Many people are reluctant to sell an item on eBay because they don't know if anyone will be interested in buying it.  The purpose of this guide is to integrate an eBay guide with eBay's blogs to help potential sellers determine whether they should list their item on eBay, sell it at a garage sale, or just throw it away!

Now this is still an experimental idea...let's try it out and see if it works! 

How It Works

"Should You Sell It?" consists of two parts linked together through this guide page:

1. Potential sellers posting information about items in their eBay blog.
2. Potential buyers browsing blogs and commenting in response to posts.

Posting Information In Your Blog

If you are looking to get rid of something or have no idea about an item's value it would be helpful to show your item to other eBay users.  They can help you judge how well your item might do on eBay.  This is my idea about how to do this:

1. Create your eBay blog.  To do this, go to http://blogs.ebay.com/ and click on "Start Blogging" - its easy to do!
2. Click on "New Entry".  When others search for blog posts they will search for the text "Should I sell it" so that text needs to appear in your post.  So I suggest starting the title of your post with "Should I sell it?"  Then you can finish the title with a couple of words that describe your item.  See an example.
   
3. In the box labeled "Entry" click(check) "View Source" then paste the following text (everything between the single quotes, not including the single quotes): '<center><h1>Should I Sell It?</h1><a href="http://reviews.ebay.com/Should-you-sell-it_W0QQugidZ10000000001657339">Learn more about this post</a></center>'.  Then uncheck "View Source".  You should see a link to this guide.  People can then get to this guide easily to use it as an instruction manual.
   
4. Below the link you just created (still in the box labeled "Entry") type a description of your item.  You can even include a picture by including the code <img src="http://imagelocation/imagename>. See this guide to learn how to do it. You might include questions like "Is there anyone out there who collects items like this?", "Can anyone help me identify this item?", "Does anyone know about how much items like this usually sell for on eBay?", "What would be the best category to list this item in?"
   
5. Click "Post".  This will display your post to the eBay community.
6. Check on your blog a little later to see if anyone has posted any comments replying to your questions.
7. If you decide to sell the item, create a new post letting people know.  You can include a link to the auction.  Or people can click on "View items for sale" next to your name.

You might also want to add "Should I sell it" as a tag in your Blog.  To do this, go to Settings.  While you are there make sure that "Yes" is checked next to "Allow comments on new entries".

Browsing Blogs

Now its time to help out other members of the eBay community by adding comments to their posts.

1. Search through eBay's blogs for "Should I sell it?" posts.  There are a couple of ways you can do this.
   
• Scroll down to "Current SISI blog posts" towards the bottom of this page.
  
• The easiest way is probably to do a search for "Should I sell it" on eBay's blog page.  Use quotation marks to search for the exact phrase and make sure you are searching in "Posts".  Click here to display the most recent blog posts.  You can search for "Should I sell it" from this page too.
  
• You can also search for blogs with "Should I sell it" as a tag.  But if a blog has many posts you may have to look through all of them to find posts with "Should I sell it" in the title. Click here to search through blogs that have "Should I sell it" as a tag.
  
2. If you can provide helpful information to the owner of a blog, type your response in the "Add Comment" box and click on "Post"
3. Check the blog often to see the comments others have left.  You might learn something new!  If the blogger posts a message that they have listed the item on eBay you can click on "View items for sale" to see their auctions.
4. Note: at no point should you make an offer to the person, no matter how badly you want the item - you'll have to wait for the auction!  See this page for more information.

Links to "Should I Sell It?" blogs

This is still an experimental idea, but as long as the volume stays small, I will post links to "Should I Sell It?" blogs here on this guide page.  That way it will be easier for others to browse through them.  This is the only way I can think of to do it since I can't link to a specific blog search like I can link to an eBay auction search.  Note: I will only put a link to your blog here if you put a link to this guide in your post (step 3 of posting information in your blog).

Current SISI blog posts

• Marx plastic figures posted by dinocollector 09-01-06
  
• Original Edward Warwick artwork posted by dinocollector 08-28-06
  
• TI-85 Graphing Calculator posted by goomba478 08-26-06
  
• Spanish Jurassic Park III Toys
• Antique USGS Barometer
  

Current SISI auctions

• None yet...