Auction Power Guide

Collectibles and eBay go way, way back, and they’re still one of its biggest areas of buying and selling activity. Many of eBay’s most hardcore and longtime users are collectors of some sort of thing or the other. It’s quite common for people to post what they think is a run-of-the-mill item, only to have collectors suddenly go to war over it because the item is linked to something these eBayers collect.

Collectors are the people on eBay who really do pay top-dollar for things that just might seem like junk to most others, not to mention to the people you’ll be getting your stock from! That’s why you can make so much money on collectibles.

Here are a few tips for finding and selling collectibles on eBay.

Go to people’s homes. People’s homes are full of things that someone out there collects. They are the best and cheapest source of collectibles out there. Sure, you might find something if you hang around at enough garage sales, but you’re going to have competition. Getting invited to people’s homes to look around should be something you’re doing your best to make a reality.

Buy on other auction sites. You’ll be surprised how much money you can make if you buy the collectibles that people sell on smaller auction sites and then sell them on eBay. These sellers will often be perfectly knowledgeable about their items, but simply getting a lower price because they serve a smaller marketplace. Sometimes you can even double your money or even better.

List in non-collectible categories. If your collectible doesn’t have a category of its own under “collectibles”, you might prefer to list it in a category that has something to do with the item but nothing to do with collecting. What you will often find is that people browsing a category for their favorite thing will pay more for your collectible than actual collectors would.

Do lots of research. Never list something you think might be valuable without searching to dig up every piece of information you can on it. Everything piece of information you can get your hands on is likely to be useful when you come to list it. Do your due diligence.

List every tiny detail. Remember that collectors really care about the most seemingly insignificant things. An item from one year can be worth thousands while the same item from the year before is near-worthless, or an item that is one shade of a color can be worth far more than one of a subtly different shade. It’s not worth puzzling over and it’s not worth trying to pass your items off as something they’re not. Just make sure you put absolutely everything you know in the description.

When you are listing items that require a lot of research and a description down to the tiniest detail, don’t be tempted to steal someone else’s work! I know it’s easy to do, but don’t take another seller’s description and try to pass it off as your own, as this could have all sorts of consequences for you. Believe it or not, eBay does have a “description theft” policy.

Clint Herman

You may have already identified who your competition is, or you may want to research yourself!

Enter the seller id of the seller you want to research, and Terapeak will generate a report on all of their recent sales.

This report includes all transactions from your selected time frame!

Understanding the competition will show you how other sellers are successful — or not!

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How do you further narrow down research to a specific style, in order to get exact pricing and listing detail?

If you sell an item that doesn’t include a model number, you may want to use item specifics to get the best matches.

Select the filters that match your item.

In some situations, it’s really important to get an exact match, and using item specifics will help you create an accurate report.

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What Am i doing wrong i sell costume jewellery on ebay which i think is a nice mix and im thinking of doing it full time and opening an ebay shop but im put of by slow sales i dont make a big profit as i beleive being greedy puts people off do you think i have the right mix and what do you think of my prices and postage please let me know as i am left scratching my head as there are shops on ebay selling the same items over £5.00 dearer in some cases. Have a look and see what you think im called shellynrichy. Thanks Shelly 27 year old stress headed female.

I had a very similar problem. I opened a shop selling lovely costume jewellery, girly accessories etc and made it look professional, but sales were so slow and the costs were so high I gave up and I’ve got loads of stuff stored in my bedroom now! (will probably try again soon but it’s a lot of hassle as you’ll agree). I’m not saying you should give up but ebay is such a huge marketplace now and there is so much competition I just think that is the main problem. I personally don’t see anything wrong with what you are selling but it depends on who’s looking for what and is a matter of luck. If you go to a shopping centre you have Claires and Accessorize or whatever but ebay has lots of shops selling costume jewellery. You say other people have sold the same jewellery for £5 dearer – maybe they were one-offs who knows but have you thought about changing your name (if you can) to something catchier relating to what you are selling? I wouldn’t recommend opening a shop yet until you see how things go for a bit longer as I ended up worse off. What about carboot sales? Good luck!

With so many people trading on eBay these days it’s hard to see how to get to the top of the eBay pile. Yet making a living is perfectly possible if some basic business methods are followed. This article considers three crucial issues.

