there is a disclaimer that says, "If you do not pay for insurance, I am not responsible for items lost or damaged during transit."

This is a subject of much debate among eBay sellers. In order for the disclaimer to have any legal merit in litigation, a court would have to decide that an eBay auction is a shipping contract, rather than a destination contract. A shipping contract would requre the seller only to deliver the item to a carrier, at which time loss or damage would be the buyer's responsbility. A destination contract would put the responsibility for loss or damage on the seller until it is delivered to the buyer by the agreed upon carrier.

While there is legal precedent for both sides of the argument, no ruling has dealt specifically with an eBay transaction. Personally, I wouldn't want to be the seller to test it. I'm no lawyer, but I honestly don't believe a shipping contract argument would hold up in court, and I'll explain why.

First, eBay specifically sets out this example of seller non-performance as a violation of the contract between seller and buyer: accepts Bob’s payment, but the guitar Bob sends him is significantly different than the guitar described in the item listing. If Bob didn't insure the guitar with the shipping carrier, I wish him the best of luck proving it wasn't damaged before they accepted it from him. A broken neck would likely qualify as "significantly different" if it was described as "like new". Secondly, PayPal will not protect sellers from chargebacks unless provided with a tracking number for proof of delivery. That detail should be, in and of itself, enough to convince us that eBay sales are considered destination contracts, rather than shipping contracts.

Being that I have no desire to test the shipping contract theory, I treat all of my sales as destination contracts. If I'm selling a $5 item, I don't worry about it. If something happens to it on the way, I'll eat the loss. If I am listing an expensive item, however, I simply remove the buyer's choice from the equation. Why take chances with an as yet untested disclaimer? Require insurance on every sale if you're not willing to refund the cost in the event of something going wrong after you ship it. It just makes sense, and after all, it's really not a good business decision to start listing things for which you refuse to accept responsibility before you've even got the buyer sold on the item itself. Everyone is more likely to shop with a company that stands by its products and services, and it's no different for eBay sellers.
Shipping & Handling Charges: This is a sticky issue for some people, too. When buying on eBay, I generally skip listings that fail to specify shipping charges. If I'm going to have trouble finding the item from someone else, then I might bother to ask. If it's a common product, however, I'm more likely to move on to the next link.

For myself, I love the postage calculator eBay offers. If you know the weight of the item, potential buyers can just plug in their ZIP code to figure out rates for the options you make available. A great way to meet the needs of all shoppers is to offer multiple shipping methods. If someone needs an item quickly, Priority Mail will usually meet their needs. If they're more interested in saving some cash, First Class or Parcel Post (depending on the weight) will be more to their liking. You can offer a choice of up to three services in your auction during the listing process. To offer the postage calculator, choose "Calculated" under the "Shipping & sales tax" heading in step 4.

Unless you are selling something like trading cards or stamps, the price of shipping will be depend on the weight of the item. An estimated flat rate will usually result in charing too much or too little for shipping, causing you to either lose money or irritate customers. For this reason, I recommend using the postage calculator every time. Once I've taken pictures of my items, I carefully pack them so I can weigh the box before I submit the listing. However you choose to determine the costs, it's always best to state them up front on the listing page, rather than leave shoppers guessing.
What About The Fees?: Electronic transaction fees are a part of every business. Every time you pay for something with your VISA or MasterCard, the merchant pays a fee. Whether or not you realize it, that fee is passed on to you in the price of your purchase. PayPal members with a Premier account (the most common for casual sellers) will incur a fee of 2.9% + $0.30.

Overhead from rent and other expenses is also considered when retailers price their merchandise. Once again, selling on eBay is no different. You have rent to pay, just like any other store, except that you're renting space on a web site with tons of traffic to offer your wares, rather than a physical location in a shopping center. Your rent takes the form of insertion fees and final value fees.

