10 Tips for Selling Products on eBay

September 11, 2006


This information was taken from an article in Top Tech News.

1. Set the starting price low (except for items you expect little interest in)

Low starting prices stimulate auction traffic and get early bidders psychologically invested in the auction, leading to more completed sales and higher final prices.

2. Use reserve prices with caution, especially for low-priced items

When using a low minimum bid, nervous sellers sometimes set secret reserve prices to make sure their item doesn't sell for less than the item's true value.

3. Use photos in your listings.

Listings with photos receive much more traffic than listings without photos.

4. Don't flood the market

If you're selling multiples of an item, space them out, rather then selling them all at once, says Ku -- that's simple supply and demand at work.

5. Spell-check

Misspellings decrease the amount of traffic an auction receives. Note for buyers, including misspellings in your search criteria can expose some auctions that are not seen by most shoppers. This can net some nice deals to the savvy buyer.

6. Hype it up

Ku and Murnighan suggest that inserting blatant puffery like "This shirt is hot!! A must-have for the summer!!" into low-starting-price auctions could stimulate interest better than more straightforward listings, and possibly even raise final sale prices.

7. Hold longer auctions

Researchers from the University of Arizona and the University of Michigan found that longer auctions tend to fetch higher prices.

8. Don't end auctions during "eBay happy hour"

Though it might seem counterintuitive, a University of Pennsylvania researcher found that auctions ending during peak hours on eBay are actually 9.6% less likely to result in a sale.

9. Charge for shipping -- but not too much

Bidders don't pay much attention to shipping costs when placing bids, say professors at UC Berkeley and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

10. Avoid negative feedback

A Bentley College researcher found that sellers who have even a few positive reports are more likely than sellers who have no history to receive bids and to have their auctions result in a sale.

Click HERE to see the entire article