eBay Selling Tips

eBay selling tips. We’ll go over 5, 6 or maybe 10 eBay selling tips that I consider important. These can be mostly applied to Amazon or Shopify. It might turn out to be a long video, but you should watch all of it because chances are you will find this useful no matter what your online status is. If you find something here helpful, please consider subscribing or leaving a like.

And we’re starting right now. eBay selling tip number one is, make sure you get only positive feedback. Or the flip side of this make sure you never get negative feedback. Now before you say – “no way that was obvious!”, let me explain what I mean, because it’s not obvious.

If you get this wrong, you might easily be banned from eBay for life, and you don’t want that. Think about your own buying activity. When you want to buy something on eBay, the first thing you check is seller feedback, right? What do you do when the seller feedback is 100%? You immediately trust the seller.

What do you do when that feedback is 98% or 95%? I bet that you immediately leave the product page because you’re fearing the worst. You’re fearing some kind of scam.

But think about it 95% positive feedback – that means this person got twenty good feedback and only one negative feedback. But still even though that person proved themselves positively nineteen out of twenty times you won’t buy from them.

And in fact, eBay will look upon that person the same way. If there’s going to be one more or two more negative feedback, they might be banned immediately. And that’s the end of that business. So to get specific, what exactly do you do? Here’s the first thing – you never disagree with the customer.

The customer might be an a-hole; the customer might be cursing at you in the comments. Still, your job is to be polite and to offer them their money back.

By the way, this one simple action of offering money back – and I mean all of it not just a partial refund, but all of it – considering that they will return the product back to you – This will result 99% of the products; I’m even including here problems like poor shipping or bad packaging whatever the customer is going to complain about. And believe me, they will complain about something, they might even be scamming you here. Because some buyers will see that you’re a new seller and you’re easy to take advantage of.

So, what you have to do is swallow your pride. Even though you did a great job on the auction. You followed all of the rules, you shipped the item nice and packaged it nicely and it’s a great product. And they got it even at a discount. You still have to offer them this refund.

Now here’s why: If this problem escalates to eBay, you know what they will do? They will do the exact same thing, but they’ll do this for you. But from then on, they will also keep an eye on you. And you don’t want that. So what it does is, it looks at percentages and that’s the same thing for all the buyers.

So 95% positive feedback, that’s pretty bad. Even though in the real world that’s actually pretty good. In the eBay world that’s bad. And if you’re selling maybe 20 items a month this could be devastating. But looking at this from percentages.

If you’re selling thousands of products a month, you can afford one two or maybe five negative feedback every month.

And you’ll be just fine; you’ll be still above the 99% range. So it all depends on your percentages and volume. Most of the time when you’re starting up, you’re starting off small and you’re selling very few items. That’s why I say, always bow down to the customer at that point.

Let them have their money back.

Be polite, don’t argue with them. Always use the eBay messaging service. This way, in case the customer still leaves you negative feedback, but you were always polite to that customer and gave them their money back, and you can dispute that negative feedback. And you know what, actually in that case eBay might rule in your favor.

Because you followed all of eBay’s rules. Also, when you do talk to the customer by the messaging service, only stay positive or unemotional. Never be negative. eBay will also look at this, and you know what also other customers will look at this.

And of course, also check the buyer’s history.

Sometimes, you just might be outright scammed, or eventually you will be scammed of course, once you do enough business. But if you study the buyers’ histories enough you will know that this is happening. So, one simple example is, this let’s say somebody buys an iPhone from you. Then they say the packaging was terrible and the iPhone arrived scratched and what they will want is a partial refund, all right? So, let’s say they bought the phone for $200, they might say “well I want $100 back for the scratch”, and then if you check their history.

You might notice they’re selling phones too. Well, isn’t that a coincidence! It might be just a coincidence actually, but chances are it’s not. Still, your job at that point is tell them: you’re sorry, you don’t do partial refunds, but you will be very happy to give them a full refund once the phone is shipped back to you. This way you do two things at the same time.

You force the customer to drop their scam, if they are scamming you. And you also force that customer to decide if they actually want their money back or if they want the phone instead. Most of the time you won’t hear from them again. But sometimes, yeah you will have to do that actual full refund. And you know what?

Just do it. Think about your losses at that point you just lost on shipping and maybe some eBay fees. But that’s really all. And you make up for it from yo

urn other auctions. So, this leads us into tip number two: which is do not start off with expensive items.
Leave that Gucci bag, laptop or iPhone for a later time. When you have already sold at least 100 items and have a hundred percent feedback. This means you have a hundred positive feedback, and you can now risk selling an expensive item. And what I mean here by risk is, you risk a negative possible feedback. Now obviously, you probably already know you should be using insurance when shipping it.

You should be using tracking numbers; all other stuff is obvious.

But let’s talk for a minute exactly how you sell expensive items. An expensive item is after all – expensive. So even if you have a hundred percent positive feedback and you have a lot of it. The buyer still needs that little push towards buying.

So how do you do this? How do you build trust? Well, in your listing, you could also say that you’re willing to talk by phone or by Skype. And you will show that item by Skype.

And even though you might never get a call, or nobody will ask you to show that item to them, you’re still building trust.

Yeah, that’s important. This goes a long way. But I still suggest if you’re really just starting out, then start out with items that are under $100. You’ll still make a little bit of money. Okay maybe not so much but you’ll still make something, and those expensive items will get their turn.

eBay selling tip number three is: never try to sell something there just isn’t enough demand for. So this tip is a little bit more advanced but it’s still useful for the new people to keep in mind. The reason is as soon as you start to have a little bit of success selling, it’s easy to get carried away thinking well I’ll just sell more of this and I’ll get rich. And that’s just not true. And the reason is simple and obvious, but people forget this all the time.