Like any other business, it only makes sense to pass these fees along to the buyer. eBay policy prohibits surcharges at the end of the sale to cover your fees, so you need to include them somewhere else. One way is to build your anticipated fees into the opening bid of the item. You can also incorporate fees into your handling fee, but don't surprise your customer with this fee after the auction ends.

By using the postage calculator, you can add a handling fee. Before this option became available, I just added whatever I needed to the opening bid. Now I add $1.25 handling fee to every auction I intend to ship via the USPS, which includes $0.50 for Delivery Confirmation and $0.75 for my fees. The $0.75 doesn't actually cover all my fees, but it does save me from having to take it all out of the final sale price.

Here's an example: An item has an opening bid of $9.99, and gets one bid. $9.99 closing + $4.20 shipping + $1.25 handling = $15.44. My eBay fees (including my gallery image) came to $1.23, and my PayPal fees totaled $0.75. While the $0.75 I included in the "handling" charge didn't even amount to half of my associated fees, at least it eased the cost a bit, and didn't leave me taking the entire amount out the selling price. If you wanted to double that to $1.50, it wouldn't be at all excessive, but remember that some buyers will throw a fit if they see anything over the exact amount they paid on the postage label. If you're using the handling fee option to cover your fees, and you'd like to avoid that sort of reaction, remember that UPS will not display the cost on your shipping label, but the post office will.
Recycle!: Remember that you can save yourself (and your buyers) money by not paying for new shipping supplies. Rather than discarding any reusable boxes you receive from your own online purchases and trades, simply break them down, slip them into a closet or storage space, and they'll be there when you need them for sales. You could even grab boxes and packing materials from your office that would otherwise get trashed. It's good for your wallet, your buyers, and your planet!
Don't Be A Dick: In all sincerity, just keeping your auction terms polite, firm, and professional can go a long way. Don't threaten potential customers with negative feedback in advance, while they're still deciding whether or not they want to purchase products from you. Do you really think that's going to stop the people who win auctions, but never pay for the items? If you're in Best Buy, looking at a television, and the sales associate raises his voice toward you, you won't want to buy anything, will you? "You're not a deadbeat loser, are you? Do you have a credit score of less than 400? Because if so, I don't want your business, lowlife." That is really how some people list the "terms" of their auctions, and it's offensive. Stand out by not exhibiting anger management issues when you list items for sale on eBay.
Stop Competing Against Yourself!: It's August 15, 2008, and over two years after adding this to the site, something has been bugging me lately. When you list an item in an auction format on eBay, you want bidders to compete against one another. The only way the price of your item will be driven up is if it receives multiple bids. If you list five or six identical auctions at once, however, why would five or six potential buyers all bid on the same listing when there are others available? If you do this, you're basically flooding the market with your own product and competing against yourself. If you list them one at a time, there will be fewer options for those who are shopping for whatever it is you're selling. Simple supply and demand dictates that if more are available when the price is set by the market, then the market will set a lower price. By limiting the supply you offer at any given time, you give yourself a much greater opportunity to cash in on the demand. Do yourself a favor, and stop running several auctions for the same thing all at once, especially if you're trying to convince eBay buyers your item is "rare" or "hard to find".


