eBay Selling

Today is the last day that you can use the eBay coupons that went out a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t used your yet, you’d have to get to it today. Don’t have anything in mind to buy? Think about your Christmas shopping that hasn’t been done yet. Even if you’ve completed much of your shopping, there may be an item or two left that you were putting off buying. You can buy those items next week without a coupon, or you can use your coupon today and save a little money. I’ve got two coupons that I haven’t used yet on two different eBay IDs, so I’d better get to spending…

As I mentioned yesterday, a crazy-long listing is going to turn off a heck of a lot of buyers. A couple of simple policies is generally enough to let people know what they need to about the transaction. Do people need to know your religious preference, as with the listing I highlighted yesterday? Heck no.

Listing the shipping amount and method of shipment and perhaps a statement about how often you ship is plenty of information in most cases. eBay is now requiring some type of return policy as part of their shipping information at the bottom, so you no longer have to add that to your description if you have a return policy.

Take a look at this listing . Quite thorough, eh? Now think about it from a buyer’s perspective. I was interested in a shoe rack. I wanted to see an up-close picture and find out about the shipping. Instead, I was inundated with pages and pages of information about the company, their employees, their philosophies and what will happen in any possible contingency.

I won’t be buying from them. Why? Because there are a milion other listings for shoe racks and they don’t make you spend 20 minutes reading about their policies. Most buyers know that they are agreeing to the terms of the sale by bidding. If they don’t have the time to read through all of the rules, they may miss something important that can mess up the transaction. It could say in there that if the item does’t arrive, I have to sent them 12 grapefruit in a wooden container. But I’ll never know because I’ve gone on to other, cleaner listings.

There is a LOT of clothing being sold on eBay, and I mean a LOT of clothing. It is the biggest category on the site and many sellers are in the game exclusively to sell their unwanted or outgrown clothing. For this reason, selling clothing on eBay is highly competitive. Nothing should be sold that has the smallest stain or hole on it. There are very, very few exceptions, such as for vintage or extremely expensive items that are offered at a great discount. If you get a couple of feedbacks saying that an item you sold was stained, your credibility as a clothing seller becomes badly damaged. Compete with other sellers and win by only selling items in very good condition.

Women want to know exactly how something will fit before they will buy. And I don’t blame them- I do the same thing myself. If I’m going to buy clothes online, I want to know whether it will work or not, and I can and do email sellers for measurements that they haven’t listed. To avoid this inconvenience as a seller, list as many relevant measurements as you can.

The waist and hips are a must for most items, such as pants and skirts. A form-fitting dress also needs these measurements. But, perhaps the most important measurement is the bust. To do this properly, lay the item flat and measure across the chest, just under the arm and then double that measurement. Pants, skirts and dresses also need a length measurement.

Men aren’t super obsessed with how their clothes fit, but they generally don’t want their clothing to be tight. For this reason, make sure you have a few key measurements. If you’re selling men’s pants on eBay, be sure to have the waist measurement and the inseam. Luckily, both of those measurements are usually used as the sizing for most brands of men’s pants. Lucky break for them.

For shirts, the chest measurement should be listed as well as the overall length. The length from the shoulder is generally the easiest place to measure from instead of trying to line up the collar just right and then choose a part of the collar to start from.

I usually love listing sales, but I probably won’t be using this one. The sale is for today and tomorrow and for auction listings only. I’[m not using auctions anymore anyway because fixed price listings are so much cheaper to use now than auctions. Out of 50+ listings I have zero auctions. But, if you’re into auctions, you can save 50 percent off the listing fees by listing them today or tomorrow.

If you are selling single items that are under $10 and have a lot of them to list, this will actually be a good way to save quite a bit on your eBay fees. Otherwise, you probably won’t save that much over fixed price listing fees anyway.

What exactly do you need to measure when you are selling clothes? The answer depends on who the items are for. For kids clothes, parents generally want to know the length of the items. But, I have a lot of people who also want to know the difference between the shoulders. I often add this measurement now because I have been asked so many times. For toddlers and babies, buyers generally want to know the age-range size on it (2T, 6 month, etc.), but also whether it runs big or not for that age range. If you aren’t sure, try holding it up to other items you have that are labeled with the same size. For older kids, the waist measurement on pants is also useful.

Listing so many clothes recently, as I’ve mentioned already this week, I started to remember why I hate it so much. If you have nice pieces, it can be lucrative, but it’s a serious pain. For one thing, there are a number of measurements that you have to take in order to have a good chance of selling the item. And with many fabrics, this is tough to tackle.

Stretchy fabrics and any kind of loose-knit item of clothing resists proper measurements. I try to list the most accurate measurements that I can, but with knits, if three people measured they would probably come up with three separate measurements. I think it’s helpful to use the word “about” a lot when describing measurement. I try to measure to the half inch, but that about protects me just in case I’m a smidge off.

I make two major pushes to sell clothes on eBay each year. Both correspond to season changes and times when demand for these items are high. The late spring is the perfect time to list all of the hot weather clothes, and this time of year is perfect for selling winter clothes. Not only are people still stocking up on winter clothes for themselves and their families, they are also buying clothing to give as Christmas gifts. There are times of year, like the middle of summer or the end of winter, when clothes can be a hard sell. This isn’t one of them. If you have winter items to sell, by all means get to it.