Sell your car on Ebay
Selling a second-hand car is easier than ever thanks to the auction website Ebay. We show you how to do it.
Selling a second-hand car is easier than ever thanks to the auction website Ebay. We show you how to do it.
As we mentioned in our hints and tips section, researching the market place before you buy or sell can contribute to the success of your trading experience. Whether you are just de-cluttering your house or looking to start a business, knowing where products fit into the marketplace on eBay will give you the knowledge to achieve the best price or in fact achieve a successful auction.
Many powersellers ask the question ' Are my fees reduced because I am a powerseller?' Unfortunately many have tried but ebay sellers fees are not negotiable. However if you have over £1500 pounds going into your paypal account each month you can reduce your paypal fees.
We have put together some pointers on how to make the most of your auction end time. Take some time to consider the type of people your product will attract, for example you wouldn’t be very successful if you tried to sell a pair of furry winter boots during the summer, or school uniforms with an auction end time of 3 ‘o’ clock in the afternoon on a weekday.
Continue reading "Seller: Best end time for an ebay auction" »
PowerSellers are eBay top sellers who sustain a consistent high volume of monthly sales and a high level of total Feedback --with 98% or better positive rating by other eBay users.
Continue reading "Powersellers - What are they and how to become one." »
The Listing description is your opportunity to really let prospective buyers know what they will be getting when they purchase your item. Make money on eBay by making that description complete and correct. It is important to include the right details to ensure that prospective buyers do have an accurate understanding of the items that you list.
Continue reading "Make Money on eBay ~ How to Create the Perfect Item Description" »
Ebay is the world’s largest marketplace with hundreds of item of all sorts and varieties being sold each day. However, there are some items that are prohibited from selling on ebay.
Many people do make good money with their eBay businesses. You can be one of those people if you take the right steps at the beginning to set up your business. You should approach an eBay business like any other. Do the necessary research first. Don't rush into it with dreams of making a quick fortune.
Continue reading "Setting-up Your eBay Business to Succeed" »
Ebay is the internet's largest marketplace, and it's an excellent place for buyers to find what they want at bargain prices, and for sellers to find buyers. If you haven't posted an auction on ebay before, It’s fairly simple to post your first auction on eBay. Just do the following five steps.
Continue reading "How To Post Your First Ebay Auction in Five Simple Steps" »
No doubt about it, Wes Shepherd knows a lot about selling on eBay.
The Chicago-based entrepreneur launched a high-volume eBay business called Channel Velocity in 2003. He sells on consignment, auctioning the overstocked and returned items of well-known retailers such as Canon and Phillips.
Shepherd handles large lots of items — for example, hundreds of Italian espresso machines — but sells them one by one. (Shepherd sells about 5,000 espresso machines a year on eBay.) Although the one-by-one auctions are laborious, "it brings a higher recovery rate for our clients," he says.
Not surprisingly, his years of selling large lots of items have taught him not only how to sell on eBay, but how to sell in large quantities.
Most important, Shepherd says, he's learned about buyer psychology — which he says is the Holy Grail of success on eBay. He shared his hard-learned techniques with E-Commerce Guide.
The Waterfall Strategy
Shepherd uses all of eBay's selling formats: auction, auction with reserve, fixed price and store listing. He combines these four formats into what he calls his "waterfall strategy."
It works like this: He attracts the largest number of buyers to his auctions without a reserve price. He then aggressively cross-lists his other eBay listings on his auction listings page. These cross-listings send buyers "flowing through" his listings like water. At each stage in the "waterfall" — auction, reserve, fixed price and store listing — he makes sales.
"Most of your traffic is going to come from traditional auctions and you can use it as a loss leader — you have to have some way of looping people into your store and your other listings," Shepherd says. Using an auction format sale to drive traffic to other listings "is the best way to do it," he says.
"What we found is that the auction without any fixed price, like if you start it at .99 cents, you'll always get bids if the product's in demand. And people will generally bid it up to a reasonable market value," Shepherd says. "But, more importantly, [the open auction] gets a lot of traffic." In contrast, fixed price listings generate only a fifth or a tenth of the traffic, he says.
There are two types of auctions that buyers can't resist, according to Sheperd. "One, auctions that are soon ending — because buyers don't have to wait, they want that gratification, and two, auctions that have active bidding — because that's where the action is — 'I better get in there and get the deal.'"
About 55-60 percent of products on eBay are found via keyword searches. These keyword searches default to auctions that are ending soon. "So it's very important that your [imminently ending auctions] show up and are visible."
Psychology Kicks In
Sellers need to understand that buyers who have "lost" an auction are psychologically prepared — even eager — to make a purchase.
Shepherd talks about the practice of 'sniping,' which is when a buyer outbids all competitors during an auction's last few seconds. These 'snipers' snatch items that other top bidders have gotten their hearts set on. "It really upsets people — they think they got the item, but two seconds before the close someone snipes them."