	Selling On eBay
	Visual Presentation: No different than any other business, it is vital to understand that visual stimulation will be the first factor for potential buyers to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase an item from you. If you visit an online storefront that looks ugly and unprofessional, are you as likely to spend your money there as you are with a site that offers an attractive first impression? Probably not. Things are no different with online auctions. If your item description is full of spelling errors and all-caps text, lacking in paragraph breaks, and short on images, you put yourself at a disadvantage when competing against other sellers. Unless your item is one of a kind, there will always be competition on eBay. If you don't know some basic HTML, learn it. The fundamentals you'll need for eBay auctions are simple to learn, and you can get a crash course from this free HTML tutorial. Get familiar with the tags used to control font size and color, bold text, separate paragraphs, and insert images. Never list an auction without pictures, as that's sure to send many shoppers scrambling for their browser's back button. If at all possible, avoid limiting yourself to just the eBay-provided hosting for images. If you don't have a place on the web to host images for free, find one. Most internet service providers (ISP) offer their customers a free hosting account for personal pages and photos. You can show more than just the item itself, too. If you're selling a STAR WARS collectible, an appropriately-sized STAR WARS logo in your listing can only enhance its appearance. If you're handy with a photo editor, and you're feeling confident in your HTML skills, light background images behind your text can make your listing stand out from the rest of the pack. You can lighten the image by using an eraser tool in your photo editor, and lowering the opacity. To see an example of how one of my own listings looked, click here for a Batgirl action figure auction layout. Feel free to use it as a template for your own auctions, or dissect the code to figure out how tables, font, and images work. You can see the raw HTML code by right-clicking on the page (anywhere except one of the images) and clicking "View Source". Your Asking Price: The first question everyone has about selling an item is, "How much can I get for this?" Research is a big part of being successful in any venue, eBay or otherwise, and the easiest way to find the answer is to see what other sellers got for the same item. At the top right of the eBay page, click the "Advanced Search" link, check the "Completed listings only" option, and start analyzing the final prices. For best results, begin your auction with an attractive opening bid. Don't fear the reserve price option if you want to open a high-dollar item with a very low starting point, but use the reserve sparingly, and only when necessary. If you want to offer the Buy It Now Option, there are a couple of ways to approach it. Depending on what I'm selling, the availability of identical items on eBay at the time, and the success others are having with listing it, I might offer a Buy It Now price. Let's say a Gentle Giant bust has sold for as low as $35 and as high as $55 in the last month, with most selling for around $45. A good option would be an opening bid of $35 and a Buy It Now price of $55. Some people want to get things in a hurry, and will fork over the extra ten bucks to purchase your item now, rather than waiting for an auction to end. If you're in a hurry to get paid for an item, you could also choose to set a Buy It Now price of $45, making it very attractive to potential buyers. They get the average price right away, combining convenience with a good deal. If you set the opening bid at $55 for this one, you won't get many bites, and will likely see your listing end without any bids. A lower starting price attracts the first bid more quickly, and initial bidding activity on an item makes it seem more interesting to searchers, generating more activity. I always require immediate payment via PayPal when offering a Buy It Now option. This prevents any misunderstandings or deliberate sabotage. Category Selection: At first glance, this will seem like a no-brainer to some, but you might be surprised at the number of auctions that inexplicably get listed in inappropriate categories. Lots of experienced eBay shoppers search by specific categories, so if you're trying to sell a Batman figure, and list it in Toys & Hobbies> Action Figures> Spider-Man, you're essentially hiding it from some of your best prospects. What might seem like a good category for the same item, Collectibles> Comics> Figurines, isn't as specific (or accurate) as Toys & Hobbies> Action Figures> Batman> Contemporary (1980-Now). Now let's say you have an item that logically fits within more than one category. As an example, imagine a rare action figure that was available only as an exclusive pack-in with a video game. Is there more demand for the video game or the figure? The latter is likely the correct answer, so listing that item in the action figures category will be your best bet to give your auction maximum exposure to the right crowd. If you're having difficulty with category selection, do some research. At the top right of the eBay page, click the "Advanced Search" link, check the "Completed