eBay - Finding Products to Sell Online

You may wonder how to find the best products to resell on eBay, but this list of links will give you some great ideas.

http://andrewminalto.com/best-products-to-sell-on-ebay/

TeraPeak - Amazon and eBay pricing analytics

http://www.whatsellsbest.com

With tools like these, and many more you can Google, you can find the best products to buy, new or used, and information on how to price those items for selling quickly for easy profit!

Visit my eBay store here. I stock clothing, unusual and hard-to-find books and electronics and even collectibles!

 

Big Lesson on "Best Offer" Options and Using Software to Make Listings

When using software to post your items to eBay, like GarageSale or iSale (both of which I own and use), it is very easy to copy a template. This simplifies listing items in similar categories or with similar properties. By the way, I’ve had many problems with iSale and I do not recommend it. The support is slow and does not address all of your issues when you report a problem. Save your money and either enter items manually through the eBay web UI or use GarageSale!

For example, I list quite a bit of LOFT items because those are my top sellers. You’ll notice if you check those listings that many have similar prices (like-new blouses often have the same price), categories and even listing description details (except for highlights on the different sizes, approximate measurements, etc). Since I list most items as fixed price listings (it’s cheaper and lasts for 30 days), I also select “Best Offer” so buyers are free to send me a lower price request. Sometimes I’ll sell an item for a dollar or more off since I regularly run discount (percent off) sales anyway. When I’ve had something in inventory for a month I like to move it quickly so I can get new items in unless the item is absolutely *perfect* in which case I usually decline any best offer requests.

Here’s the catch: you have to remember to check everything about your listing when you copy a template using one of these applications. I had a situation come up today (and once a few weeks back) where the person purchased from me for less than the listed price. I had no idea why when it happened in the past, but today’s item was a listing for XBOX Live Gold codes, so the customer had to interact with me to get the code he bought.

This is when I realized I was very lucky his offer wasn’t much lower, as I had copied another listing which had an automatic accept of best offers of $10 or more! Because of the price I paid for the XBOX Live Codes (bought cards in bulk online a few months back), I at least didn’t lose a ton of money, but I am short more than a dollar.

eBay does not indicate anywhere in the SOLD screen that you accepted a best offer automatically.

Keep this in mind when using software on your Mac to list on eBay:

CHECK ALL LISTING PROPERTIES CAREFULLY BEFORE POSTING!

Good luck and happy eBaying!

What Sells?

One of the questions I get from people interested in eBaying for profit outside of unloading the collection of stuff in their homes is: “What should I buy to resell on eBay?”

Well, this is REALLY easy to learn. Yep, EASY!

First, the rule of making profit in any business that sells products is important to remember: buy low, sell higher. So, shopping for things to resell is all about finding deals that are like steals. Recently I found a couple of new PS3 games on the cheap at Target (thanks big T for your clearances, you always price things to move!)...

Understanding whether or not you can actually sell these items on eBay is the much harder part, at least if you are starting out. Just because you’ve found a game for $9.99 that is still on Amazon for $29.99 doesn’t mean you can sell it (and ship it) at a profit on eBay.

Here’s how to learn whether you can!

STEP ONE - SIGN INTO EBAY AND SEARCH FOR THE ITEM OR ITEMS LIKE IT

Let’s say I’ve found a great price on a MacBook Pro with Retina display from 2012 and the 4th generation Intel Core i7. Here’s what a search on eBay reveals:

STEP TWO - SCROLL DOWN AND SELECT SOLD LISTINGS

This area is on the left side of the webpage.

Once you’ve clicked “Sold listings” the page will refine the results.

STEP THREE - LOOK AT THE PRICES AND COMPARE SPECIFIC LISTINGS WITH YOUR ITEM

In this case, we’re talking laptops and models may have different components like RAM and SSD hard drives. You want to make sure that your item (or potential purchase if you are browsing eBay via the web or app on your smartphone) is configured similarly to sold items to understand if the pricing is comparable.

STEP FOUR - LOOK AT THE COUNT OF SOLD RESULTS, THEN CLICK COMPLETED TO SEE THE RATIO

In this example, there are 51 sold items. When completed is selected, the total is 59. That means only 8 items matching our search query did not sell. This is a great item to buy if you have room for markup.

SUMMARY

Remember, eBay takes 10% of your selling price, so if you sell that MacBook for $1800, you don’t get nearly $200 of that deal. This is noticeable in a large price, but these fees can quickly add up if you’re selling items for $10-$20. In a future blog post we’ll look at how shipping works and how you can save on packing and shipping supplies while building a little profit into the handling of an item. Remember, on items that cost you $5 and you sell for $10, an extra dollar made from shipping could be a huge difference in your profit margin!

