Auction 411

We cannot stress this point enough: Do your research!

Find out what people are buying on eBay, what items they’re bidding on, and what they’re willing to pay for them. One way to do this is to browse the Completed Listings - you’ll see how many people bid on an item, what they finally paid for it (eBay is a truly great example of a free market, because the true value of the item lies in what the buyer pays), the length of the auction (starting and ending dates and times), the item description details, and if they offered Buy-It-Now.

Another reason to do your research is to see if you can really sell your product. For example, if your product is in a collectible category, make sure that you familiarize yourself with all aspects of the product to extract key selling points you find important. You wouldn’t want a Disney Pin Collector turned off from a sale because you didn’t take the time to educate yourself on the item to fully divulge the right information.

One of eBay’s great tools is their monthly Hot Categories Report, which lists the best categories to sell in. For a nominal fee, you can also search eBay’s Marketplace Research Database, a pool of various essential statistics. You can view and analyze top searches, average start prices, average sold prices and so on. (Click on the Marketplace Research link from the home page for detailed information.)

Other third-party companies will sell eBay research tools for a small fee. Andale.com provides supplemental reports detailing the hottest-selling items, tracking pricing trends, and analyzing your sales data. AuctionIntelligence and HammerTap also provide research tools for a monthly subscription fee.

The point here is, do your research. No one said this was going to be a simple one-step process. There are never any gains in life without sacrifice, so if you want to succeed, think about sacrificing a couple of hours of your day to research.

Now that you have become a little bit more familar with eBay, you might be wondering if you’ve chosen the right product to sell on eBay. The first thing you should ask yourself is, Is there is a need for this product? Other questions that you might want to consider are:

• Have you gone and researched your eBay competition to see if you can beat their prices and/or provide a better customer experience than them?
• Do you have enough knowledge about the product?
• Would you buy the product yourself?

These are important questions to know the answers to because you want to know if you’ll have a fighting chance against your competition.

eBay is a very price-driven environment and if you don’t have the weapons (low prices/great service/attractive store) to compete with established businesses, then you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Customer Service is probably one of the most important and overlooked elements when learning how to become a Top Seller. An easy way of making sure you provide good customer service is to be extremely knowledgeable in your products so that you can give quick and informative responses to any questions your customer might ask.

To really begin understanding the ins and outs of eBay, you must first have an account to be able to navigate all the pages within eBay. First of all, we recommend that you keep your personal and business accounts separate. If you have an outstanding personal account, it still doesn’t matter because you don’t need everyone of your customers to know that you just bought the Pink Power Ranger from someone in Canada for $54 dollars plus shipping. Do you get the point? Don’t worry about your feedback ratings because you’re going to provide excellent customer service and the feedback will roll in with ease.

So, what Seller ID are you going to give yourself? We suggest you pick something simple that also describes your business. Names such as “crazy_girlie4506″ or “MikesDaManonCampus69″ just won’t do it because they are honestly impossible names to memorize and indistinguishable from your average eBay customer. If you’re selling Rubber Duckies, something like “BestRubberDuckies” or “RubberDuckies4Sale”would be a good and easy name for people to remember.

Register Your New Account by Clicking Here!

Tip: If you currently have an account with negative feedback, it may be a good idea to start a new account from scratch since feedback can’t be removed.

You do have the option of changing your ID once every month, however, many people do not change their ID often, if at all. Some people think you may have something to hide if you change your “identity.” eBay keeps a public track record of the number of times you’ve changed your ID, and what the past ID names were because of this very reason.

Once you’ve set up your account, the next thing you need to do is truly understand the bidding process from the point of view of a customer. I know that you might already have experience purchasing items from eBay, but do you really know what each step is?

So, let’s take out a piece of paper and grab a pen. Now go find an item that you can bid on, but don’t have to win - my favorite example is bidding $2 for a Red Ferrari since the worst thing that could happen is that you just won yourself a Ferrari for $2! Or if you already have an idea of what you want to sell on ebay, find a competitor and bid on their product. In any case, I want you to begin writing down each step you take. For example:

Step 1: Searched for “Ferrari” in Search Bar.
Step 2: Selected “Red Ferrari in Perfect Condition” Auction because I like how the tagline said it’s in perfect condition.
Step 3: Read the Description and History of the car. I’m going to make a bid because . . .

and so on . . . . The point is you understand what triggers people to make certain decisions. Keep the piece of paper so when we begin to set up your eBay Store, you’ll be able to reference key points in the selling process.

So now that you have really become familar with the selling process from the view of a consumer, you should go to your “About Me” page and write a paragraph or two describing yourself and your business. It doesn’t have to be a biography about your whole life, but it should be enough so that you come off as a regular person who’s got an honest business on ebay. Look at that piece of paper you just wrote and note what key phrases which attracted you which you might want to put in your own description. This will provide a genuine element to your storefront and make people more at ease when purchasing from you.