listings only" option, and see who got the highest final bids. If one seller got no bids or less money in one category, and four other sellers got top dollar in another, then you have a pretty good idea of where to list your item. Choosing Keywords: Here's an area where many sellers, even some of the more experienced ones, really don't understand the potential of keywords related to your item. You have to remember that eBay has a "keyword spamming" policy, and violating it can get your auctions removed from the database, even if they already have bids. What you want to do is maximize your exposure while playing within the rules. Okay, so let's have an example, and we need a specific one for the purposes of this exercise. We'll go with the Clone Wars Yoda Maquette from Gentle Giant. Looking at the listings on eBay, I see this specific item with a title of: STAR WARS GENTLE GIANT CLONE WARS YODA MAQUETTE IN HAND. Here's another: Star Wars Gentle Giant Clone Wars Yoda maquette OOP. What's wrong with these titles? Well, "in hand" and "oop" aren't going to drive any searches to your listing. There is a 55-character limit for your auction title, so that's wasted real estate. Something else wrong is that an item-specific keyword is completely missing: animated. Now here's where we begin to apply logical thinking to our choice for the title. Due to the 55-character limit, we can't just remove the unnecessary "in hand" or "oop" and replace them with "animated", as we would then have 56 characters. So what can we do to get our listing in front of more potential buyers? Well, how many companies produce Yoda maquettes? STAR WARS Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette allows us to work our missing keyword into the title, but it would exclude us from searches for "Gentle Giant Yoda", which is specific enough that we want to show up there. Here's an alternative: Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette gets us back into the Gentle Giant searches, and most serious buyers aren't going to include the words "star wars" in their search. A search for "star wars yoda" is extremely vague, and not the kind of targeted traffic that we're looking to get. Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette leaves us with some extra characters, so you can play with that. Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette StarWars (notice the lack of a space) is one option, but Gentle Giant Clone Wars Animated Yoda Maquette Statue is even better. Just be certain that any keywords you choose are genuinely relevant to your item. An example of keyword spamming showed up in my search, too: star wars YODA MAQUETTE(gentle giant)clone wars(vader). The word vader has nothing to do with the auction, but the seller included it in an effort to attract unrelated search traffic. It doesn't work, and it's stupid to even try, as it actually annoys many experienced buyers (those most likely to make a purchase). Never put anything in your title like LOOK!, Must See!, Wow!, Awesome!, HTF, RARE!, or NEVER OPENED!. Not only does this waste your opportunity to include more keywords, but you're never going to sell the item with your title. You do that with your auction description, which we'll cover next. Auction Description: This is an essential aspect of selling on eBay. First, make sure your description is accurate. Don't bother trying to get over on someone by employing a misleading description. Not only will that result in the inevitable negative feedback on your profile, but you are legally responsible for delivering the item as-described. Believe me, federal mail fraud charges are something you never want to encounter. The description is also an opportuinty to use even more keywords, as many shoppers take advantage of the "Search title and description" option. For our Yoda maquette example above, you might want to mention Genndy Tartakovsky, the artist whose work inspired the design. Have another look at my Batgirl action figure auction layout to see how I incorporated more keywords into the description, such as DCAU, Bruce Timm, Batman, Justice League Unlimited, and Barbara Gordon. Gallery Images: This is pretty simple. The extra thirty-five cents for a gallery image can make all the difference in the world. Remember the importance of a visual presentation? This is your chance to get a head start. Some buyers don't even bother reading the title; they just skim the gallery photos. If you provide one, your link is more likely to be clicked by shoppers with short attention spans. This obviously wouldn't apply if you were selling fifty-cent trading cards, as it wouldn't be worth the expense. UPDATE: As of February 20, 2008, eBay offers free gallery images on all listings. Since it no longer costs anything, be sure you take advantage of this feature! Your auctions will be at a serious disadvantage otherwise. Auction Schedule: Here's a factor most sellers never consider. The default for eBay searches is to show items nearing the end of the auction duration. In other words, if you search for Transformers, the first listings you will see are those on the verge of closing. If you list your auctions at four in the morning, when are they going to end? At four in the morning. How many people are shopping at 4:00 am? On the other side of that coin, if you list your auctions right after lunch, what are people doing when your auctions end? They're working. Some people can access eBay from work, but many cannot, and even more cannot devote enough to time to getting in on an item at the end while being distracted by their job tasks. That means we need to list our auctions to end during peak hours, when most people are less busy with other things. 