Market choice: Most casual eBay sellers don’t have a target market as such – they simply sell to anyone who might buy. To be fair, their marketplace is a vast one and the likelihood is great that someone, somewhere, will want what they are selling. This was the original eBay idea – a vast marketplace of potential buyers with something for everyone.

However, times change and, if you want to make a business out of eBay, a way has to be found of sustaining a viable sales level. This is essential if you want to a) make enough money to be worth the effort and b) climb the eBay pile to be recognised as a serious player. There are two main ways of doing this:

First, simply sell more. If you are an ’emporium’ type seller – that is, a non-specialised merchant who sells a wide variety of goods – this is, up to a point, easy. You just take on more sales lines to increase your selling chances. The downside to this is that more and more time is spent sourcing, cataloguing and listing – not to mention money ties up in your widening range of inventory.

The other route is via niche marketing. Your sales window may be much smaller but, if you have identified your market properly, that market can be a good one. With less inventory to tie up cash your business can operate on a much leaner model, helping to maximise profit and taking less time in administrative tasks. My choice would always to go with a niche market.

Maximising exposure: It’s an old business truism that you can have the best product in the world but, if no-one knows about it your business will fold. An eBay business is no different. Okay, your auction lots are in front of the eBay world and, if targeted correctly, will probably sell. However, selling purely via auction brings its own problems, not the least of which is the difficulty in projecting profit and loss with its attendant cash flow issues.

It might be wise, therefore, to consider how to best expose your business to the wider world! One way is to write articles like this one. Although they must not be adverts for your business, they can – and should – contain useful information for readers that can generate interest in what you do. That of course leads us on to the next way to get noticed:

A website. Web hosting and domain names are these days so inexpensive in comparison to ten years ago as to be almost laughable. If you’re paying more than forty pounds/eighty dollars a year for web hosting you’re paying too much! It’s so easy too to set up a basic selling website compared to those distant days of the mid-nineties that anyone can do it (even me!). But here’s the kicker: get yourself a basic eBay shop and, using the simple-to-use tools that eBay provide FREE you can embed your eBay shop into your website.

Why do this? Well, it’s a triple whammy. Your eBay shop can drive business to your website and your website drive business to your eBay shop. Also, your auction items draw buyers to your shop, giving shop inventory items much greater exposure. Search engine optimisation is beyond the scope of this article but, by using well-tried techniques, your website should climb the rankings, especially if it is content-rich rather than just a mass of adsense advertising.

Using your eBay shop and website in tandem should, in time, put you way ahead of any competitors utilising only a single marketing stream. Try putting yourself in the buyer’s position – is it a) easy and b) interesting to use you – or someone else?

Customer care: Many people think that the sale is over when you have the order and the payment is in the bank. Wrong! It’s much easier to sell to an existing customer than to get a new one. Existing customers already trust you to a certain extent – if their initial purchase has gone well, been easy and the goods were fine then they are more likely to use you rather than an untried competitor – even if your products are a bit more costly.

It’s true – the fact is that, for many buyers, price isn’t the absolute deciding factor when buying online, especially from a ‘known’ seller. What they want is a) an easy transaction b) peace of mind as far as the quality of their goods goes and c) a reliable delivery that they don’t have to worry about. Give your buyers these three things and they’ll love you for it.

Customer care isn’t difficult but it is essential. Your mindset should not be one that suffers your customers but enjoys them. On a purely practical level this is essential for your business – on a subjective level it helps you enjoy building your business on eBay or elsewhere. In my opinion, the more you can enjoy your business the better it will be – for both you and your customer – and that puts you firmly on the road to success!

Steve Dempster
http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/ebay-trading-three-pivotal-points-to-consider-119034.html

You need to know who your competition is so that you can compete!

From your Product Reports, let’s see who else is in the market
— from here you can see any other sellers that have sold your items

Compare your sales statistics with the top sellers to see where you’re positioned in the market.

If you want to look at past sales, change the date on the calendar to update times.

It’s important to always know who your competition is.

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Many people have jumped on the eBay bandwagon, learning quickly this online auction and direct sales marketplace can open doors for individuals and businesses alike. By driving thousands of potential buyers to users’ wares each day, the site can be a literal goldmine when it’s tapped into. There is even eBay store software out there now to make the process of setting up shop even easier.

