Avoid These eBay Mistakes and Make More Sales

by Daniel MacDougall

When Marie and I first started selling on eBay we made somevery common mistakes. Experience has taught us a few things.Here are some tips that have helped us succeedin our eBay business. Many first time sellers have one thing in common – theyoften fail. Many of them fail time and time again, neverunderstanding what is going wrong. They do hours of researchlooking for the perfect item to sell, get the auction set up,and wait for the bidding to begin. Hours go by and no bidsare placed. Days go by, and there are still no bids – orthere are very low bids. Finally the auction ends, and itturns out to be a total failure. Considering the huge numberof sellers who run eBay auctions, there are specific thingsyou must do, and specific things you must not do if you areto be successful. There are many reasons why auctions fail. The most commonreason is that the item is not in high demand. This problemcan be avoided by doing the necessary research to determinewhich items sell well, and which items should be avoided. This research takes a great deal of time – but in the end, you willfind that it is time well spent.Another reason for eBay failure is pricing. If you set thatopening bid too high, most people won’t even click the link toread the description for your item. Another pricing problem islack of research. Before you set your reserve price, you mustdetermine what the item is really worth, and the price similaritems have sold for in past eBay auctions. Avoid using a reserveprice if you can. Reserve pricing can often discourage bidding. Poorly written descriptions are another cause of failedauctions. Poor grammar and misspelled words drive people away.Failing to post a picture of the item will also keep peoplefrom visiting your auction page. Make sure that your descriptionis well written. This is essentially your ‘sales copy.’ The moreinformation you can provide, the more comfortable people are inbuying. Tell a story about the item if you can. People like tobe involved and can make an item stand out from thecrowd.Shipping prices scare people away from auctions if they are toohigh. Find the lowest shipping prices that you can find, andconsider paying for the shipping yourself if it won’t cut intoyour profits too much. Do not charge handling fees.Offer great ‘customer service’ for all of your auctions, andask your buyers to give you feedback. If the items that yousell are everything that you said they would be, and you offergreat customer service, you can expect wonderful feedback – andthis feedback will help a great deal in your future auctions.

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