At this point, a powerful buying mood sets in among the 'defeated' buyers. As he describes it, these frustrated buyers often think, "'You know what? I don't want to bid with these people anymore — this thing's a joke. I just want my darn coffee machine!' And they go and see a fixed price listing, or one with a reserve, and they'll just run it up and buy it — because they want to be done."
"eBay will pick you up and get you really excited, but it will drop you just as quick," he says, with a laugh. "You really have to understand auction psychology to build a retailing strategy to move high volume."
Part of this psychology is knowing how to leverage buyers who lost' an auction." Shepherd says. "The thing is, if you have 30 bids on an item, only one person is going to win it. So what do you do with all those other people? So this is where the 'water' [auction bidders] starts spilling into different levels."
"In a lot of the cases the people who lose the first auction get marketed to by eBay about other available items that are closing soon." But Shepherd does his own marketing by directing them to his own related sales.
Steps Two Through Four: The Reserve, Fixed Price and Store Listings
After he's gathered traffic with a traditional auction, he then directs buyers — perhaps an hour later, to capture the mood — to an auction with a reserve. (A reserve auction has a minimum price that a seller will accept to sell the item.)
"Once people determine the auction has left their price range, they might go to the reserve auction and pick it up." For example, "Say I want $500 for an item, I'll put the reserve at $500."
Then, shortly after the reserve auction, he funnels buyers into his additional listings "So an hour after the auction that has the reserve, you might have the fixed price listing," he says. "As a fourth tier, you might even put store listings in, and you'll raise the prices by, let's say, five percent."
Shepherd's waterfall strategy calls for staggering each type of sale, one behind the other. "So you want all your auctions ending within the same time frame — within a few hours."
His eBay sales break down as follows:
• Auctions without reserve: 50 percent of his sales
• Reserve auctions: 5-10 percent of his sales
• Fixed Price: 30 percent of his sales
• eBay store: 5-10 percent of his sales
About half of his reserve auctions don't close, because bidders don't meet his minimum." But again, it's a traffic generator. I don't mind paying the extra fees, because I'm getting bidders onto my auctions."
Automate — But Don't Forget Buyer Mood
Since Shepherd is a volume seller, he has built software to automate most of his auction listings.
He automatically sends "second chance" offers to bidders who lost the first auction. For example, if he's just concluded an auction in which the winning bid was $550, but two people bid $540 and $530: "We'll automate an offer of $530 and $520 to those people who bid on it — so we're selling three items off of one listing."
However, he won't send those offers immediately. "We'll send it after all the other auctions have ended behind it." The tricky part is trying to guess the time frame of these frustrated buyers. "If it's the mad bidder, who says, 'gosh, for $20 more I'm just going to go buy it'…he'll go do that in the next 30 minutes."
Consequently, "I don't want to give him that offer until late at night."
"You're really trying to figure out their psychology," Shepherd says. "If you can figure out buyer psychology on eBay, you're one step ahead of pretty much everybody."
Common Seller Mistakes
A common mistake that sellers make is failing to post a clear policy about their auctions. In particular, sellers need to post well-considered rules about returns, warranties, payment policies and damage that occurs during shipment. "You have to be very, very clear about what you expect from the buyer and what the buyer can expect from you," Shepherd says.
If a seller is completely clear about these issues then their volume of questions is very low. "If you're not, you're going to get a tremendously high amount of questions, which increases your costs." Handling a lot of questions makes it almost impossible to scale a high volume eBay business. Shepherd says he averages one question per auction, "at the most."
Responding quickly to e-mail queries from prospective buyers is "critical," he says. During the workday he answers within the hour. "If a question is answered, generally it's going to result in a purchase — I bet half the questions are ahead of a proposed purchase. They just need a feeling that there's someone on the other end of the line who can answer a simple question. The act of answering a simple question dramatically improves buyer confidence."
A Couple of Tricks
Shepherd is particularly fond of using the Feature Plus listing option on eBay. It costs $20 but it places a seller's item at the top of a page.
The Feature Plus creates "a lot of traffic, it's very hard to miss when you're searching for items."
Naturally, your item's price point has to be high enough to justify the $20 expenditure. In Shepherd's case, since he cross-lists his items he might make a handful of sales from one Feature Plus listing.
Another favorite technique of his involves his fixed price listings. He starts them off with a one-day listing. If it doesn't sell, he extends it to a three-day auction. If it still doesn't sell, he extends it further, until he reaches the maximum of 10 days. "What this does is that it keeps rotating the listings at the very front of the search results, because they're normally displayed by auctions that are ending first."
The other advantage of these time-limited listings is that they maintain urgency about the offer even as it's being extended. Once again, Shepherd is using the key element of his strategy: buyer psychology.
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essentials/ebay/article.php/3614391
Here are some handy tips for Personal and Commercial Traders on eBay.
