Auction Power Guide

Hello my name is Erick and my dad and I want to open up an eBay business selling old car parts. We have a bunch of old car parts and I wanted to know if it is worth opening a eBay business. Also, what are the pros and cons of opening it and if there is any tips on opening a business. Thank you.

Hi Erick

Opening an eBay business can be very rewarding and profitable. I would start small by listing a few parts and gaging your response from buyers as to the demand for your products.

You have 2 ways of listing your products,
1) to do the conventional auction listing.
2) Buy it now listing.

Both have their benefits and draw backs as you can imagine. I would be tempted in your case to go for the buy it now system as you are able to obtain a higher selling price I would imagine. Unless the parts you propose to sell are very rare and widely sort after.

Shipping is a very important point to think about. I would call your local UPS depot and talk to them to see what they can offer on shipping rates. Most shipping companies are always willing to talk about their prices and give brake’s to businesses who ship large volumes. Some of your smaller parts I would imagine could be shipped using USPS, Priority Mail. THey offer all the boxes free and you can pack quite a lot of weight into the boxes, up to 70lbs for a very reasonable rate.

Most eBay sellers miss a very simple listing point when selling items, that is to give good contact information. Buyers feel better and are willing to pay more if they feel they can contact the seller easy. I would not only allow them to contact me through eBay but I would also use a Skype telephone number. You can place a recorded message on it and get back to them later if necessary. This seems to give you more credibility and so more sales.

Photographs are another must have. The more pictures the better. Buyers want to see the item from many different angles. Don’t forget the buyer cant touch the item so they rely on the pictures to give them a better idea as to the condition of the item. I would not use eBay’s picture hosting as it is too expensive. Find a business’s that does picture hosting or a business the does both picture hosting and eBay templates. It will save you a lot of money over the course of a year.

eBay Templates! These are a must have. They make your listing look professional and neat. It is a proven fact that templates do increase the selling price of items. You can find many online businesses offering templates for you to use. Remember look for one that hosts your images as well as having templates. Expect to pay around $8.00 per month for their service. Some but not all of these businesses have a huge information system to help you sell on line so they are worth the investment. Also a lot offer the first 30 days free.

Payment is another option you need to consider very closely. Are you going to accept only PayPal? or will you allow customers to send you checks or money orders. The more payment options you have open the wider your market place is. A lot of older people do not like to use systems like PayPal and would rather send a check or money order. Obtaining your own payment gateway can be expensive when you first start. I f your business flourishes, then I would possibly consider one in about 12 months time.

Customers inquiries. These can be a pain, people do not tend to read the item description for some reason and will often send you a message asking about a feature you have explained in the listing. MAKE sure you always answer these questions quickly, as this shows you are a serious eBay seller and that your customers matter to you. I know it sounds stupid stating the obvious but you would be surprised at how many online sellers do not do it.

You can list for free on eBay Poland, and Singapore for FREE. However these listings are not shared with other eBay venues so sales opportunities might be limited. Previously you could list on several other eBay sites globally without charge. eBay does this as an incentive to build a critical mass in developing markets. They then introduce listing fees as recently happened in India, where domestic listing had been free for several years.

The best way to minimize listing fees is to wait for a cheap listing day when auction listing are reduced to between 5 and 20 cents. eBay has them every few months when listing activity declines in line with seasonal economic cycles.

What is the cheapest way but yet the most profitable way to go on ebay? doing auctions or just running a store. I have bought some things off ebay and have my paypal account but have never checked out the costs to get setup or how much time it takes. I’d love to hear from sellers on ebay to tell me what they think.

The basic eBay store subscription costs $15.99 a month. One advantage of an eBay store is the insertion fees for store inventory range from $0.05 to $0.10 for a one month listing. You can list multiple quantities of the same item for a single insertion fee. When you compare that with $0.20 to $4.80 for a single standard auction listing, it is a bargain.

The insertion fees may be cheaper, but the final value fee (FVF) charged when an item is sold from an eBay store is significantly higher. The fee is almost double the final value fee of a standard auction. For example, the FVF for a $100 item selling in an eBay store is $7.75. For an auction, the FVF is $3.75. This difference in FVF needs to be factored in when deciding whether to list an item as a store listing or as an auction listing.

The main disadvantage of using an eBay store is the store inventory only appears in the main search results when there are 30 or fewer auctions and fixed-price listings found. This means if you are trying to sell a very popular item in an eBay store, it will not will not be included in the standard search results. This makes it very difficult for buyers to find store items.

An eBay store works best if you have multiple quantities of the same item. The best strategy is to list one unit as an auction and list the rest in the store. When buyers see the auction listing, they may check the other items that are listed for sale by the seller. This list will include items from the seller’s eBay store. Buyers may chose to buy the unit out of your store instead of waiting for the auction to end.

Good Luck,
Bill
Visit http://www.newlifeauctions.com for more eBay tips.

It was the original blue Dell restore disk that came with my computer that the MoBo fried on. I saw several auctions on ebay for the same thing. (still are) I noticed that they were selling them with a ram chip or hard drive to, as they put it "comply with microsoft and ebay rules to sell it" so I did the same thing but still got my auction shut down. It was unopend and unused. This is what I got from them.

Dear g95437 (slidellcomputers.com@gmail.com),

You recently listed the following auction-style listing:

120953159649 – New Dell CD Restore Disc Microsoft Windows XP Professional with service pack 3

Your listing has been removed.

