Why Ebay will not Work For Most People as a business Part 2

This is the second part of this article where we will look at some tips and techniques of how to sell on Ebay as well as the pitfalls.

Poor quality and unwanted stock works best!

Let me explain. One of the best products that I sell on Ebay is a pair of opal earrings, they are not good quality, but are opals and as they are not branded its difficult to compare with an item like this. I would regularly list these and they would start at about $30, which was a fair price for them. However they would regularly be bid up to $100+ at the end of the auction. Understand that this is not what I as the seller wanted to sell these items for but what the buyer decided to pay for them. At $100+ this is 3 - 4 times the price that we would sell them for in our retail shop. Also branded jewellery and watches that are last years models, or just not popular, sell quite well if you reduce the price enough. Compared to the other alternative for a retailer which is that you keep the stock and try to sell it at full price, or that you reduce the stock and try to sell it (i.e. Have a Sale). The trouble is that this compromises the rest of your stock so is not a desirable option.

Two ways to sell Successfully with Ebay!

Find your niche, which has to be something that there is a demand for and is not easily copied or branded, so that other stockists can list their products and dilute the market.

The other way is to be constantly trying new products and finding new niches that will work for a while. Just because a niche stops working does not mean that it will never work again. For example if your prices drop, then so will other sellers and sooner or later people will stop listing those items, if the price drops enough. So you can find that you can start re-listing the items again and where the competition has fallen, the price goes back up.

Tips for selling on Ebay!

1.Don't sell branded products. For example I am an authorised D & G watch stockist and I used to sell the watches on Ebay, however as soon as you do well with something other dealers will list their stock also.

2.Include any RRP in the listing title.

3.Experiment with end times and durations.

4.Use turbo-lister to save you time (a free listing tool available on Ebay).

5.Use an Ebay shop. The listing fees are much cheaper (you still want to have auctions to enable more people to find your shop).

6.Use a professional looking template.

7.Be creative with your title.

8.Use a thumbnail picture for the gallery listings.

9.Have as much positive feedback as you can.

10.Sell to other countries, if shipping is not too much. Ebay is pretty much global (But beware of posting to some countries - as you will find that your goods disappear and you don't get paid!)

Beware Ebay can delete your account!

One of the ways that I used to generate more from ebay, was to use Ebay to promote my online store. I sell nominations Italian charm bracelets and they sell quite well on Ebay, however there are over 1,500 so to list them all on ebay would cost a fortune and would be time consuming. However they were all listed in my online store. So I put a link on my listings pages to my online store and did really well for a little while until, I got an email from Ebay stating that they had deleted my listings because they included a link to an outside store in them. Which is against Ebay rules.

I was lucky in that they only deleted my listings and not my account. So be careful, you could spend years getting good feedback and then have your account deleted because you have broken a rule.