eBay Selling

There’s no telling how the economy as a whole will do this year, but I do expect sales on eBay to remain steady. Overall, eBay fared well compared to most other retail sites. If you had a hard year on eBay in 2008, you might want to branch out a little and find a few new sites that work in a similar fashion. Here is a review of several other online auction sites that are alternatives to eBay. You may find one that you do well with in addition to eBay, or you may decide at some point to replace your eBay sales with sales from another site. Good luck in the new year!

You may not think that your eBay sales are worth reporting, particularly if you only sell a few items a month, but they can certainly add up. Even if you sell only $50 worth of items a month, that’s $600 for the year, and taxes are due on it. If you have subscriptions to sales reports from eBay, all you have to do is to download and print them all out for a complete record of all of your sales and fees for the year. These sales reports even have the amount of PayPal and eBay fees you paid each month, saving you hours of work in your bookkeeping.

Someone listed this recently on eBay. Imagine the final value fees if that sucker had gotten it’s Buy It Now price of $75 million! Because Sotheby’s was bought by eBay a couple of years ago, it isn’t really that unusual to see extremely large-ticket items on eBay.

If you ever do have a very expensive item to sell on eBay, you might want to use their approved escrow company . I don’t think that the site is actually owned by eBay, but they approve it as an escrow method. That’s important because over the past few years there have been a number of fake escrow sites that have popped up, taken the escrow money and then disappeared. There have even been buyers who have created their own fake escrow companies, pretended to put money in them and then received the item from the seller.

If you have a customer who is irate that an item didn’t arrive before Christmas, or their nephew didn’t like it, or they are miserable people and want to take it out on others, there’s not a lot that you can do about it. What you can do, however, is to keep your response professional and to not lose more sales than is necessary because of the negative feedback.

It is very tempting to respond with “Customer is stupid, bought late, eats poop,” but that will probably make you lose more sales than the actual negative did. Many buyers do look at negatives and try to assess the situation. An angry reply tells them that you might be trouble. A calm, professional response tells than that this occurrence was handled well by the seller.

A response like “Buyer paid on 12/21, item shipped 12/22″ or “Buyer purchased too late to receive by 12/24″ lets other buyers know that the fault was with the buyer and voices it in a way that you are more likely to be believed than if you went crazy with the exclamation points.

Right before Christmas I usually notice a lull as people realize that they are not going ot be able to buy things for people and have them arrive in time for Christmas. But after Christmas, there is a big pick up that lasts about two months. January and February often rival Christmas for the best times to sell on eBay. I have two theories about why:

1. People got into the habit of shopping online every day, and they liked it. They don’t want to stop.

2. People got eBay gift certificated for Christmas and they want to spend them before they forget about them.

Both reasons are good enough for me. So, even though Christmas is over for another year, keep on listing and expect good sales through the end of February.

Sometimes, an item just doesn’t have as wide an audience as you might like. Or, it might seem like a useless item that you might as well donate rather than try to sell. In those cases, the item may simply need a new angle to make sure it sells.

Take this listing. I don’t consider it a gret listing because the information that an actual book buyer would need (publication info.,page condition, etc.) was not included. But, since the book probably isn’t worth anything, they did a good job of rebranding it for a different purpose. The color alone might just sell it for people who have vintage book collections that are all dark colors. The seller tapped that niche effectively by thinking a little bit outside the box.

Why is it eBay Christmas, well besides this being a blog about eBay selling, I’m guessing that at least half of your presents came from eBay. In this house, the number is closer to about 90 percent.

When you open your gifts this morning, there’s one thing to remember- don’t open the packaging if it’s something you hate. Take a look at it, thank the person who got it for you and then set it aside. You can always sell it on eBay for more if the packaging isn’t opened.  Have a great day!

Now that Christmas Eve (a.k.a., the last day to receive packages) is here, I hope that all of your packages have come on time and that all of the packages you sent to buyers made it in time for Christmas. If they haven’t arrived after the USPS mail has run, you can always ask for a tracking number and hope that the items was sent another method that will arrive later in the day. UPS does tend to deliver late this time of year because of their heavy delivery load. I’ve had them deliver here after 8 p.m. before, so if there’s something you haven’t gotten yet, here’s hoping!

If you have a PayPal account, you may have gotten the recent email from PayPal that they are reducing the number of emails that they send to their customers. Why they find this necessary, I can’t imagine- it’s not as if they have to use postage to send each email.

Anyway, the good news is that they aren’t cancelling any important emails at this point. They are mainly stopping the emails that PayPal used to send when there are order cancellations. The only downside is that if you cancel an order, you have to email the buyer directly and can’t rely on a note attached to the cancellation email. You also won’t receive an email if you send a customer a refund, which is no biggie.

What I would appreciate an end to is the email receipt when you pay for something. You don’t need it- all of your payments are there in your PayPal history. Of course, that might be next on their list of eliminations…

If you have a variety of marketable skills, one or more of them might just help you in selling on eBay. Having good writing and/or storytelling skills can be extremely useful if you are selling items that probably don’t have much chance to sell on their own. Every year or two a new fad will begin that makes these type of imaginative listings popular. One year it was the “ghost in a box” listing that required nothing more than a box or a jar and a good, imaginative story to sell it.

One example of this type of listing that I recently ran across is this ring. The ring may not look like much, but it has quite a story that comes with it. These listings may not have caught on terribly well yet, judging by the seller’s sales, but you never know when the next fad will be born. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little and see how well you can capture the imagination of potential buyers.