5 expert tips for selling on eBay
5 expert tips for selling on eBay
It’s easy to be skeptical about something like this — I know we were.
Susan and I are both fans of Big Wins. That means aggressively cutting costs, optimizing our spending, and earning more.
But does earning more apply to eBay?
How much can you really make on the site anyway? Isn’t this the same place where people regularly try and sell stuff like “the most expensive GIF”?
That’s why Susan and I asked IWT readers who’ve made more than $1,000 on eBay to share how they did it. We took our learnings and distilled it down to five key insights that’ll help you earn thousands on the website.
Here they are in order of importance:
1. Use really good pictures (and a lot of them)
Like establishing a good relationship, first impressions are crucial.
That’s why you need to make sure your photos are great. Photos are going to be the very first thing people look at when they click on your product listing. So make sure they look as good as possible.
When taking photos of your product, make sure you keep these two things in mind:
QualityThe best-sellers use really good pictures — not blurry and not like you’re selling from a house from the show Hoarders.
To do this, photograph your product on a flat neutral-colored surface and background (ideally white so your product will pop). Make sure it’s well lit so you can actually see the product.
The photos don’t have to be perfect, but should accurately reflect the quality of the item.
PRO TIP: You can build your own lightbox for cheap to really make your photos look professional.
QuantityAs one reader put it, her secret was “LOTS of pictures.” As of writing this, eBay allows you to post 12 photos for free — so posting a lot of photos might not be an issue for you.
However, if you want to add more, you can leverage third-party tools to help.
“Use an outside app to manage listings and to upload photos to your own server so you don’t have to pay eBay’s prices for extra photos,” they said. “I use GarageSale myself.”
2. Write mouthwatering product descriptions
A good product description is the perfect marriage of copywriting and selling.
Because it’s not enough to just describe your product (which you should also do), you need to sell the reader on why your product is perfect for your potential customer.
To do that, keep one thing in mind: Sell benefits, not features.
There’s an old marketing maxim that sums this up nicely:
A few other examples:
A few other things to keep in mind:
- Completeness. Fill out all the fields in your listing, and make sure your textual description gives a LOT of information about the item. Think like your buyer: If I’m dropping $200 for a rare book on eBay, I want to know EVERY detail about it. I don’t care how mundane or even repetitive it is, I want every reason to have faith that my $200 will be well spent.
- Search optimization. Use targeted keywords in your item title and description. The more closely your description matches that search query, the more visible your products will be. If it’s a brand name thing, then people will probably be typing in the brand, not just the name of the item itself, so make sure to include the brand (e.g., “Pottery Barn queen duvet” versus “queen duvet”).
Bad eBay listing title – this is NOT how to make money on eBay.
Good eBay listing title – THIS is how to make money on eBay!
3. Time your listing right
There are typically two schools of thought when it comes to your list timing:
- Shorter duration. A listing of three or five days provides a sense of urgency. This is why you’ll see a lot of businesses with sales “only lasting X days!!!”
- Longer duration. Logic is simple: The longer your listing is up, the more opportunities it’ll have for buyers to bid on it.
Our suggestion: Go with the longer duration. More specifically, choose a 10-day listing and optimize it for the most views.
“Use the 10-day listing starting on a Thursday,” suggests one reader. “That gives you two full weekends of eyeballs. Weekends typically have the highest traffic.”
4. Avoid reserve prices
This same seller told us even more about reserve pricing.
This is a price minimum a seller can set on their product. If an auction ends without any bids at that price or higher, the seller doesn’t have to sell the product.
Here’s what they had to say on the topic:
“99.999% of the time I never use a reserve price. My goal is to make as much money as I can, so I reduce the amount of upfront money I have to pay. I also do this by using a low starting price of $0.99. This keeps me competitive with everyone. I would rather get little for it than have it sit on my shelf and have it costing me money.”
5. Find your niche and own it
The survey respondent who made the most money off of eBay ($50k+ in the past 12 months) gave us an interesting tip on what to sell:
“Find a niche market, and go deep. Do you have a hobby? If so, can you sell supplies for it? If selling hobby supplies, make sure your customer has purchased everything necessary for a successful project such as providing fantastic customer support.”
Many people think that choosing a niche limits the amount of customers you have — which isn’t the case. Choosing a niche allows you to focus your offers on a specific group.
Let’s take fitness coaches for example. Who do you think will do better?
- The coach who promises everyone that working out will make them healthier.
- The coach who promises 30-something women they’ll get a flat stomach in three months?
The second one, of course. That’s the paradox of niching down your offering. The more specific your niche, the easier it is to sell and the more you can charge.
If you need help finding a target market and niching down your offerings, be sure to check out my best articles on the topic below:
- Case Study: How niching down helped this entrepreneur double her clients
- Case Study: From $17 / hour to $65 / hour
- How to stand out from the competition (this is from IWT’s sister site GrowthLab)
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