7:00 pm is a good starting point, but when it's 7 on the east coast, it's 4 on the west coast. I like to list my auctions to end somewhere between 7:30 and 9:30 pm EST. Listing on the weekends could help with your potential buyers being at work, but other activities keep a lot of people away from the internet on Saturday. By Sunday, your buyers might not have anything left from their paycheck. Most people get paid on Thursday or Friday, so I like to end my auctions Thursday evening. Even if your buyer gets paid on Fridays, he can win your auction Thursday evening, and pay you the following morning. PayPal, & Why You Need It: Most eBay shoppers not only use PayPal, they actually prefer it. It's just a fact. Your shopper sees two identical items from two different sellers. She can pay your competitor from her computer without ever getting out of the chair, but she has to go get a money order or write a check to pay you. Any guesses as to which auction is getting her bid? What's the point of saving a dollar in fees if it costs you ten in the final price of your item? Seriously, it's 2008, and if you're still requiring a paper payment, you're way behind the times. To Insure, Or Not To Insure: This is an area about which many eBay members, both buyers and sellers, seem to be confused, and for good reason. We've all seen these auctions, and some of you may have even listed your own this way. At the end of the description, there is a disclaimer that says, "If you do not pay for insurance, I am not responsible for items lost or damaged during transit." This is a subject of much debate among eBay sellers. In order for the disclaimer to have any legal merit in litigation, a court would have to decide that an eBay auction is a shipping contract, rather than a destination contract. A shipping contract would requre the seller only to deliver the item to a carrier, at which time loss or damage would be the buyer's responsbility. A destination contract would put the responsibility for loss or damage on the seller until it is delivered to the buyer by the agreed upon carrier. While there is legal precedent for both sides of the argument, no ruling has dealt specifically with an eBay transaction. Personally, I wouldn't want to be the seller to test it. I'm no lawyer, but I honestly don't believe a shipping contract argument would hold up in court, and I'll explain why. First, eBay specifically sets out this example of seller non-performance as a violation of the contract between seller and buyer: accepts Bob’s payment, but the guitar Bob sends him is significantly different than the guitar described in the item listing. If Bob didn't insure the guitar with the shipping carrier, I wish him the best of luck proving it wasn't damaged before they accepted it from him. A broken neck would likely qualify as "significantly different" if it was described as "like new". Secondly, PayPal will not protect sellers from chargebacks unless provided with a tracking number for proof of delivery. That detail should be, in and of itself, enough to convince us that eBay sales are considered destination contracts, rather than shipping contracts. Being that I have no desire to test the shipping contract theory, I treat all of my sales as destination contracts. If I'm selling a $5 item, I don't worry about it. If something happens to it on the way, I'll eat the loss. If I am listing an expensive item, however, I simply remove the buyer's choice from the equation. Why take chances with an as yet untested disclaimer? Require insurance on every sale if you're not willing to refund the cost in the event of something going wrong after you ship it. It just makes sense, and after all, it's really not a good business decision to start listing things for which you refuse to accept responsibility before you've even got the buyer sold on the item itself. Everyone is more likely to shop with a company that stands by its products and services, and it's no different for eBay sellers. Shipping & Handling Charges: This is a sticky issue for some people, too. When buying on eBay, I generally skip listings that fail to specify shipping charges. If I'm going to have trouble finding the item from someone else, then I might bother to ask. If it's a common product, however, I'm more likely to move on to the next link. For myself, I love the postage calculator eBay offers. If you know the weight of the item, potential buyers can just plug in their ZIP code to figure out rates for the options you make available. A great way to meet the needs of all shoppers is to offer multiple shipping methods. If someone needs an item quickly, Priority Mail will usually meet their needs. If they're more interested in saving some cash, First Class or Parcel Post (depending on the weight) will be more to their liking. You can offer a choice of up to three services in your auction during the listing process. To offer the postage calculator, choose "Calculated" under the "Shipping & sales tax" heading in step 4. Unless you are selling something like trading cards or stamps, the