Terms and Conditions
eBay is often called an online Auction, though in fact it is a Trading Platform. This means eBay takes no responsibility for transactions carried out using the service. All the details are stated in your terms and conditions which you agreed to when you became an eBay trader. For full details got to http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/useragreement.html
The terms and conditions states that eBay will not take responsibility or liability for financial loses by transactions which maybe fraudulent. If you are not aware there is some protection is offered Paypal which is owned by eBay. Paypal terms in full are at http://tinyurl.com/6qmou.
Can I sell my item on ebay?
Some items on eBay are prohibited such as fireworks, though some weapons are considered questionable. Though if in doubt about any item go to http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/items-ov.html before listing the item in question.
Am I a Private or Commercial seller?
The key difference between the two types of sellers are that a commercial seller is bound by the Sale of Goods Act in full, though is you are a private seller you will be obliged to make sure the item you are selling is accurately described.
A commercial seller is anyone who sells more than one copy of an item or the volume of transactions is always high. The definition of a commercial seller by eBay is when you buy or make items with intention to sell to make a profit on the trading platform. There are tax implications for commercial sellers so the business sellers can provide eBay with their VAT Registration number and receive net invoices direct from eBay. In recent months tax authorities have realised the huge amount of money flowing through the site, so if you are looking to increase your income on a larger scale rather than just unwanted items please take advise from the Inland Revenue. http://www.inlandrevenue.co.uk
Trading Name
Whether you are looking to sell a few occasional items or on a commercial level we recommend you need to choose a good trading name. When choosing a name it is best for the long term to choose a name which will not be offensive to any of your potential buyers. A good idea is to use a name affiliated with maybe specific items you trade in and also which country or region you are trading from.
If you have or in the future you may feel your name is inappropriate at all it is possible to change it. The eBay ID can be changed only once in a 30-day period. Once an eBay ID has been changed an icon will appear to inform the viewer that this user has changed their ID. This icon will show in new and existing transactions to alert other eBay users. The feedback which is attached to the previous eBay user ID will be carried over to the new ID. A good name is where your reputation is staked. eBay provides a guide at http://tinyurl.com/fgwpa.
My auction is cancelled, do I still pay the insertion fee?
eBay offers a reserve price option when setting up your auction, as well as a starting bid price. If the starting bid is not hit or the reserve price is not met the auction is cancelled and you do have to pay the insertion fee. Fees start at 15p and rise to £3.00depending on the reserve price or the starting bid that was set. See http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html for eBay’s fees.
What is a Dutch Auction?
A Dutch auction is where multiple and identical items are listed in the same lot. The items are not sold at a fixed price, however, visitors bid on the quantity of the items they want and the fixed price they are willing to pay. A full guide to Dutch auctions can be found at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/buyer-multiple.html.
How to price your item?
Where to start the bidding for your item is the trickiest part, you don’t want to price your item to low and risk cutting your profit though you do not want to price your item to high that no one is interested.
When trying to set your item at the right price always look to the competition. Look at other eBay auctions selling the same product as yours and compare items. Also look at online stores and the high street to see what the market value of the product is new. Once you have looked into and compared your item it id now to time to build the image of your product such as age, conditioned, usage and rarity. The one important thing to remember is people are drawn to eBay to find a bargain.
What is Turbo Lister?
eBay permits sellers to add HTML coding so text can be edited to be brighter larger and more colourful. eBay provides a free tool called Turbo Lister where sellers can add templates. Use the Turbo Lister web setup capability that will search your hard disk for components. Once you the download of Turbo Lister is complete the installation wizard will ask for your eBay username and password which will access your account from the main site over a encrypted link. You are able to create listings offline, set templates for postage and insurance terms as well as edit listings in bulk if a detail may change. Get Turbo Lister at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/turbo_lister.
Completing the Sale
Once you have listed your item and set the time frame for the auction some potential buyers may have questions to ask you. You shall receive their questions via email which are emailed to you via a web form link. A good seller should respond to their email questions as soon as possible though if you do check your emails irregularly it will be in your best interest as a seller to state this so the bidder is well aware. If you are a Turbo Lister you can include this information on the ‘About Me’ page. To make sure the sale goes smoothly and without a hitch is to make sure you choose the correct way of delivery to goods to the successful bidder.
This day in age sadly to many parcels and packages go missing globally and without a proof of delivery you as a seller have no evidence to stand on if that matter is taken to Paypal or eBay. So the best way to make sure your sale goes as smoothly as possible is make sure signed-for delivery is in the condition of sale.
If a winning bidder is not happy with paying for signed-for delivery it is in your rights a seller to cancel the auction.
There are other situations when a auction can be cancelled by the seller, the rules are extremely strict. A full list of conditions are available at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/questions/endlist-now.html.
The final tip for sellers is to always pack your items extremely carefully. Always put thought into the way you have packed your item and whether you will survive its journey whether long or short. Put effort and thought in into the way the item is wrapped whatever you do, do not use old plastic bags or newspaper. People may even reflect poor packaging in their feedback.