How to Increase eBay Sales

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By blonde-doc
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Increase eBay Sales

eBay has grown tremendously in the past few years and the sales competition can be fierce. In order to maximize profits and minimize potentially costly errors, it is critical that eBay sellers are knowledgeable in every aspect of their business. The key to achieving this, as discussed in this article, is thorough research of your product, your customer, your competitors, and the system.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Step 1

Apply good business principles: Selling on eBay is a business. And like all sales businesses, the first step to making money is to know your business inside and out. You must know your product, your customers, your competition, and the system. While this sounds simple in theory, many eBay sellers often overlook one or more of these items, which can significantly lower bids. You'll need to invest time up front, the payoffs - increased sales, higher bids, and lower business costs - will make it well worth the effort.
Step 2

Know your product: Whether you're selling depression glass or tickets to a ball game or the Gymboree clothes your kids have outgrown, doing a bit of research before you post your listing can really pay off financially. Basically, you need to understand what you're offering for sale. For collectibles, check valuation guides and online resources to estimate the year, maker, specific characteristics, etc. For tickets, research the stadium, seating charts, and amenities. Likewise for clothing, you'll need to research the label, line, and sizing charts. If you're new to selling, spend time browsing the various eBay categories and active listings to learn the defining characteristics.
Step 3

Research your target buyers: Buyers shop at eBay for particular reasons. Some are looking for the latest hot item that has disappeared from store shelves, while others are looking to save a couple of dollars on their favorite facial lotion. Before you post your listing, you need to understand who your buyer is and why he or she is shopping at eBay. Once you know your customer, you can better tailor your ads and choose the appropriate auction type and length, starting prices, pertinent details to include, etc. (See the Resource section for an article that discusses the various types of eBay buyers and how to tailor your listings.) You'll also need to research any particular terminology that prospective buyers expect. For clothing, acronyms such as NWT, NWOT, EUC, and VGUC are commonplace. For health and beauty products, NIB or NIP are must-haves! Again, spend time on eBay reading through listings and guides to understand the particular terminology associated with the item you're listing.
Step 4

Study your competition: To remain competitive, it's important to thoroughly research completed listings that offered the same or similar items. Review the listings for both items that sold as well as items that did not sell. This will help you to develop a pricing strategy and give you ideas as to what descriptors to include in your listing.
Step 5

Utilize online resources: There are several resources you can use to efficiently review similar listings - I recommend trying them all. The first is eBay itself. After typing in your search terms (keep these as general as possible to maximize the listings returned), look on the left side of the page for the box next to "Completed Listings." (You may need to scroll down.) Click on the box, and eBay will show you all of the recently completed listings that used your keywords in the auction title. Another nice service for reviewing completed listings is Terapeak. Go to www.terapeak.com/ebay_research/. Type in your search terms, and on the page that's returned you'll get not only links to recently completed listings, but also a tremendous amount of market research. To check out active listings, a nice tools is What's Hot Weekly (whats-hot-weekly.com/). Here you'll be able to see the number of watches on a current listing, in addition to the number of bids.
Step 6

Master the system: Another approach to increasing your eBay profits is to keep you selling fees as low as possible. Become familiar with eBay's listing fee schedule and use this to develop your initial price. (For example, starting at $9.99 incurs a $.35 fee, while starting at $10.00 has a $.55 fee!). Use an auction management system, such as Auctiva (which is free) or Seller Sourcebook (which has a nominal monthly cahrge). These services allow for multiple photos at no additional cost (eBay charges $.50 for each photo after the first, for most items) and allow you to schedule your listings for free (eBay charges $.10 per listing). For smaller items, always offer to ship internationally - it's not much more work than shipping domestically and you'll double your customer base!