Holidays Are Coming, Make Money on eBay Now Part 1

Having watched one of my closest friends make money seemingly from thin air I decided to really look at how he does it and came up with quite a few things that he does differently than many other people. First off he approaches his home based selling business as just that, a business. His hours differ from the main stream working world but he puts in just as many. His area to work in lends itself to treating his tasks seriously. His computer area is neat and orderly, he has a separate area for going thru and checking the things he intends to sell. They must be checked to see that they are in good condition or working order so they can be advertised as such or the problem with the item stated clearly if the working status is not imperative to attracting a buyer as much as the item itself. He has an area set up as a packing station, which is the down fall of many an eBay newbie. Once you sell the item getting the proper shipping material, actually packing it and SENDING IT, in a timely manner, can make or break good feedback. If you wait til after the sale to go hunting for the right envelope, box or wrap you've just added that much more time to get the item to the person who was excited enough by it to out-bid possibly many others.

That brings us to attracting buyers. It's absolutely all in the title. To any eBay sellers not having a great deal of luck with traffic I suggest an experiment. List an item the way you normally would. Lets say it's a lovely faux ostrich purse. List it as just that, elaborate even slightly more. Lovely medium faux ostrich purse tan. Ok, lets disect that title. When I sign on to look for an ostrich purse am I going to use medium as a key word to find what I'm looking for? Probably not. Scratch medium. Rarely am I going to pick a specific color in my initial search either, and since the first picture, the gallery picture is now free, I should be able to see the color when I pull up the available items. Scratch tan. Lovely? Doubt that's going to occur to me when I type in what I'm searching to buy. So what do we have? Faux ostrich purse, right? Wrong. Think of every single term that might be used, from coast to coast, or continent to continent to describe your item. Although it seems like the title line is an item description, it's not. It's the title. One person is going to look for a purse, another a handbag, another a hand bag. Also keep in mind that some words are commonly misspelled, by not using that commom misspelling, just because you know it's grammatically incorrect, will leave out a whole group of buyers that would use that grammatically incorrect spelling. I did this, with this exact item. I got 13 people thru for traffic using the first title, not bought. The second time I listed this item I got 244 lookers, 13 bidders and sold it for over $18. It cost me 50 cents at a garage sale. The listing read; hand bag, faux ostrich purse, america handbag co leather. Do not describe the item you see sitting in front of you. Market it by every name you've ever heard the item called. Think like a buyer. How would you look for what you are trying to sell. Ask your friends what they call the item in question. Sign on and look at other auctions selling similiar items, especially from sellers with high feedback and see how they list that game or toy or notebook or whatever it is.

Another thing my money making friend does is research. Before he puts an item up for auction he goes online and finds out as much he can. The date it was made, looks to see if it's unique in some way, not many of the item made or something special about where or when it was made. When people collect things they come to know what they want and why. When people first start collecting things they sometimes don't know. The more information you can gather about an item and convey it the less your buyer has to think. If you can make that item stand out as desirable, or make buyers see it as special the better the chance of a sale, for more money.

Lastly in this installment is the importance of the picture. A clear picture, showing every imperfection is of the utmost importance. A buyer who can make an informed decision is going to be a satisfied one. Think about it. If I want a vintage Spider Man action figure and find three of them listed how will I make my decision? If two have just one picture showing, of course just the one angle, even if it looks perfect, how do I know what the back, bottom or sides look like? I'm going to be much happier with the purchase if I know exactly what I'm buying, even if it has a paint chip on the foot or a nick on the chest. If I still want it I'll know what I'm getting and be ultimately happy with the honestly of the seller. The extra pictures are not that big an expense and well worth it to get satisfied repeat buyers.

The next thing I'll talk about is the way to find products. Thinking out of the box can make you quite a bit of coin.