This marketplace spotlight focuses on one of today's biggest and most influential online marketplaces: eBay. With millions of active sellers and many millions more active buyers, eBay has become a primary source of income for many of our Liquidation.com buyers. In the list below you'll find some great tips for getting started selling on eBay, or increasing sales for your existing eBay account.
- Traffic: More than 67 million unique visitors per month
- Pros: Detailed seller guides, payment protection, large buyer base, secure site, strong feedback system
- Cons: high selling fees, time consuming, price competition
- Fees: Separate marketplace and transaction fees. Click here to see eBay's fee calculation table.
- 1. Buy before you sell. – On eBay, both buyers and sellers have the opportunity to rate those they do business with. Because eBay highly values its feedback system, buyers often overlook new sellers that don't have any positive feedback yet. To create stronger seller ratings when starting out on eBay, we recommend buying some items before selling anything. When you make a purchase, voluntarily offer the seller positive feedback and request feedback in return. This will build a good reputation and ensure that you make the most out of your eBay selling experience.
- 2. Research the products you want to sell. – Spend some time researching both the average selling price of your items and the qualities of similar auction listings. To get a detailed analysis of what your items have sold for in the past, we recommend using Terapeak, or a similar service. Terapeak will give you historical data for average selling prices, sell-through rates, and top eBay sellers so that you know who your main competition is. You can also see sales trends for different days of the week and times of the day. Terapeak's basic plan costs $9.95/month; if you're looking for a free service, we suggest browsing current listings on both eBay and Amazon.com to understand how to price your merchandise.
- 3. Go above and beyond to deliver good customer service. – Since seller rankings on eBay are strongly based on positive feedback, you'll want to get as much of it as possible from your customers. To do that, we recommend making the purchase process for your customers as easy as possible with good, reliable service. If you receive a question from a potential customer, try to answer it within 24 hours. This will help build buyer confidence and increase customer loyalty.
- 4. Differentiate your listings by using audio. – In his article, "77 Tips and Tools for Selling on the New eBay," eBay expert Skip McGrath discusses how he was able to double sales on eBay by using a company called Seller's Voice to record and incorporate audio into his product listings. This is a great idea for differentiating yourself in a very crowded marketplace, and can work with a wide variety of products!
- 5. Become a product expert. – When you're just getting started, you may be tempted to sell a wide variety of products. However, instead of selling TVs, cameras, iPods, and video game systems all at once, try focusing on one or two products. This niche-oriented strategy has a lot of benefits. First, you'll really get to know a specific market segment and consequently be able to build targeted, profitable sales strategies. Second, you'll naturally learn a lot more about those one or two products than your competitors. As a result, you'll be seen as an expert in your industry and increase your customers' confidence in buying from you. Now that's a great loyalty program!
Top 5 Tips for Getting Started on eBay
So you want to sell online, but where do you start? What do you sell? We have a few recommendations if you're asking yourself these exact questions.
We hope you found this information useful! If you'd like to get more tips and tricks for selling on eBay, here is a link to a helpful list put together by Skip McGrath: 77 Tips and Tools for Selling on The New eBay. Happy listing!