The idea behind eBay store software is to help individuals and businesses that want to set up virtual storefronts on this site do so with ease. As eBay gets even bigger, the choices in eBay store software are getting better all the time, too. For those who aren’t aware, eBay isn’t just for single item sales anymore. The site allows for the creation of full shops so users can consolidate their auctions and sales in one place. The eBay store software package options just make this easier.

For more information on ebay store sales click here

Did you ever wonder what it takes to get onto eBay Pulse What type of Watch Count is necessary for an item to seem on an eBay Pulse page Ordinarily Watch Counts are private information, on the market only to the seller of the item in question and eBay Client Assistance. But with the support of specific computer software, you can (legitimately) lookup the Watch Count of most any eBay Pulse item — and most other items listed on eBay.

But wait — let me take a step back in case Im moving too rapid here…

You have been to eBay Pulse, perfect It is the location on eBay exactly where, amongst other factors, best-watched auctions are showcased for the rest of the globe to see. Auctions whove accumulated the most quantity of Watch This Item clicks bubble their way up to the Pulse page for their category, and possibly even to the most important eBay Pulse page. Such clicks act as votes of reputation for items, no matter if in famous Auction format or option listing formats such as Fixed-Cost or Classified Ad.

So what type of numbers (i.e. how most watchers) does a sellers item have to have to accrue to climb into the limelight on eBay Pulse As an eBay shopper or onlooker, possibly you are curious. If you are a seller, figuring out the Watch Count of Pulse items in your category can support you measure oneself up against your competition. I had a closer appear at Pulse applying an web based utility and here are some trends that I located on the eBay US web-site, as of this writing.

Best-watched auctions appear to get visible on the most important Pulse page past the 200-250 Watch Count range. And it is not uncommon to see items whove elicited more than 600 votes to seem there as properly. Naturally this can consistently modify as auctions come and go in the marketplace and as eBay tweaks its threshold criteria.

For a when there have been sellers whove made use of clever promoting approaches to accumulate watchers at an tremendously accelerated pace so that they can guarantee themselves placement on Pulse. They employ techniques that range from the benign click here to watch this auction links inside their auction listings to custom scripts that are probably made use of in violation of eBay policies. Lately eBay has cracked down on the latter, but when those auctions had been visible on Pulse they had inflated Watch Counts in the 100,000 range. Yup, that high.

Drilling down into specific Pulse categories, 1 can see figures that are a lot easier to fathom. The Tickets category tends to have items in the 100-200 range, while a celebrity event or hot football game can garnish Watch Counts above 400 or even in the 1,000 terrain. The Genuine Estate location tends to feature its most famous properties and land auctions at 200 , and more than in eBay Motors it is not uncommon to see 400 watchers on an auction, in particular for early- to mid-century Fords.

Seeking for a low-priced laugh Then head on more than to the Almost everything Else category exactly where you will acquire at the best of the list such in-demand items as a normal toothpick, empty bottle of laundry detergent, or a piece of mint candy — all supplied with zero cost shipping, of course. These festive sellers delight in showing off their inventive listing templates and quite often hope to make it on the 11 oclock news with their zany item (or entertaining listing), considerably like the seller who spotted an image of the Virgin Mary on their grilled cheese sandwich and sold it on eBay for US$28,000.00 back in 2004. These items grab numbers of active watchers across a broad spectrum, from unimpressive single-digit Watch Counts up to 10s of 1,000s in specific situations.

There are some other considerations that eBay appears to take into account when screening auctions for Pulse eligibility. These criteria are not disclosed, but Ive noticed that an items bid count and/or quantity of Get in touch with the Seller emails can play a role. Nevertheless, the Watch Count is the main ranking factor, and it can be enjoyable (and potentially lucrative too, if you are an eBay seller) to see the wide range of counts that eBay Pulse items can amass.

We see it just about every year about this time, on forums and on group posts: My eBay sales are so slow this summer. Im honestly discouraged. What can I do Here are a couple of suggestions.

