Tips for an Ebay Rookie?

[Santilli]

Hi
I need to start selling stuff on Ebay.

Does anyone have any general tricks on minimizing the fees they charge, without loosing money in other ways?

What general guidelines do you use for posting low cost items, vs. high cost items?

Thanks

GS

 

[Clocker]

Fees you are charged are based on an initial listing (i.e. insertion) fee as well as a fee based on closing auction price.

A higher initial bid price will cause you to have a higher insertion fee. If you are confident the item you are listing will get good bids and traffic, use a very low initial bid price to minimize your insertion fee.

Using the Buy it Now (BIN) option has usually worked out good for me. There is a small extra fee but you usually sell items faster and there are some people willing to pay a premium price to just BIN rather than wait for an auction to close. If you use BIN, I would set the BIN price to just a little higher than what you think the item would go for if it went for a full auction. Research completed items of a similiar description to the item you are selling to determine a good price that the item is worth.

There isn't much you can do about final value fees. It is usually some percentage of the final value. Read more about the fee structure here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/fees.html

Some people use Reserve prices to ensure that the item they are selling does not go for an unreasonably low price. This is not usually a problem with computer hardware so I would not worry about using a Reservce price. Besides, you can always enlist someone from SF to put in a bid that is slightly less than the min. amount you would take for the item. That way, if nobody else bids on it, you won't make the SFer buy it and all you have lost is your eBay fees.

I usually list stuff on Sunday evenings for 7 days as it seems eBay gets lots of traffic on Sunday nights.

Make sure you accept PayPal. It is the most popular online payment method on eBay that I know of. I think you are a big disadvantage to other sellers if you don't use it.

C

 

[Clocker]

Side note:

One downside to useing BIN with a low initial listing price. Example:

You list a Gigabyte GA-7VAX motherboard on eBay with an initial listing price of $10 and a BIN price of $60. You know the board will go for at least about $50.

Some jack-in-the-box decides he will bid $35 on your motherboard. He's pretty sure he won't get it for that low of a price but he bids anyway. Because of this, your BIN option has disappeared and you are screwed out of the BIN fee. It was wasted money for BIN in this example.

Morals of the story:

• IF you use a BIN option, make sure the initial listing price is not a whole lot less than the BIN price. Or be willing to kill the bids of low ball bidders to keep your BIN option available.
• Don't let Cougtek bid on your motherboards :wink:

Just kidding around Cougtek!! It all worked out great!!

 

[Clocker]

useing = using

 

[honold]

first and foremost, mention that you use scsi drives on all your auctions- they'll know that you get high sustained transfer rates, and thus a very cool cookie.

http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/download.html - their own tools can be used to list items and calculate fees

i think proper listing is of greater importance for most decently-priced items, and the biggest tip there is to search closed auctions for similar products and figure out what made the highest-bidded ones so high. keywords in the title, description, etc. also make sure that you don't make the auction close at an awkward time - aim for mid-evenings on saturday/sunday.

 

[Mercutio]

I sell computers with initial bid set at $.01 and no reserve. Usually I start my sale on a weekend (Saturday or Sunday). I put "$.01" in the titles of my auctions, which seems to attract attention. I've never lost money selling complete systems on ebay. Usually I get a pretty decent profit (in one memorable case, $400 on a $500 computer).

Be VERY CLEAR about what you're providing. I had a guy spouting all kinds of crap at me because the machine I sold included Red Hat Linux with an option to install Windows. He read that as "A pirated copy of Windows is installed, for free, on request" and hilarity ensued.

If you're providing pictures (a good idea), do so either indicating that your picture is of the actual item, or (in LARGE PRINT) that you're using a generic image. I've had to deal with annoying issues from that, too.

Buyers seem to flake out a lot, particularly on more expensive stuff. Annoying but understandable.

Don't send anything until actual funds are in your actual bank account.
Don't take personal checks, ever.

 

[honold]

Don't take personal checks, ever.

i'm fine with them as long as they clear before i ship

 

[timwhit]

I accept personal checks. Just be sure to specify that you will have to wait 7 days for the check to clear before you will ship the item.

Specify what type of payment options you will accept in the auction. I usually say: "I will accept Paypal, money orders, cashier checks, and personal checks. Personal checks will delay shipping by 7 days because the check will have to clear before shipment."

Also specify how much shipping will be and where you are willing to ship.

 

[Mercutio]

Sometimes they take forever to clear (particularly when drawn from somewhere like "1st bank of GnawBone" (a city in Indiana, and yes, that's a real bank) and I'm always suspicious that I'm getting a bad check.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

What are your handles in ebay?
Mine is cmih.

 

[Clocker]

kevharper

 

[honold]

you'll never know!

 

[Prof.Wizard]

you'll never know!

and I'll never guess... :roll:
btw, 3 complains? All about communication problems? jee, looks like you... :lol:

 

[honold]

yeah yeah

2/3 i was flatly delinquent, just took too long to ship them. the other one wasn't valid.

