eBay Selling

Everyone knows that eBay is the big dog on the block. Other online auction sites come and go, but none seems to stand up to eBay. Yahoo auctions were finally ended. Overstock’s auction site never panned out into a serious competitor. But, there are still sites out there trying. If you ever get too frustrated to deal with eBay, there are a number of other auction sites out there that are still operation and new ones pop up all the time.

For the latest information on other online auctions, check out AuctionBytes . The site compiles an incredible amount of information about online auctions. Yes, some of it is about eBay, but much of it is not. This recent article describes three new sites that are trying to get a piece of the eBay pie by introducing new selling formats. Those sites may go nowhere or they may explode on the ecommerce scene. Only time will tell.

The annual gathering of eBay execs, sellers and enthusiasts known as eBay Live begins soon. This year’s event will be held in Chicago on June 19-21. Registration in May is $100, but it goes up to $120 on June 1. So, if you’re panning to register, do so immediately.

EBay Live has become a tradition for many PowerSellers. Held in a different city each year, the event attracts sellers who are interested in networking as well as eBay higher ups who hold seminars and answer questions. Many new sellers attend each year to take advantage of the many classes that teach selling techniques. There are also a number of third-party companies on hand every year to try to sell their services to eBay sellers. There are 10,000 people expected to attend this year.

Many people find that advertising their eBay store away from the site can bring in a lot more potential customers than relying on eBay for marketing. EBay stores do rank highly in search engines, but there are other things that sellers can do to advertise them. Stores can be advertised with pay per click ads, or through social networking.

Sellers who advertise their store and bring traffic in that doesn’t come in through eBay are entitled to a fee credit from the site. The referral credit is given to any store owner who uses their referral url to bring in customers. To promote your referral code, take the url of your store and add &refid=store to the end of it, without a space. The referral credit is 75 percent of your final value fees on the sale.

There have been several news stories lately, most notably a huge CNN spread, about eBay sellers who leave the site and open their own Web stores. This proves to be a fantastic move for a lot of sellers, apparently. I do know of one seller who makes just as much with her own site as she does with her eBay sales, and both are extremely respectable amounts.

But, is this idea really practical for most eBay sellers? Isn’t the marketing involved likely to kill a good bit of the profit, not to mention the time it takes for a store to gain a following. It seems to me that most sellers who try to migrate their inventory will likley not find the same number of customers that they did on eBay.

If you do think you’d like to leave the site, do read the CNN story . It’s an inspiring look at five sellers who left the site and struck out on their own. All have been wildly successful away from eBay.

Some of the categories that I sell in have been part of the category consolidation that has changed the way a lot of listings have been categorized. This has gotten rid of quite a few subcategories that were useful in searching, undoubtedly giving buyers a great many more results when they want to search through a category. Is this a good thing? I don’t think so.

One of the things that can be frustrating to a buyer is too many search results. This makes it harder to zero in on the exact thing that the person wants. I think a lot of items will go without bidders because the potential buyers are simply unable to locate them. Not every buyer is a seasoned eBay member and not all of them know to change the default search setting to something that would be more helpful. Many of them don’t know standard search terms that sellers often use in their titles. That means they will be inundated with items in a category and may not have the time and the patience to sif through them all. Lost subcategories mean lost sales.

One thing that most listings need but don’t contain are dimensions. Many auctions that end unsuccessfully do so because there are no dimensions listed. You need dimensions for any type of clothing, linens, wall hangings, posters, furniture, figurines and about 95 percent of everything else.

Without dimensions, be prepared to lose some listing time in answering questions. I can’t count how many times I had to go and get an object that was already listed, bring it to the computer, measure it and answer questions. This is much easier and less time consuming if you enter the dimensions at the same time you’re listing the item.

Some buyers will ask about the dimensions before they buy, but many will not. Many will pass on the auction because they don’t want to have to wait for an answer. And, if they have discovered the auction when it is about to end, they know there will not be enough time to wait for a response. Those are customers, and dollars, lost.

This week I am going to concentrate on tips for improving the descriptions of eBay listings. The description that you write for your listings are extremely important for bringing in buyers. Many people don’t concentrate enough on their item listings, and some people concentrate too much.

The item descriptions can’t be too short or potential buyers aren’t getting enough information. One or two sentences is not enough to describe an item, no matter what the item is. Conversely, if the description is incredibly long, with lots of irrelevant information in it, a potential buyer will lose interest fast. Finding the right length so that the appropriate information is included but the listing isn’t too long can take a lot of practice. If you’re wondering what the perfect length is- there isn’t one.

Practicing with different description lengths and noticing how well they sell is one way to get the best description length. Another way is to look at the descriptions of items you’re interested in. How long were the listings? Why did you or didn’t you buy?

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of listings out there that are simply too long. This does turn away buyers, but it can do a lot more harm than that. It can also conceal the important information in the fluff. If the buyer has to skim through a lot of useless information, they may not see what they need to. This means that a used item may be bought by someone who thought it was used, or an item with a missing part may be bought by someone who will expect it to be whole.

Read through your listings and see what’s in there that shouldn’t be. Does it say that you’re a stay at home mother trying to make money? It shouldn’t. Does it say that you’re moving or that you have a garage full of stuff that you want to sell this summer? It shouldn’t say either of those things. There should be little to no personal information in the listing, no matter how “fun” it makes it seem. No, people will not come back to see whether you have cleaned out your garage and listed more things. People search by keywords and not by people who seem fun in a listing. Don’t waste your time, your customer’s time and the description space with things that shouldn’t be there.

An unusual sale on final value fees starts today and runs through June 1. The sale takes 15 percent off the final value fees of both auction and fixed price listings. Sounds great, right? There’s a catch. Isn’t there always a catch?

To get the discount on the fees, the listing has to use the free shipping option. With the price of postage as high as it is right now, that may not be possible for a lot of items. For others, it may mean adding the price into the price of the item, making it too high to be competitive. So, for many people, this may actually raise the listing price for something that won’t sell because it is too highly priced. If you can take advantage of this sale, though, good luck.

Some of the biggest changes of the eBay feedback system have gone into effect in the last few days. This latest round of changes has added repeat buyers’ feedback to the total feedback number. That was a jolt- I refreshed the screen to reflect a new sale and my feedback jumped by more than 300. I got a new star!

Anyway, the new system also changes the feedback percentages. The new percentages have been a little controversial. Instead of a calculation of your total positive feedbacks since the beginning of your eBay account, it now calculates the percentage in the past 12 months. I don’t really have a problem with it for now.

My percentage had been a steady 99.6 percent, despite the fact that I haven’t had a negative in almost two years. My percentage is now 100 percent. I think this may also help with the problems that a lot of new sellers have. They are more prone to make mistakes and get negatives. But, after a year of learning and selling well, those mistakes are forgiven in the feedback percentage.