Auction 411

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Real eBay Member Spotlight

Member: corgidusty

What is the main category on the eBay Site in which your items are bought or sold?
Collectibles (plush dolls and animal inspired jewelry).

How long have you been using eBay and what do you use it for?
I have been a member since June 6, 2001. I mainly use Ebay to sell plush toys and jewelry. But, I do buy things like china and business supplies also.

How did you first hear about eBay? (i.e., friend, family, search engine, advertisement, etc.):
I was referred by a friend

How often do you visit or browse the eBay Site?
Daily

What is the most unique item you have bought or sold on eBay?
A milk glass owl from Canada that was made in 1899 .

If you mainly use eBay to sell items, do you have a certain strategy that helps you to sell the items that you really want to sell? Or, if you mainly use eBay to purchase items, do you have a certain strategy that helps you purchase the items that you really want to buy?
Sometimes I will add bold to make the listing stand out and I always use the Gallery. I also keep items I really want to sell listed in my Ebay Store at all times.

What tips would you give to people out there who are selling or buying their items on the eBay Site?
Try to list in the proper categories, offer items at reasonable prices with reasonable shipping rates. Also, put the proper keywords in item titles.

Tell us how your Feedback Rating on the eBay Site has improved your reputation as a buyer or a seller?
As of today 2847 positive feedbacks have been left for me with 100% positive rating. When new buyers look at my reputation, they realize that I am a trustworthy seller and they do not have reservations about purchasing from me. It definitely helps.

Do you participate in eBay’s chat rooms or discussion boards? If you do, how often and which ones do you visit?
Several times a year I check a discussion board if there is a something new I want to learn about or if I’m having some sort of issue that I am trying to find an answer to. Normally I look at the seller or help discussion boards.

If you participate on any of eBay’s Chat, Help, or Discussion boards, what reasons would you give a new eBay member to encourage them to join in?
Discussion boards are a great way to find answers to your questions and see what other people are doing that is working.

Has your life changed since you began visiting the eBay Site? If so, in what way?
Ebay has allowed me to develop a small business and earn extra income to supplement my teachers salary and I don’t have to leave home to do it. It’s makes selling easy for buyers and sellers. It provides and instant target market that I could not get in other venues.

What eBay feature or service would you say has been the most helpful to you and why?
Selling Manager Pro – it takes the work out of listing. I couldn’t do the volume I do without it.

Are you a collector who buys or sells on eBay? If so, tell us about your collection and how you got started.
I started on Ebay in 2001 just because I wanted to collect milk glass animals. I try to be careful when I purchase to make sure the items are authentic. I have a neat collection of milk glass hens and other animals that are decorating my house. I was able to get pieces on Ebay that I could not find at my local antique stores.

If you mainly use eBay to sell items, have you ever bought anything on eBay? Or if you mainly use eBay to purchase items, have you ever sold anything on eBay? Please tell us about it:
I frequently buy business supplies like padded envelopes, jewelry boxes and full page labels. I also like to buy my china and other household items.

Can you give us a brief description of what eBay means to you?
Ebay means freedom. Freedom to run my business while I’m at work all day and the ability to have a second income without ever having to leave my house.

The length of your eBay auction listing and the ending date are two factors to consider. Depending on what you’re selling, you need think about the following options:

One Day Auctions

If your products are in high demand and the average item is getting many views and bids, you can consider listing them for a one-day auction. Listing the auction one day will send your items to the top of the list since most people view the listings that are ending first. It’s all about being creative with your pricing, in order to try to reach the highest bid. Imagine your starting bid is only a dollar or two below your Buy-It-Now Price. Many bidders may bid the lower amount, in hopes of winning the auction at a lower cost. However, in many cases, the bidder spoils the BIN and may end up bidding more than the BIN in the end!

Three Day Auctions

Three Day Auctions are a good choice if you have a hot item that people want, or if you have a hard-to-find holiday item that people might want sooner. It’s similar to the one-day auction, only you’ll have a couple extra days to squeeze in some additional bids.

Auction411.net Tip: Double Up

Try putting up a Three-Day Auction at the end of a very successful seven day auction two days before it ends. If a red-hot item is getting bid on like crazy, throw in a three-day auction and cash in on the bidding craze. You might end up selling both items for a large amount.