Listing on eBay in Ten Easy Steps

There are many ways to list items on eBay. For that matter, many cities of a good size (like Dallas) have eBay stores, where someone else will clean up your used item, take photos and present it in a listing on their store for a commission. Unfortunately that commission is usually 50% of the money received after the eBay fee of 10%.

I prefer to list items via desktop (or iOS) applications like GarageSale and iSale as they have cool templates and let you use your own FTP server to store photos indefinitely. These applications have many bells and whistles you might find unnecessary and can be complex to use for a first-timer, so in this blog post, I’ll cover how you list a simple item using the eBay web interface.

Prep work: make sure you have at least a couple of good photos of your item. In this example, we’re going to look at a T-Shirt with print on the front side only, so I’ve taken a picture of the front on a mannequin and the inside collar tag. For most clothing I like to take 3 to 6 photos, with closeups of the collar, buttons, sleeves, the front and the back plus the tags inside the item.

STEP ONE - LOG INTO eBAY

Using your username and password, visit eBay and select the Sign In option by your name.

STEP TWO - CLICK SELL

As indicated in the picture above, the Sell button is in-between Daily Deals and Customer Support on most eBay accounts in the USA.

STEP THREE - TYPE THE NAME/DESCRIPTION OF THE ITEM, CLICK SEARCH

In this example, we’re listing a New Orleans Saints T-Shirt.

STEP FOUR - CHOOSE A CATEGORY

In some cases you will be prompted with different requests for information because of the item you entered in the search box. Products that are likely to have UPC codes and that exist in the eBay database will request confirmation of the product so that eBay can integrate this data with your listing.

For this item, we’ll select Men’s Clothing > T-Shirts then click Continue.

If the system asked you about listing variations, say no for now and move on.

STEP FIVE - ENTER PRODUCT DETAILS

In many cases you have to enter the content -- especially in the Brand and Material fields.

STEP SIX - ADD PHOTOS

Scroll down below the Country of Manufacture and you’ll see this section:

Click Add photos and the following dialog opens up:

You use the Browse button to find your photos. Hint: having the images resized before uploading will save time. eBay reduces size anyway, so full size iPhone photos are a waste. I use the Camera+ app and set it to smaller photo (1200x1200) size output by default.

Click Upload

STEP SEVEN - ADD DESCRIPTION

You’ll see your item title up top, under the “Describe Your Item” heading. Be sure to select pre-owned for used items.

Just below this section you will find an area to enter a detailed description. Use my basic description as a guideline or search for previously sold listings of similar items so you can use the best details possible to sell your item.

 

STEP EIGHT - CHOOSE LISTING TYPE: AUCTION/FIXED PRICE

Auctions can be up to 10 days while fixed price listings can be 30 days. Fixed price listings cost less to list, but for most items the final value fee payed to eBay is the same (10% for clothing, for example).

You can also choose to give donations to a charity as a portion of your selling price. It’s important to know that the minimum donation is $1. I once had a 99 cent auction item end up giving $1 to charity.

The next section requires entry of your PayPal information so we’ll skip that for now and go to shipping details.

STEP NINE - ADD SHIPPING DETAILS

I recommend you start out with light items that weigh less than 13 ounces (so they qualify for first class postage) OR items small enough to comfortably (and safely) fit into a flat rate Priority Mail envelope. In these cases you can charge a flat rate to your customer. Most T-Shirts are going to be under 13 ounces, but the more they weigh and the further they go in the mail, the more you pay for first class mail. This is under $4 even without negotiated rates, but you should expect to make 50 cents to $1 on your shipping and packing minimum, especially if you are doing auctions.

Make sure to uncheck International Shipping and create an exclusion list to exclude all international locations.

We’ll come back to how to revise items on a later blog post. For now, click continue at the bottom of the page.

Note: eBay will do a basic scan of your content to see if there are any issues with it. In this case, I’ve selected both “pre-owned” and used the word “New” in the title:

STEP TEN - CONFIRM AND LIST YOUR ITEM

Review the information presented and click List your item!

You are done! Congratulations!

How Do Markdowns Work on eBay Stores?

We’ll be exploring how the markdown manager for stores works in future blog posts, but here are a few key points:

1. The ability to do “sale” offers such as percent off or dollar amount off of items where those discounts show on the eBay screen as a promotion is limited to sellers with eBay “Store” accounts. Free users of eBay are not offered this option.
2. Listings being promoted can be picked by any of the following ways:
   • Selection by Store Category
   • Selection by Price
   • Search by any of the main listing fields
   • Individual (manual) addition to the promotion list
3. Multiple sales promotions can be run at once via the Markdown Manager.
4. Promotions can also feature discounted or free shipping.
5. The minimum time for a sale is 24 hours.
6. All promotions are scheduled around Pacific Time (eBay time).

