1. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old cliche goes and its true. But make sure the picture isn’t blurry and shows off relevant information. It may be useful to have pics from several angles, a closeup and a overall pic.
2. Spell check. If someone is searching on eBay, they will more likely find your item if you spell it correctly. You might misspell it on purpose if its a word that might get misspelled a lot, but only if thats the case. Otherwise selling a “Alphred Hitchkock” DVD set wont get many hits.
3. Put up vital information on the item. Serial numbers, model #, year released, type…. You get the idea the more technical information the better, especially if you are selling electronics or computer equipment, but even if you aren’t it can still help others find your item.
4. List any flaws the item has. Its better to be honest right away than to have someone get something that has some major flaws, because you might get bad feedback or a neutral rating. You might not think they will notice but they probably will. This can sometimes hurt your auction’s bid amounts, but do you really want a bad reputation that could have future customers not want to do business with you?
5. Have a good title. Most searches will be done based on the title (this is how the default search works) so you need to put in the information people will want to know. Here’s an example: My So Called Life DVD set R1 NEW This gives them an idea what the item is, and the region, most people will figure out or know the acronyms in this case R1 means Region 1. Here’s another good title: Linksys Router BEFSR41 FOUR 4 Port Sometimes its a good idea to use both the number and have it spelled out, notice the model # in the title also. You only have so many characters but if you can fill them up with useful information. Sometimes people use LQQK or TITLES IN ALL CAPS!!!!! or WOW or RaRe ItEM, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Personally I suggest to use varying cases, sometimes CAPS can help differentiate a word if you have a long tile, otherwise you can use a dash or a semicolon to space them out.
6. Look at similar auctions with bids, see why others are successful selling a item similar to yours, maybe its just luck but again they may have a better description, better pictures, better feedback or all the above.
7. Survey the market, see if there is too much of one item on eBay and if they are not selling. Don’t waste money and time on items that wont sell. If the item isn’t listed it could mean its a rare item or that it isn’t popular.
8. Make a good description. Here is your chance to sell an item, you want the customer to feel they want to buy the item, so make it sound good without lying.
9. Start bidding amount as low as you can. You can always put in a reserve, but keep in mind you will get charged more for that. You get charged the same amount if you start it at $0.01 or $0.99, I usually prefer starting at 99cents with no reserve but only if I’ve done enough research to know that it will sell. If you charge $1 you will end up paying a few more cents for listing it, so use 99cents or less.
10. Leave feedback for others. Usually others will forget to leave you feedback unless you leave it for them. Just make sure you stuff works first. And beware of bullies, research the person to see if they leave bad feedback for those who leave them bad feedback. If so you might wait until the last few days to leave that feedback. You have 60days to leave feedback.