price of shipping will be depend on the weight of the item. An estimated flat rate will usually result in charing too much or too little for shipping, causing you to either lose money or irritate customers. For this reason, I recommend using the postage calculator every time. Once I've taken pictures of my items, I carefully pack them so I can weigh the box before I submit the listing. However you choose to determine the costs, it's always best to state them up front on the listing page, rather than leave shoppers guessing. What About The Fees?: Electronic transaction fees are a part of every business. Every time you pay for something with your VISA or MasterCard, the merchant pays a fee. Whether or not you realize it, that fee is passed on to you in the price of your purchase. PayPal members with a Premier account (the most common for casual sellers) will incur a fee of 2.9% + $0.30. Overhead from rent and other expenses is also considered when retailers price their merchandise. Once again, selling on eBay is no different. You have rent to pay, just like any other store, except that you're renting space on a web site with tons of traffic to offer your wares, rather than a physical location in a shopping center. Your rent takes the form of insertion fees and final value fees. Like any other business, it only makes sense to pass these fees along to the buyer. eBay policy prohibits surcharges at the end of the sale to cover your fees, so you need to include them somewhere else. One way is to build your anticipated fees into the opening bid of the item. You can also incorporate fees into your handling fee, but don't surprise your customer with this fee after the auction ends. By using the postage calculator, you can add a handling fee. Before this option became available, I just added whatever I needed to the opening bid. Now I add $1.25 handling fee to every auction I intend to ship via the USPS, which includes $0.50 for Delivery Confirmation and $0.75 for my fees. The $0.75 doesn't actually cover all my fees, but it does save me from having to take it all out of the final sale price. Here's an example: An item has an opening bid of $9.99, and gets one bid. $9.99 closing + $4.20 shipping + $1.25 handling = $15.44. My eBay fees (including my gallery image) came to $1.23, and my PayPal fees totaled $0.75. While the $0.75 I included in the "handling" charge didn't even amount to half of my associated fees, at least it eased the cost a bit, and didn't leave me taking the entire amount out the selling price. If you wanted to double that to $1.50, it wouldn't be at all excessive, but remember that some buyers will throw a fit if they see anything over the exact amount they paid on the postage label. If you're using the handling fee option to cover your fees, and you'd like to avoid that sort of reaction, remember that UPS will not display the cost on your shipping label, but the post office will. Recycle!: Remember that you can save yourself (and your buyers) money by not paying for new shipping supplies. Rather than discarding any reusable boxes you receive from your own online purchases and trades, simply break them down, slip them into a closet or storage space, and they'll be there when you need them for sales. You could even grab boxes and packing materials from your office that would otherwise get trashed. It's good for your wallet, your buyers, and your planet! Don't Be A Dick: In all sincerity, just keeping your auction terms polite, firm, and professional can go a long way. Don't threaten potential customers with negative feedback in advance, while they're still deciding whether or not they want to purchase products from you. Do you really think that's going to stop the people who win auctions, but never pay for the items? If you're in Best Buy, looking at a television, and the sales associate raises his voice toward you, you won't want to buy anything, will you? "You're not a deadbeat loser, are you? Do you have a credit score of less than 400? Because if so, I don't want your business, lowlife." That is really how some people list the "terms" of their auctions, and it's offensive. Stand out by not exhibiting anger management issues when you list items for sale on eBay. Stop Competing Against Yourself!: It's August 15, 2008, and over two years after adding this to the site, something has been bugging me lately. When you list an item in an auction format on eBay, you want bidders to compete against one another. The only way the price of your item will be driven up is if it receives multiple bids. If you list five or six identical auctions at once, however, why would five or six potential buyers all bid on the same listing when there are others available? If you do this, you're basically flooding the market with your own product and competing against yourself. If you list them one at a time, there will be fewer options for those who are shopping for whatever it is you're selling. Simple supply and demand dictates that if more are available when the price is set by the market, then the market will set a lower price. By limiting the supply you offer at any given time, you give yourself a much greater opportunity to cash in on the demand. Do yourself a favor, and stop running several auctions for the same thing all at once, especially if you're trying to convince eBay buyers your item is "rare" or "hard to find".