eBay is one of the popular choices of sellers for selling items quickly.
The auction site helped most of the sellers to earn more than the item was actually worth.
eBay is an ideal platform for people who are just started and new to explore the eCommerce world.
Well, since the popularity is increasing, it also created a competitive environment. So if you are new or already have a business on eBay, you are going to need something that can make you shine this among others.
Here are the secrets and strategies that are followed by several successful sellers on eBay. And you can consider making your store successful on eBay.
1.Take A Day To Browse And Get Familiar With Site
eBay has a lot of popular tools and other things that can go to waste if you are not aware of it.
For new sellers, starting a store and earning a profit can be too exciting that makes them skip getting familiar with the platform.
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The more you know about eBay and what can help, takes less time in the future and makes it hassle-free. Here are few points to consider :
- Use the navigation bar as an anchor on eBay, you can find this on the top of every page on this platform.
- Make sure you are keeping notes of pages that you might need in the future.
- Make most of the use with pages like Service page, it contains lots of treasure tools as well as service to help.
- eBay has an education page that you can visit to know what you can sell. Also, you get the interactive audio tour to know a lot more about selling on eBay and creating a list.
2. Sell What You Know For The First-Timers
Lots of seekers look for profitable items to sell when they start new on eBay. No doubt that it’s helpful and it gives you more opportunities to earn.
However, first-time sellers should start with the products that they are comfortable with.
Choose what you know, for example, if you hold the information about fashion, sell items related to that.
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Sellers who know what they are selling can target a better audience. And it makes it easier for you to handle further things.
3. Wait And Be Patience For Opportunities
When it comes to obtaining items in quality, look out for the offers and low prices for sale.
Often these offers are right under the nose, that’s why you need to be observant of what’s going on around you.
For example, if you have a retailer in local and you want to merchandise it to get liquidated. Make an offer to them for clearing out their old or damaged stock.
Often retail stores look for a way out to get their stock sold before it turns into dead stock.
4. Educate Yourself Before You Sell
As mentioned earlier, you should start with what you know. But if you want to sell something else and you have no idea about what those things are.
Make sure you know to get familiar with products you want to sell. It’s important to educate beforehand, so you can write a powerful product description.
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If you end up making mistakes or writing something which doesn’t make any sense. It will make your buyer feel hesitant and lerry to do the bidding.
If your buyer end up knowing that you have no idea what you are selling, they will properly drop doing any bidding on your products in the future too
The more you know, the better credibility you can create. This means you have more buyers for bidding on your products.
5. Create Second User ID On eBay
eBay allows you to create as many IDs as you want, as long as you are providing a separate email address.
So with this, you can expand your business. Add more items to your second user ID and make it relevant to your new product line.
Keep it relevant so you can expand later.
6. Make Yourself A Designated Area For Business
Selling on eBay doesn’t limit your work only to the online platform, you need to do lots of things such as packing, taking photos, storing inventory, etc.
For all of these things, you need a space where you can arrange it. It’s better to be organized from the beginning, so it will save the hassle when your business starts to grow.
Get a place where you can do the packing and shipping-related work.
Separate space where lights are good, use inexpensive clothes or papers to set the backdrop. Use this for clicking the photos of your items.
Keep a separate area where you can store the items, computer, printer, etc. Make your work simple and organize so you can work faster.
7. Avoid Using Too Many Capital Letters
When you browse other stores on eBay, you might find some examples where the sellers have written titles in capital letters.
However, don’t consider doing this with yours. Using all caps for your title makes it difficult to read. And it doesn’t look appealing either.
Image source: salehoo
Use the uppercase and lowercase letters with proper spacing so they can be simple to see. Also, it makes buyers notice your products faster.
8. Provide More Information And Details To Your Listing
When you are creating your listing on eBay, don’t just mention the title and few things. It won’t make your buyers do the bidding as it lacks the information.
Buyers need information and proper detailing before they consider choosing your product.
That’s why provide a complete description, include detailed photos and clear specifications to your every item.
Image source: sellbrite
9. Highlights The Terms & Condition In Listing
Well, use the existing template for separating the information related to terms and conditions, shipping, warranty, guarantee policies, and returns.
You can divide this information into sections, and use bullet points to highlight it.
This will keep the information more clear to read and your customers can easily find it too.
Keep the language easy and simple for everyone
10. Develop A Schedule For Listing
There are lots of times when you don’t get the results you were expecting from the listing.