Five Day Auction

If you don’t have a whole week to post a listing or if you want an “extended weekend” listing, put your item up in a five day auction. It’s longer than a three day, but shorter than a whole week.

Seven Day Auction

Many people put their items up for a seven day auction mostly because there is more of a chance to get an increased number of bids. It’s sort of the standard amount of time for an auction — not too long and not too short. Many bidders won’t think one week is too long to watch an item.

Ten Day Auctions

You might want to opt for a ten-day auction listing if you have a rare item that you’d like to maximize exposure for. Collectibles that aren’t very common could yield much more in the end if it’s listed for two weekends. If you start the listing on a Friday, it’ll have two whole weekends to be viewed.

Ending Date

So now that you’ve thought about how long your listing will run for, on which day should your auction end? More specifically, what time of the day will your auction end? These are also important questions to consider, since there will be more bidders on eBay at certain times looking at certain items.

First and foremost, don’t end your auction on a national holiday or any holiday actually. Obviously, most people are out traveling with their families or enjoying their day off, instead of surfing the internet. Besides that, we recommend that you should end an auction on a Sunday evening, when more people will be at home viewing the site. The time that we have found to be the optimum time is 8:00pm PST as you will get a good number of eyeballs on both the east and west coast and everything in between. If you can’t end on a Sunday, then try the next best day — Monday! Monday usually is a day many people come back from their long weekend and relax by surfing the internet and doing some browsing, hopefully on your eBay store! Coming in third is Thursday as it’s not exactly the weekend yet, but close enough to spare a few extra minutes browsing eBay a bit. But remember to be smart about your product and to understand your target audience. For example, if your target audience are men between the ages of 18-35, then it wouldn’t be very smart to end a bid on Mondays, since this demographic is usually stuffing their face with hoagies and beer, watching Monday Night Football!

Here are the best times we suggest to end your auction:

1. 6:00pm - 10:00pm PST
2. 9:00pm - 12:00am PST
3. 3:00pm - 6:00pm PST
4. 1:00pm - 4:00pm PST

The worst times to end an auction are:

1. 2:00am - 6:00am PST
2. 12:00am - 3:00am PST

With so many products out there, there are numerous ways to approach your Starting Bid amount. For example, most people like to start to sell their items at the price they paid for the item to ensure they cover their costs. This could be a good approach especially if you’ve paid less than the going market rate for the product on eBay.

Another approach that is discussed is to whether or not start your bid at $0.99 or even $0.01. Many will swear that the technique works, especially if you are selling an item in a very competitive market. The downside of this approach is that if the super high competitive market yields you only one bid, you must be prepared to sell your item for that amount. Some sellers can’t afford this kind of risk, but others take the risk in order to gain as much exposure as possible for their items or their store. We suggest that you use this approach when you are starting to establish your feedback, but once you have a eBay feedback rating of over 100, you should be able to sell more on the merit and professionalism of your store. The level of risk is unique to each product and each store owner, so to get an accurate risk tolerance level, we always suggest to do as much industry research as possible on your market and your product.

On the flip side of this approach, starting at a non-competitive bid will lead to less eyeballs, so whatever your choice, there’s always a chance that the bidder can actually win the auction at that price. A great way to look at how you correlate your feedback and starting bid points is to think of it as one. If you have less feedback, then you will want to start at a lower starting bid to attract more buyers. As your feedback increases, your starting bid increases because you will be selling more on the merit of your feedback than on just lower prices. People aren’t stupid, they’d rather pay a little bit more from a trusted site than lose all their money for a cheaper price.

Auction411.net Tip: Price Point Cutoff

If you start your listing at a higher price, make sure you cover any fees and remember to price the item just under the listing fee cutoff. For example, if the fee for a price point of $25.00 - $49.99 is $1.20 and the next highest price point fee is $2.40, don’t start your bid at $50.00. Start it at $49.99 - you’ll save on fees alone if you always make sure to check the price point cutoff.

