Some hints and tips on how to make the most money from selling on eBay, spend less and how to maximize how much you get from each sale.
Ebay has become synonymous with selling online, no doubt that when people are looking to sell something online either for profit, to get rid of old or unwanted items or just starting off on their first steps to online trading, the first place that comes to mind would be eBay. There is no doubt that sellers would like to see their items sell for the highest possible price, meaning more money for them. Here I will provide some tips from my experience of selling on eBay and how I manage to squeeze every last penny out from each sale.Avoid paying for unnecessary listing "enhancements"
Add-on's for listings to enhance picture galleries, such as gallery plus or supersize picture are not likely to push sales up much further as buyers should already know what they are purchasing since they have made the search and have already clicked through to your page. The only thing needed now is to catch their eye with a good and tidy description of the item you are selling. Try not to over exaggerate it too much but be firm and precise and most importantly honest with a clear description of your item to catch their attention, make sure to emphasize on the positives and good selling points.
TIP: Sites such as Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com/) let you register and upload pictures for free, which provide an HTML link to where your picture is located. This will let you add as many pictures as you want to your eBay listing for free. Simply do this by selecting the HTML method when creating your eBay listing, and then insert Photobucket's HTML link into the eBay listing box, then switch back to the normal tab. This should now display the picture from Photobucket on your listing page, you can freely drag the picture to your desired size or location on the listing page. This will save you the extra money from purchasing gallery enhancements and allow you to freely add as many pictures you want, for FREE. Your pictures will be displayed on the listing as normal when buyers visit your page.
The options to highlight or bold text your listing will make your listing stand out, however, it may do so for the wrong reasons. Normal results (without the added features) will give people the impression of a normal, genuine listing, without it trying to be too "in your face". As it is typical for ads (banners, towers, popups, etc) to try and blend in with the rest of the content on a page but have a tendency to be a little "different" from the rest in order to draw attention to itself, they could have the reverse effect and give the impression that it is an ad as opposed to a genuine listing, prompting people to have a split second thought before clicking that link. The best way to attract people to your listing is to include a good, clear picture (the free one) and provide an eye catching title for the listing, instead of trying to make it too over powering and "ad-like". Again, as the buyer has searched for what they are looking to buy, they are more than likely aware of what they are looking for beforehand, so such enhancements will not likely do much in terms of pushing up the final price and you could end up spending more money to no avail.
Research on previous sale prices, and keep up with the competition
It is important to have an idea of how much your item is most likely to sell for, to know this, make a search on eBay for similar, if not the same item(s) that you are about to sell on eBay. Make sure you are logged into eBay (it usually doesn't work if you are not logged in) and click on the "Completed Listings" link on the left hand side bar, which would show you what has sold and for how much, when it was sold, if it failed to sell etc. You may choose to sort this by price + PP from highest to lowest and vice versa, date, etc. depending on what you want to have an outlook on. Once you have a general idea about the demand of your item and the potential selling price, be sure to keep up with the competition and stay ahead of the game one step. If you are buying and selling items at buy it now prices, make sure to find another seller who is doing the same and try to slightly beat or at least match their asking price, attracting more customers to you rather than them. As long as your price for the same thing is the lowest on eBay, people will buy from you, even if you are asking for 5p lower (with a good reputation and feedback too, of course).
If you are in it for the long run and have many of the same item to sell continuously, then it is better to have more sales generating a bit of profit, than setting the asking price too high and putting off buyers, resulting in a potential for greater profit, but less likely to get it as the chances for a sale are lowered, with possible loss of money due to listing fees.
If you are hungry and don't want to waste the last drop, there are a few possible ways to "get" a little more money by not having to charge anything extra from buyers, they will still pay the same amount. As you know, eBay recently started charging 10% for their final value fee, almost double of the previous charge. Receiving PayPal payments have also increased a little to 25p + 3.5%. You could opt to receive your payment by cheque or other methods, however many people still insist on PayPal as it is apparently the most convenient and secure, despite the drawback of having a charge to using it.
The listing fee is set by eBay so it is not avoidable in such sense, but if selling as buy it now, the more quantity you wish to place, the more you save on the listing fee, as you can have more than one of the same item on the same listing for the price of one listing fee. Your listing will remain on eBay until all your quantities have been sold, this would make for a more cost effective method to listing.
We can, however, have a little play around with the final value fee, and I'll tell you how. The final value fee is calculated from how much the item was sold, and does not take into account the charge you made for postage, therefore, the aim is to decrease your asking price slightly for the product itself but increase your postage price, making sure to keep it within reasonable values. For example, if you are to sell an item for £90 and charge £10 for postage, totalling £100, then you can get away with asking for £85 for the item and £15 for delivery. The benefit of this would be that you are getting the extra £5 slashed off the price through postage payments, hence leaving eBay with less of your hard earned money to "tax" away from you, saving you 50p while you still receive your full amount for £100. Of course I'll leave it up to you to play around with and decide on what best would suit your listing in a believable format, as it would be against eBay's rules to have a significant postage price with a product final price irrelevant to the total. This also in a sense can give the illusion of a cheaper offer for the same product, as people generally tend to look at the asking price for the product itself before anything else, potentially drawing more attention to your listing.
Lastly, it is best to organise your outgoing/incoming expenditure and determine the actual profit made with a trusted eBay calculator (Google this), where you can play around with possible price structures to see how much you can try to squeeze out and gain. Hope this has helped.
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