As a regular buyer and an occasional seller, I find it strange that many sellers still don’t follow the basic requirements to gain visibility for their auctions. This has helped me get some really good deals as a buyer and I thought I would share these tips for the occasional/novice seller to benefit from.
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Before listing something, see if the product is popular. And I don’t mean see if the category is popular. I mean, search for your specific product or similar ones. Invariably, you will find a few items that can be used for comparison. And if those items aren’t doing too well, think twice. You may not get much more for the item than what the others are selling for. Worse, if you price higher, the item may not sell at all.
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Set your expectations. eBay is a buyer’s market. So don’t have lofty expectations of price.
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Expect someone to spike the auction (meaning bid at the last few seconds so that no one can outbid later). While as a seller, you may dislike the idea that someone got a good deal just because of timing, this is a norm and you should see this in a positive light – that, the selling price of the auction will usually go up in the last few seconds.
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Decide the best day to sell. All good sellers know that the best time to end auctions is during the weekend (since most auctions are 7-day, this means you list during the weekend a well). It helps you get the maximum users online.
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And decide the audience most likely to buy your item. The maximum eBay stamp buyers are from the US, followed by UK and Germany. If your item is generic, choose a timing best suited for one or more of these countries (I would recommend Sunday 5:00 pm US Eastern time, as one of the best. This gives you US all time zones, UK & Germany coverage). If alternately your item is preferred by a different zone (research on similar items can tell you this), use timings that match people from that country.
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Use a gallery image in your listing. This costs a few cents more and tremendously improves visibility. But if you have multiple items, you probably don’t need a gallery for all – just the first, last and a few in between. This can save you money in listing.
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Speaking of multiple listings, break down your item into reasonable pieces – not in to such small components that they lose value but enough to get more people involved. Also, try and have similar items ending close together. This gets prospective buyers to notice item. For example list a Scott Catalogue 6 volume set as six separate listings, around 5 minutes apart. This gets buyers who want only specific volumes to be involved in the bidding as well as retains the buyer searching for all six.
But don’t overdo this like say, breaking an album down and selling by page. You will be, in effect killing all value of the album and incurring higher listing fees to boot. -
Listing in the right category, while important, may be a two edged sword. Your item may get lost in others which are more competitive. Sometimes you can get a better deal by listing in the wrong category but this is for an experienced seller and involves some risk. The reason why this works is because many buyers (like myself) search by keyword to find items wrongly listed (in the hope to get a bargain). But do this only if you are confident of your item.
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Use popular keywords in your auction. eBay gives a list when you search through a category – all popular ones include names of many countries, album, hingeless, scott, china, india etc. The entire list can be got at Common eBay Keywords. Use as many popular keywords as possible. For example if you want to sell a collection of Singapore stamps in a stock book, use descriptions like "Lot - Singapore collection on hingeless pages in stockbook album".
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And all these can help you price low to start. Some sellers price higher as they don’t have the confidence that the item will sell at the price they expect. Doing the basic research and ensuring a good listing can ensure item will fetch a better price and a starting bid of 99 cents or lower will help get more bids and a better final price. On top of that, it reduces your listing price as well.
While I have given suggestions here that are quite basic, you would be surprised how many listings don’t follow even one of these guidelines. And as long as there are such sellers, there will be bargains for buyers like me.
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