TITLES
The best and most successful auctions are the ones that are written with a powerful title and informative descriptions. These titles and descriptions are no different from regular forms of advertisement — they need to be able to pull in the customer, grab their attention, give them enough details to make an informed decision and then finally, be able to close the deal. If you master writing effective titles and descriptions, then you’ll be turning a profit in no time!

Titles are the first words your customers will read about your product. Actually, it could be the only thing they see as they peruse through the ebay listings, since 90% of all buyers search the titles, not the descriptions. You have only 55 characters (letters) to use to capture the buyer’s attention, so make them count.

First, you need to know your eBay product (See, I wasn’t kidding when I said you should do your research). Enough so that you know what are the most common words people will be using when searching for your product. Once you have pinpointed which words those are, include them in your title. Official names, nick names, year manufactured, color, size, condition are all common types of keywords used in effective titles. We suggest creating more than one listing for each product so that you can test more thoroughly which titles work the best for your product — this is what we call A/B Testing, which we will go over more in depth later (for now, just think of title 1 as “A” and title 2 as “B”).

One of the best things for you to do is to also think like a copywriter. Ask yourself — what are words that will attract buyers? Attention getting words like — Free, New, Bonus, Extra, Deluxe, Rare — as long as they also give an accurate description of your product! The better you know your product, the easier it will be to come up with these words. Also, remember to use common words. i.e. instead of using Argentine Musician, you should use Argentina Musician.

Still having a hard time finding words? Well, let’s cheat a little bit and use a thesaurus. There are also synonym finder programs or other reference books you can find out there on the web. We sometimes recommend using the thesaurus when you have an extremely popular item and you want to be able to distinguish yourself from the other listings a little bit more.

Here are some Don’ts: Don’t shorten the true titles of the products you’re selling! For example, if you’re selling an iPod Nano, be more descriptive in your title by writing out “Apple iPod Nano 4GB mp3 Player.” You want to be able to use all the words that buyers will be searching with to get as many tries at their click as possible. Don’t use too many superlatives, as those kind of titles may sometimes seem too good to be true — which can turn off the buyer and force them elsewhere (i.e. “Best” iPod Nano Deal Ever).

DESCRIPTIONS
Now that you’ve got the buyer to click on your listing with your outstanding title, it’s time to actually sell them on your product. This is where a well planned out description comes to play. Accuracy and details are the most important elements you want to start off with in your description. For example:

• Name
• Condition
• Unique Characteristics
• Age
• Original Use
• Measurements. Be as accurate as possible and maybe use a point of reference in your pictures (i.e. a ruler)
• Value (not to you, but the market value for a similar product)
• Included Accessories (adds to the value for the buyer)
• Be Honest about any known defects or damage

Tip: You might want to include alternative spellings or misspellings of your product in your description. When someone searches those misspellings, you’ll be one of the few listings smart enough to show up.

Unlike the title line’s 55 character limit, the description page gives you an unlimited amount of space to try and sell to your customer. The first thing to do is know that your new visitor wants your product and that you need to prioritize the information in your description to give you the best shot of converting that new visitor into a new customer. Each new line you type in your description should be viewed as another shot for you to convince your visitor to buy. This is where the research we asked you to do before comes in handy (again).

Secondly, if you can write your description as an authority figure of your product, your description will come off more genuine and the visitor will be able to trust what you have to say. Being an authority figure will also give you the ability to write in a unique manner where the visitor will be able learn some valuable insight on the product they are about to purchase. You will be able to stress how owning your products will benefit them, instead of some generic listing which lists just the product features. Remember to be positive and keep your description professional. We’re not looking for any warm fuzzy stories about how you won the teddy bear while taking your ex-girlfriend to the carnival. To-the-point is the name of the game here.

The last section of your description should be your Terms of Service (TOS). This is where you set the rules for your store (a.k.a. the fine print that people should be aware of). Some examples of some TOS stores include:

• Bidding Restrictions: “No bidders with negative feedback”
• Payment Options: “No Personal Checks”
• Shipping/Handling Charges or Options

Your Terms of Service should be clear and detailed, and also not so intimidating that you scare away the buyer.

Finally, make sure you proof read your description. Nothing is worse than reading a description with poor spelling or grammatical errors as that is a great indicator as to how professional your store really is.