LTC Trusted Reporter

The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, Microsoft Corporation, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

Copyright infringement is unlawful and against eBay policies. Copyright is the protection provided by law to the authors of creative works, such as movies, music, software, photographs, and books, both published and unpublished. Copyright owners have the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to distribute copies of the copyrighted work, and to perform or display the copyrighted work publicly.

eBay doesn’t allow the listing of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. Unauthorized copies include backup, pirated, duplicated, or bootlegged copies.

If the product you are selling is a copy of another work that you aren’t authorized to copy, don’t list the item. eBay doesn’t allow the sale of software if this violates the manufacturer’s copyright license.

Anyone know what the real scoop is on this? What do I need to do to sell it legaly? Or is it just eBay in bed with Microsoft…

There is no real scoop as you put it.

You have been told the reason. Copyright Infringement.

By selling an OS Restore disc your selling a pirate copy
of the original OS!

Auctions on eBay are inherently boring, with nothing more than black text on a white background, and maybe a few photographs of the item in question. Sellers can get lost in a sea of boring auctions, as buyers skip from item to item with nothing really sticking out in their mind. For stay-at-home moms running their own home business from eBay, using HTML is a cheap and easy way to give their auctions a little burst of life.

HTML stands for hypertext markup language, which is the “language” of the internet. Every single website you visit using HTML to work. There are many different things you can do with HTML, and additional languages that work in conjunction with HTML to make some presentations that really pop online. HTML in and of itself, however, is not hard to learn. There are a few basic tags that you can use over and over again to spice up your auction pages, and it won’t cost you but a few minutes of your time to do it.

The best way to learn basic HTML is by surfing the web. Thousands of websites online offer free tutorials on the basics of HTML. Find one that focuses strictly on HTML for eBay, and you’ll find everything you need to know about working with HTML on eBay. Basic tags, like bold and italic, can help you build a better auction. You can also find codes for changing font and background colors, adding in your own images, and creating links so that buyers can e-mail you directly from your auction, or visit your website.

If you want to do more with your auction than what HTML offers, then the next step is to do some research on CSS. CSS stands for cascading style sheets, and gives you more control over the look of your auction. CSS isn’t much harder to learn than HTML, but it lets you change your link behavior, scrollbar, cursor, and even add a background image to your auction. Be sure to adhere to the rules of eBay, however; CSS generally applies styles to the entire webpage, and eBay requires than any style changes made may only apply to your auction.

Once you have gotten a grasp for the basics of HTML and CSS, you can go as far as making your own auction templates. Design an auction template that you would like to use for all of your auctions, and then you can simply copy and paste your auction information into the template every time you list a new item. This can save you time, and give your auctions a more uniform and professional look.

If you are having trouble working out the kinks with your auction’s template, you can always visit eBay’s forums, right on their website. There is a section dedicated entirely to helping sellers set up their own customized auction templates, and they are more than willing to help you figure out what you’re trying to do, for free. As you work with HTML more and learn how to appropriately apply it, you’ll soon become a master of it yourself, and then you may find yourself helping others who are just starting out as well.

Vickie Sayce

Selling real estate over the internet may sound like an awkward idea. However, the exposure the real estate receives over such a widespread media like the internet is every realtors dream.

Can eBay be used to market real estate? The answer is a resounding yes!

eBay provides functionality that is clearly adaptable to the needs of most realtors. It provides a widespread medium of advertisement for the real estate. It is also a relatively inexpensive method of advertising.

One of the best things about selling real estate on eBay is that it “markets” to many areas around the world, not just a local area. Advertising on eBay makes the property available to more than 100 million potential buyers, including those from other countries. Visitors can browse through the property details 24 hours a day, 7 days a week all without the realtor having to explain the details about the property to every single prospect wanting information.

Advertising on eBay

When one has a house or other real estate to sell, he or she may list it for auction on the eBay site. There are many different ways to present the property for sale on eBay. If the realtor seeks to sell the estate at a fixed price instead of having the property go through an auction, he may request eBay to display a real estate listing in a format much like a local paper.

eBays page has three selling formats. These are the auction, fixed price selling, and the traditional real estate listing.

For each of these selling formats, the “user” furnishes additional information regarding his or her property. Details may include lot size, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, type of property, year built, and other information. The auction listing period must also be specified, where the choices range from 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, 10-, or 30-days, or a 30- or 90-day non-auction listing.

The eBay website charges two types of fees for listing a property. There is a simple fee for listing the property and also a fee is based on the final amount of the property sale. The charge for a 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, or 10-day auction listing is typically around $100. A 30-day auction listings cost about $150. A non-auction listing costs $150 for 30-day listing, and about $300 for a 90-day listing.

Fees for Timeshare property and land are usually slightly lower. The final fee amount for Timeshares and land is generally about $35.

Selling on eBay is growing in popularity as the internet stretches it’s outreach to more countries. Although nothing beats direct and personal inspection of property, the convenience of having eBay connect seller and potential buyer is definitely appreciated.

John Long
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/selling-real-estate-on-ebay-52964.html

Many eBay sellers experience this exact same problem. They list an eBook on eBay which they are certain will sell but the auction ends with no sales and only five or six hits to the auction. Some small adjustments to the auction listing could easily explode the auction visitors and sales.

Get a new auction title

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