In my eBay store, Styles on the Sly, you I’ve created a number of promotions and they are visible at the header of my store as shown below.

Clicking the “On Sale” link will show all items currently discounted.

Note: these items each have a custom listing frame that also shows a quick link to these markdowns. For example, this Ann Taylor LOFT blouse on eBay shows up as follows:

There are many benefits in designing sales with certain discounted amounts. In this case, by choosing the 12% discount, eBay has placed a green ribbon showing I’m offering 10-15% off of Women’s Clothing. This is a helpful way to imply you are selling for less than you are. It is important that you are giving a fair deal and a good discount, but it doesn’t hurt that the entire set of items has 15% showing as a top range. When combined with the Make Offer option for fixed price listings, customers can be positive you are giving them a bargain. As I’ve mentioned on my eBay About Me page, I’m already getting referrals and return shoppers. This is the way to make the most money.

Below that part of the listing, we see this:

Further highlighting the promotion and even giving links to other products I’m selling along with a link to see more that aren’t pictured! eBay is doing much of the work for you here and it is certainly easier than setting up your own eCommerce platform, even though in that case you aren’t sharing 10% of your revenue with eBay.

Going below this area, we see the actual custom listing frame:

Here we see that the listing itself contains links to my About Me custom page and my two most popular categories (Men’s Clothing and Women’s Clothing) plus a link from eBay highlighting Items On Sale. Again, clicking this will give us all items on sale, not just the discounts in women’s clothing or whatever particular discount in which this blouse is included.

So, the moral of this story is that eBay will help you promote the heck out of your products if you choose good categories and have multiple sales running at one time.

I’d love some feedback from you experienced sellers on the following:

1. Do you see significant sales improvements with your on sale items?
2. How long do you run your sales for?
3. Are your items “truly on sale” or marked up a little before so you can offer a bigger promotion?

Anonymous comments are welcomed if you don’t want to share with a name that can be tied back to your store.

I’ll answer first, but I hope others will chime in -

1. Yes. So far, every time I’ve done a markdown, I’ve had a couple of transactions that I wouldn’t have gotten (or hadn’t gotten yet for something listed quite a while).
2. I do 24 hours although I have 4 promotions going right now that are 48 your offers.
3. I never mark up items for promotional discounts, but I do mark up items on occasion. This should be a future topic for the blog, but sometimes items won’t sell for $11.99 but then I raise the price to $19.99 or best offer and someone offers $17 (which I happily take). I don’t know the psychology of the shoppers in these cases, but it does work.

Please comment and feel free to suggest topics you want covered first. In the next week we’ll look at listing an item manually (using the eBay website) vs using a program such as iSale or GarageSale (two mac and iOS apps).

Thanks for reading! Remember, if you see something in my shop you like, simply make an offer and let me know you read about my shop from this blog post and you’ll get at least 10% on anything that doesn’t include free shipping. For repeat customers or people looking to buy more than one item at a time, we can even drop the prices better!

 

 

 

Welcome

This blog is dedicated to everyone who has thought about using eBay for clearing out their home clutter, buying hard to find items, obtaining the highest quality used goods for less or just as a side business.

You'll read about topics as diverse as using CSS in listings to make your items pop out to determining the best prices to sell your goods online. Over the course of the next few months, you'll get an introductory course on using eBay for fun, profit and saving money.

Always wanted to make more room in your apartment or house? Selling on eBay is a great way to rid yourself of some of that clutter! Remember, there are people who'd love many of the items you've grown tired of, and they will pay you for the pleasure of taking those items off of your hands.

Here are some of the topics to be discussed in coming weeks: searching eBay for the best prices to buy and how to see what the average selling price has been for items you want to sell have been; understanding the listing options; deciding between auction and fixed price listings; costs of using eBay and PayPal; and many more!

We'll even get started with links to eBay's instructions for setting up your account. Note: it is difficult to buy or sell when you don't have many reviews. In other words, a new seller should not sell anything expensive. In fact, you might find it worthwhile just to break even or make a few pennies on those early listings so you can get positive feedback. It is also good to buy on eBay at first since that's the fastest way to get reviews, even though the reviews as a buyer are tracked separately those reviews will show in your overall rating.

Here's an example link on setting up an eBay account by an eBay user. You'll find that much of eBay's "how to" information is user supplied. The eBay supplied instructions have much more to deal with eBay policies.

By the way, there are many types of items that are restricted (or banned) from resell, most for obvious reasons. Among them adult items, which must be listed in the Adults Only category and generally require an account with a track record of selling other items (an approval process is required) and virtual goods which are outright banned with the exception of goods created in the game Second Life.

More to come - enjoy eBaying and check out my growing store at Styles on the Sly. You can watch as I learn new things and make mistakes and enjoy that whole process, if schadenfreude gives you warm feelings of pleasure!