Selling is not the easiest thing to do, especially on E-Bay. Although I have a super reputation, am honest, and am a "Top-Seller" on E-Bay, other factors come into play when selling. Consequently selling is sometimes harder that I thought it would be.
Since I was a teacher of professional photography, I put my skills to use taking top-quality photos of my items for sale. I also created composite photos
(4 in 1) to save money on E-Bay costs. However, E-Bay will soon change to 12 free photos per listing.
I started selling and buying old and mostly American toys about 1 1/2 years ago. I had just retired from teaching, and needing something to keep me busy, so I fell into selling toys "by accident". I had always liked to write, and had written books for my courses of professional photography, so writing a blog came naturally for me.
1. Having a Blog:
My blog address is oldantiquetoys.blogspot.com
Since buying and selling requires research, I decided that I might as well share what I've learned in the short time in this field. My blog started out slowly with low numbers of viewers, but after 1 1/2 years I now have a readership averaging from 40-140 "page views" per day. I still can't figure out what a page view is, and Google never answered me on that question.
Every time I sell a toy, I write a brief note thanking the buyer, and providing him/her with the addresses of my 2 blogs - the antique toy blog, and my other blog on taking better photos and learning image-editing software (e.g. Photoshop and other programs). I don't expect every buyer to go to my blog, but if I get 1 in 10 or even 20, that's better than none.
Since the continuity of my blog depends on selling, there are times when sales are slow. Right now (Spring season) seems to be slow. Last year at the same time (2011) the same slowdown occurred.
What I will do sometimes is to ask someone from whom I've either purchased toys or sold toys to, to be a "guest writer" on my blog. I can't pay the person, nor do I make any money from the blog. What I do offer is "free publicity" for sellers or buyers to promote themselves.
2. Use Picasa or Flickr to show your photos of toys that you've sold
These photo-sharing sites are great to present your photos. However, I have found that old toys are not necessarily the most popular topic on photo-sharing sites. However, I added my photos there, and I also added my blog address. Again, because of low viewer numbers for toys, I'll perhaps "guesstimate" that I get 1 in 100 people going to my blog. What you might do is look at the most popular types of photos, and then "mix and match your merchandise with lets' say pet or family photos.
Surprisingly, I've had American Pickers e-mail me asking for permission to use my photos. I also had a writer on the Smithsonian Website ask for use of my photos. So one never knows who will be looking at your work.
Right now, E-Bay seems to be having problems with their site. I can't upload any photos, nor can I Italicize or embolden parts of this review. So what I'm going to do for now is stop.
Perhaps there's an overload at E-Bay's server as they have a "free 5000 listings for "Buy-It-Now" merchandise, and as this is the last day.
(Saturday, April 28, 2012), I'm guessing there must be 1 huge overload. I also had trouble uploading photos for several listings. So what I did was write in my listing description for anyone interested to go to my blog.
The photos on my blog are extra-large (E-Bay downsizes all photos), so viewers can look at the photos and have a better view of the small detail.
So thanks for dropping by to view this guide, and I hope this helps in having you improve your sales on E-Bay.
)