How to Sell on eBay as a Career
Hundreds of thousands of people use eBay every day, selling and buying virtually every product that's ever been made. Most people sell on the site to get rid of unwanted items from their home, or to make a little extra money for vacations or special purchases. Some sell on eBay every day and make a good living doing so. If you take advantage of all of the systems in place designed to help you, and if you are consistent with your actions, you can support yourself and your family by selling items on eBay.
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Instructions
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Research your products that you want to sell. Most successful sellers on eBay specialize in one or a very few specific items. Choose your genre by first studying things you know, such as old books, records or vintage clothing.
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Find out what is selling on eBay, for how much and how often. Do a search for closed auctions for items that you may want to sell. Closed auction results will tell you what sold, how many bids it got and the final selling price of each auction. Do multiple searches for different sub-sections of your specialty. If you are going to sell books, search for children's books, mystery books, antique books and books by author. Once you know what sells well, you will know what inventory to stock.
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Secure a number of sources for inventory. If you are going to sell vintage clothing, get to know all of the used clothing stores and thrift stores within a comfortable driving area. One source will never be enough, as it may shut down or not have any viable merchandise for some weeks. The more supply sources the better.
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Sign up on eBay if you have not already done so. If you're not very familiar with the system, make a few small purchases in order to get used to the process, making sure that you pay as soon as the auction ends, in order to garner good feedback for your transactions.
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Download an auction-management program--eBay has a free program called Turbo Lister, designed for medium-sized sellers. There are useful commercial programs with a few more options, like Auctiva, Inkfrog, Auction Tamer and many others. Research the prices and options to see which one works best for you.
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Take clear and descriptive pictures of every item that you are going to sell. Make sure that the color is true and that the light is flattering, but do not try to hide any obvious flaws that the item may have.
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Write copy for at least 10 auctions in your auction-management program. You can do this writing at any time of the day, but schedule the auctions to upload during auction prime time, which is generally 5 to 10 p.m. EST. Make the descriptions attractive but honest.
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Schedule yourself around three actions every day. Each day that you work, you will ship, search for inventory and write auctions. Do these in whatever order you wish, but unless you find a huge amount of inventory at once, you will need to do all three things every work day.
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Work at least five days a week, and work the same schedule every week. Even though you are working from home, it is still work and should be treated as such. Set a schedule and stick with it. If you get a reputation for answering emails every day because you are working every day, customers will respond to that.
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Tips & Warnings
Familiarize yourself with the different shipping options at the U. S. Postal Service.
Even though it may seem to be extra work figuring out shipping, sell internationally. The more customers you have, the better.
Frequent the seller forums. There are a lot of experienced sellers on the forums willing to help a new seller.
Never put off emails more than 24 hours, unless you have an auto-responder in your email in case of vacations or other time off. EBay customers tend to want very immediate responses to their questions, and an answered question can mean a large bid on one of your auctions.