That’s why you need the schedule before you start the listing. Consider what time will be the best for you to start the listing. Also, fix a date when the particular product will get the auctions.
If you are selling something like American flags, make sure you are scheduling to end before the fourth of July.
This will give you much more time to do the shipping before the holidays start.
It’s important if you have a niche market, pay attention to the days and times which can be ideal for your product to sell.
According to that, do your listing scheduling. Make sure you are sticking to it.
This also helps your clientele when you are going to list the items. And this will help you in improving your listing and results will get better too.
11. Avoid Getting Stuck In A Rut
There might be some situations where you feel like your products are not selling. Maybe some of your items get stuck and even if you are trying, it’s not going anywhere.
Instead, getting stuck into a rut, take a look at how you listed your product. Maybe it doesn’t have clear photos to show the product and highlighting its features.
Or maybe the title and description are not that effective. You can change it to freshen up the list and try again.
12. Do Not Waste Time For Shipping
When you get the orders confirmed to form the buyers, waste no time and start the preparation for shipping.
It should be your next obvious thing when you get paid for the product. Do not make your audience wait for the delivery.
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Make sure you are packing the items securely and keep them good. There are a lot more tips that you can find on the community help board on eBay.
13. Keep Your Shipping And Handling Cost Reasonable
Shipping prices are also one of the points where you and your competitor get compared. The customer can drop your products just because your shipment charges are high for their expectation.
It’s important for your shipment and handling price to be reasonable. You can use low price and the high shipping cost as bait to get your audience moving to another product in your listing.
14. Track And Update Once The Parcel is Out
This helps in making sure that your customer is receiving a good experience. Most of the customers feel anxious when they place an order online.
Make sure you are tracking the updates and keep your customer informed. You can also send the follow-up email to the buyer, informing as well as asking for feedback.
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This will improve the communication, and you will get the window to connect with the audience even after the purchase is done. This helps in getting customer retention.
15. Respond To Question And Queries
To make sure that you are getting better customer retention, focus on providing an easy and simple experience.
Also while doing the purchase, customers have lots of questions that they want you to answer
That’s why make sure that you are providing prompt and punctual responses to your customers.
Also, focus on being courteous when you are answering their queries. People will do business again with you if they are getting a pleasant experience as well as answers on time.
16. Get Rid Of Roadblocks
It’s important that you don’t create unnecessary roadblocks that stop the customers from shopping for you.
For example, if the customer wants to send payment via Paypal, but you don’t accept payment from PayPal, well this is one of the roadblocks that you created.
This stops your customers from buying the products and reduces the chances of getting the profit.
That’s why to take down any kind of roadblocks like this. Make sure your customer leaves with happy and good customer care.
Keep your business simple, it means you can sell the item, get money and ship it easily.
17. Be Kind And Helpful
The secret behind a successful business is happy customers. And if you want happy customers for you too, focus on how you can make it.
Apart from offering a good customer experience, you also need to create a personal connection.
That starts with being kind to them, and being willing when they need help.
18. Connect Fast Who Sends Email
If your customer is the one who is connected with you through email, make sure you are fast responding.
They are complaining about something, maybe your ship got delivered late or there are some issues. Make sure you are being honest with the response.
Customers can understand if there is something wrong, but lying is out of options.
19. Schedule A Day For Posting Feedbacks
You need to get the day or time fixed for posting the feedback.
Create some of the statements for generic feedback, and make sure you correct the spelling mistakes. Now paste this to the feedback submissions.
This will help in adding more posting feedback. And people don’t really care about what you ‘re saying if it’s positive.
Also, avoid using too much of your emotions. Or best leave it out.
20. Get Yourself A Business Paypal Account
There are lots of buyers who prefer PayPal payment. It might be one of the reasons why the buyers limit their shopping to those sellers who are offering PayPal.
One of the reasons why PayPal is recommended before it makes it easier to track sales, invoicing and you can easily do the bookkeeping.
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That’s why make sure you have a business Paypal account or premier one. It will also keep the work hassle-free and you can get yourself an option that attracts more customers.
21. Keep Track Of Every Single Penny
For business, your every single penny matters. The difference in listing fees starts with $9.99 and $10.00, the difference is 25 cents. If you are planning to list your 100 products every week, the difference will add up to $25.