 

[blakerwry]

I guess if it matters, I usually put a flat fee on shipping. say $5 for small things $8 or more for larger...

USPS Priority (~ $4 for things less than 2lbs, 2 day, no insurance) is usually good if things are small... FedEx ground is usually better for me though.. $4 minimum, but comes with delivery confirmation/tracking and insurance upto $100 included... usually takes 3 days and is cheaper than USPS priority for larger packages.

If you ship USPS have the US postal service send you free boxes, tape, and adhesive labels and use the online shipping label system to get free delivery confirmation on your packages.

Always try to use the lightest packaging method possible (including cutting downn boxes (a few ounces could cost you a few $$ when it comes to shipping). It's also good to have a scale at home that can weigh your packages so you know what to exect.

If possible, always list upfront your shipping charges and courrier you'll use.

 

[Groltz]

It has seemed that on most of the items I've auctioned, some asswipe from New York City has e-mailed me and asked "wut wud shipping c0st 2 my address?"

To try and head that BS off at the pass, I always weigh the package before listing it and add a statement to the Shipping and payment details such as "Item will be shipped via USPS Priority Mail. from ZIP code 98372. Shipping weight is approximately 2.9 pounds" --That will at least get the people off your back that know how to access the USPS online postage calculator.

 

[jtr1962]

From the bidder's standpoint I notice auctions ending during "primetime(7 PM -12AM)" seem to fetch more. Ditto for anything ending on weekends(preferably also during "primetime"). Conversely, I've been able to pick up some real bargains when the auction ends at something like 4AM on a weekday. Obviously there isn't much competition during that time.

My brother sells alot of stuff on eBay. He generally has a low opening bid with a reserve price at least equal to what the item cost him. If you're selling old computer stuff you generally don't need a reserve but it's a good idea to be realistic about what you're going to get by checking other auctions. For example, those 4MB, 30 pin SIMMs you may have paid $200 for in 1992 will get next to nothing on eBay. No sense having a high opening bid. For some reason old IDE hard drives of a few GB or more seem to fetch ridiculously high prices while old RAM or SCSI drives don't. I picked up 376MB(2 64 MB modules and the rest was mostly 16 MB modules) of 72-pin RAM for $10 BIY. In other auctions I got 4 32MB modules for $5 BIY and 2 64MB ones for $10 BIY. Old processors(200 MHz or less) also go for a song. I was able to build 2 decent 200 MHz systems from motherboards I found and <$20 of eBay parts. I tend to think that outside of hard drives old computer parts depreciate really fast.

 

[jtr1962]

It has seemed that on most of the items I've auctioned, some asswipe from New York City has e-mailed me and asked "wut wud shipping c0st 2 my address?"

Sorry about that. :mrgrn:

 

[Clocker]

I find good deals at around 5:30PM EST on Mondays and Tuesday for some reason.

Definitely do not have an auction end on a holiday. I accidentally had one end on Halloween and the price I got on the item sucked.

C

 

[honold]

i learned recently how easy it is to ship overseas, sold 1gb of corsair pc3700 and shipped it to london for about $10 usps global priority (with a small customs card to fill out declaring items and price)

 

[blakerwry]

A good tip for getting high bids on ebay is to provide clickable (thumbnail -> full size) images, I like to include several images of the item I'm selling.

In the item description be sure to state very clearly 1) What you are selling 2) It's features 3) What differentiates it from other similar products 4) why you are selling it if applicable(make room for new stuff, upgrading, not using the item any more, etc).

I also like to include driver/manufacturer website links so that people can get more information.

 

[Groltz]

Sorry about that. :mrgrn:

No, JTR...They were all typed by what seemed to be barrio dwelling scumbags. Not decent folks.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Actually I would worry if my winning customer wrote me afterall like this...
wut wud shipping c0st 2 my address? :roll:

 

[Santilli]

Bump
Still looking for other tips.

Selling comix, and computers, and old surfboards...

gs

 

[blakerwry]

Bump
Still looking for other tips.

Selling comix, and computers, and old surfboards...

gs

As already stated, check out auctions on similar items. See what formats look good and which dont.. which seem to get high bids and which don't.. try to mimic the good ones.

For comics you are of course going to need a description of the episode(s), pictures of the condition of the comics, and a decription of the current condition of the comic(s). Be sure to make special note of any valuable or rare comics you have.

I think there are enough computer examples, but be sure to state the condition of the equipment (if you know it works say so.. ex: working pull).. give examples of what the equipment would be good for (ex: This lucent winmodem would be great for someone needing an inexpensive, yet reliable dial-up solution.) Be sure to state if the product is compatible with different operating systems.. win9x, NT, 2k, XP, DOS, Mac, Linux, etc.

For the surfboards I dunno, tell them the board is fun and you have a lot of memories attached to it... 1st big wave... 1st date.. 1st happy meal