Remodel. Appear at your listings and your shop, if you have 1, with a fresh eye. Feel back to all of the suggestions you have heard but not taken and look into applying it. Attempt a thing numerous for a modify. It couldnt hurt and could possibly just support. Im talking about suggestions such as taking improved photographs with improved backgrounds or applying way more photographs applying terrific key phrases and all 55 characters of just about every title not centering the text in your descriptions applying a appropriately-sized font, not too major and not too small applying a font color that is convenient to read such as properly-written, non-threatening, qualified-sounding shipping, payment, and return policies in your listings or operating on making your brand by standardizing colors and templates so many people will recognize your listings in a crowd.

Reassess. If your merchandise are not selling perfect now, why could possibly that be Are they just 1 item in a gazillion with absolutely nothing that makes them stand out or rise above the crowded marketplace Acquire a high-volume seller who sells comparable items. Examine those listings and attempt to identify what makes their items sell when yours do not. Search for items comparable to yours on completed listings and take a appear at the ones that sold. Whats so unique about them Could listing/closing time have something to do with it Did they have a Order It Now solution whereas your items do not What does that seller do that you do not do Does he or she present a newsletter Do you Do not ever copy a further sellers listings, but take notes about what appeals to you as a buyer and incorporate some of those tips into your own listing and promoting practices. Identify what you can do to make your shop and your items irresistible to your shoppers.

Restock. Sell a thing else. If your listings are fantastic and have to have no improvement at all but the items are nonetheless not selling, look into the truth that not almost everything listed on eBay sells. If it hasnt sold inside a reasonable period of time, look into donating it or getting a yard sale. Possibly your merchandise are out of season perfect now and should certainly be put on the shelf for awhile and re-listed later. Feel a month or two ahead to the subsequent holiday or, through the summer, to back-to-school time and acquire items that should certainly sell properly then and get those listings prepared. Or, feel in a entirely opposite season have a Christmas in July sale or list items with a gift-giving theme.

If you are not busy this summer shipping out sold items, you quite possibly have some time on your hands. Use the time wisely by studying each the market place and promoting principles. Get started with our remodel, reassess, and restock techniques, apply them, and possibly you will see your summer sales start to take off once again.

We see it just about every year about this time, on forums and on group posts: My eBay sales are so slow this summer. Im honestly discouraged. What can I do Here are a couple of suggestions.

Remodel. Appear at your listings and your shop, if you have 1, with a fresh eye. Feel back to all of the suggestions you have heard but not taken and look into applying it. Attempt a thing numerous for a modify. It couldnt hurt and could possibly just support. Im talking about suggestions such as taking improved photographs with improved backgrounds or applying way more photographs applying terrific key phrases and all 55 characters of just about every title not centering the text in your descriptions applying a appropriately-sized font, not too major and not too small applying a font color that is convenient to read such as properly-written, non-threatening, qualified-sounding shipping, payment, and return policies in your listings or operating on making your brand by standardizing colors and templates so many people will recognize your listings in a crowd.

Reassess. If your merchandise are not selling perfect now, why could possibly that be Are they just 1 item in a gazillion with absolutely nothing that makes them stand out or rise above the crowded marketplace Acquire a high-volume seller who sells comparable items. Examine those listings and attempt to identify what makes their items sell when yours do not. Search for items comparable to yours on completed listings and take a appear at the ones that sold. Whats so unique about them Could listing/closing time have something to do with it Did they have a Order It Now solution whereas your items do not What does that seller do that you do not do Does he or she present a newsletter Do you Do not ever copy a further sellers listings, but take notes about what appeals to you as a buyer and incorporate some of those tips into your own listing and promoting practices. Identify what you can do to make your shop and your items irresistible to your shoppers.

Restock. Sell a thing else. If your listings are fantastic and have to have no improvement at all but the items are nonetheless not selling, look into the truth that not almost everything listed on eBay sells. If it hasnt sold inside a reasonable period of time, look into donating it or getting a yard sale. Possibly your merchandise are out of season perfect now and should certainly be put on the shelf for awhile and re-listed later. Feel a month or two ahead to the subsequent holiday or, through the summer, to back-to-school time and acquire items that should certainly sell properly then and get those listings prepared. Or, feel in a entirely opposite season have a Christmas in July sale or list items with a gift-giving theme.

If you are not busy this summer shipping out sold items, you quite possibly have some time on your hands. Use the time wisely by studying each the market place and promoting principles. Get started with our remodel, reassess, and restock techniques, apply them, and possibly you will see your summer sales start to take off once again.