Pay attention to where you are expensive, what different it’s making, and what are the hidden costs you are paying without knowing. Look for the shipping supplies and postage-like parts to save money.
22. Use eBay Keywords
Once you are all settled with the regular inventory, upgrade your game by adding eBay keywords.
Also, you can get more attention to your store by choosing pay per click banner advertisement.
23. Focus On Cultivating The Customer Database
The customer database is considered a goldmine for the business. You can easily market any of your products directly to your customers if you have the database ready.
You can send the newsletter monthly, here you can describe the new products or offer discounts to your customers.
Image source: theebaycommunity
However, make sure that you are following the laws and not avoiding the national spam laws.
24. Take Advantage Of Cross Promotion On eBay
With the help of tools, you can get the merchandise featured in your store. This allows you to choose any item that might attract someone else’s interest and decide to purchase already from your list.
25. Watch Out For The Competitors
eBay has one of the profitable platforms and naturally, it brings more competition too.
That’s why you need to look out for the competitors first. Search the seller who can be your poetical competitor or already doing great in your niche.
You can also look for the offers, strategies, and practices that they are doing. If your competitors are offering similar products at a low price, you can gather customers by offering free shipping.
26. Don’t Limit To One Place
Instead of limiting yourself to one place, it’s important for you to look for more paces from where you can get the buyers.
There are many brands that are famous in the United States, and it’s hard to get access to the products to someone who lives outside the country.
There are lots of buyers from different countries who are willing to purchase the products and they are providing good profits too.
The point is not to limit your business to the United States only.
27. Avoid Accepting The Foreign Currency
These are important rules that you need to remember when you are dealing with non-US buyers.
Make sure you specify that you accept only US dollars.
Accepting other currencies can be a loss if the exchange rate changes. For example, if you’re selling your product at $20 America, but the customer pays you $20. You can end up losing $8.
This is important to be clear about the currency, also add the additional charges for the delivery if you are considering shipping to different countries.
28. Put Some Items On Hold
Well if you see there are some items that are becoming popular and the trend will live longer.
And your competitors are selling the same thing, then don’t be afraid to put a stop for some time. Wait until the competitors sell everything.
You can earn more profit if you are the only one who is offering the popular item.
But for this, you need to understand the market and trends first. Because your calculation went wrong, you might deal with stock that no one wants to purchase.
29. Use Your Email Signature For Cross Promotion
When you are using the emails to connect with your customers, and doing follow-ups, you can also use them for cross-promotion.
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You can get your email signature by adding something so the audience knows where they can go or visit for more products.
30. Use Accounting Software
There are apps like QuickBooks or more accounting software that can help you in keeping the record of your transaction, inventory and maintain reports
This also helps you when you are paying for the tax etc.
31. Don’t Start Until You Have Transactions
When you are starting on eBay, make sure you have the numbers of transactions on-site.
Also, it’s important that you have an understanding of how eBay works and other aspects so you know how to do your business.
32. Treat your Customers Good
That’s a no-brainer secret but still, it’s important for you to keep that in mind.
Lots of times you might encounter some situation that can be overwhelming. Not all customers are the same, that’s why you need to treat everyone according to that.
Be understanding and remember they are only unhappy because you are not providing something you suppose to.
33. Use Paypal Built-In Postage Service
eBay allows you to use different online payments from a bank account or credit card.
With this, you can purchase the postage, print labels, etc from USPS and UPS. And you can use your
PayPal account for that. it will also save you time.
34. Mention The Shipping Day
Have your days or day when you do the shipping and make sure you mention it in your store.
This will help the customers to know when they get the parcel. This eliminates the issues and also helps in building trust.
35. Feed The Bidding Frenzy
You can do this to the items which are using low opening bid rice without any reserve.
This helps in gathering more bidders and it will start the bidding on the list. Eventually, it will lead to a personal bidding war, and the buyers ended up paying more than they intended to do it.
You can get much more profit and you can get much more price.
36. Use Seller Assistant Pro
If you are considering becoming an advanced user, this will help in putting the listing together when offline, and then it will get a load all together as a bulk loading feature.
You can use the free trial too before you pay for the subscription.
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“Business, marketing, and Branding – these three words describe me the best. I am the founder of Burban Branding and Media, and a self-taught marketer with 10 years of experience. My passion lies in helping startups enhance their business through marketing, Branding, leadership, and finance. I am on a mission to assist businesses in achieving their goals.”