You can only sell so much of something. And that limit is actual demand.

So do your research! You have to check the sell-through rates of items. And you have to check the quantities of those items being sold.

So, here’s an easy example to consider, think about those Trump hats: make America great again. This was a great item to sell during the campaign process, even when Trump was elected. But nowadays, not really. And what has changed? Well, demand of course.

So, during the campaign process you could have made a little investment and spent a few thousand dollars on those hats. And put them on eBay and maybe make one or two dollars profit off each hat. And you would probably sell them all. But nowadays, if you sell a hundred, you’re probably lucky. So, you always have to keep research in mind.
This is especially true also for seasonal items. So, think about Halloween masks for example. Maybe you just happen to have a ton of masks laying around, all kinds of masks. Vampires and Frankensteins. Obviously, you should be waiting until maybe a month before Halloween to sell them.

But don’t try to sell them after Halloween.

That’s senseless. So, I think I can’t repeat this enough: do your research! You can do this on MarkSight.com.
But really, you could do this anywhere. So just do it. And you’ll be glad you did. Study the sell-through rates. Study how many items are being sold.

And from there, you’ll be able to figure out if you can even sell your item. And if you think “yes”, then you will probably sell your item. Another tip relating to this is: don’t try to be a pioneer. Don’t try to be selling something that’s totally new and nobody ever bought before. Sure, you might get lucky and you make a lot of money.

But that’s really a lottery ticket. The surest way to do real business is to find out what others already sell and what really sells online. And just repeat the process. Let somebody else be the pioneer and you’ll be the second one in line making all the money.

I’ve seen this work for many sellers over the years and it’s a proven system.

Now let’s move on to tip number four, and I hope I’m not boring you, but I think all of these tips are actually quite helpful. This tip is concerning a mindset you should be having but you probably don’t. This mindset is to think attachments and accessories, and how to split up your products. I’ll actually give you two examples. So, I’m a coin collector; and a long time ago I sold my coin collection.

What I did was, I sold a few of the most expensive coins I had separately. And then, kind of out of laziness, I simply bundled my whole coin collection into a single auction.

We’ll let me tell you what happened, by the time the auction ended I wished that I had split the auction into several. And I probably would have made twice as much money. And I see the same thing being repeated all the time on eBay.

So, I’ll give you another example. You might have a desktop computer and a monitor and a printer and a fancy keyboard and a mouse and you’re thinking: well, I’ll just put all these things into one auction and sell it.

And you can do this for sure. But think about this: the buyer that you’re going to have is somebody who needs all those things at the same time. And that’s actually pretty rare compared to the other scenario where you might have a buyer for your printer, you might have a buyer also for your computer and even another buyer for your monitor.

And for every auction you’re gonna have more people looking at your auction, thereby bringing up the price. So again, I think I should repeat this, if you’re thinking to sell something online, think if you could split this into several auctions. Now sure you might be paying more eBay fees this way, but at the same time you’re broadening your target audience for every auction. Now let’s take this concept actually one step further. Let’s say you’re trying to expand your business and you’re thinking I want to sell the really expensive things.

I want to sell the iPhones directly from Apple. Or you want to sell the robot vacuum cleaners also directly from the factories. And while you could do that, you should also keep in mind the other business where you’re gonna sell accessories for those same items. Now I’ll tell you, becoming an Apple reseller is hard stuff.

But selling an iPhone case is way easier.

Okay, maybe you’re going to have to face a lot more competition, but still, that’s the business you could get into today. And the same thing for vacuum cleaners – those robotic ones – I see a lot of accessories being sold for them. And those sellers are in no way resellers from the factories. Just look up accessories for those popular items on AliExpress or Alibaba and you will find many, many out there that you can resell.

Now here’s the other thing that’s going to do: first of all, you’ll be studying the buyer, and you’ll be building a kind of a history of selling these items, okay.

And this way, if you really want to become an iPhone reseller, then applying for that job is going to be much, much easier. You know why? Because one of the requirements is, Apple will ask you: “hey, have you sold anything related to Apple in the past”? And this way, you’ll be able to say “yes I did”! Now Apple is just an example, but you can take and use the idea for really anything else, Samsung or whatever.

The last selling tip I’ll give, is about optimizing your processes. Now that’s a lot of fancy words for something actually really simple. What you should be doing at all times, when you’re selling a few items or a lot of items. You should keep a mental time sheet of where your time is going. So, I’ll give you an example, let’s say you’re creating a lot of auctions on eBay.

Let’s say you’re making 10 auctions every day. How long does each auction take you to make? Is it 20 minutes? Is it an hour? A good auction, with good descriptions can easily take an hour.

So what do you do? Are you spending 10 hours on creating your auctions? Imagine if you had to make 20 in one day.

That would be an impossible task. So really, at all times you should be on the lookout for ways to speed yourself up and you should be doing this in all areas.

So, I’ll give you an example… In the usual real-world business, a lot of time goes towards answering the same questions to the same customers. So, business has got a little bit wiser, and now most of them have websites where those questions are answered.

This does two things. First of all, answers the questions to the customers. But also it reduces the time they have to spend on answering those questions every single time. I hope you see what I mean here. So for eBay, Amazon, Shopify or really whatever system you have to sell online, you have to do the same thing.

You have to look for ways to speed yourself up. And I’m sure you’re clever enough to do this by yourself. Just use Google. If you have more tips that I didn’t cover, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. I hope that was helpful and thanks for watching!

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