How To Be A Successful E-Bay Buyer & Seller

By Judy

eBay can be a fun and rewarding experience if you know how to buy and sell effectively. I've been an active eBayer for a little over a year and have learned some great tips along the way. I'm going to try to teach you some of the selling and buying tips I've learned over the last year. This article will not tell you how to set up a seller's account on eBay, or about any of eBay's fees. That information can be found when visiting eBay's home page in the "Welcome New Users" section, found on their homepage, www.ebay.com

I started out by selling paper piecings. My first piece was a snowman and it sold for the starting price. That was all it took for me to get motivated to make more. Within a few months most of my pieces were selling for between $10 and $20. I averaged 3 or 4 pieces a week. When Christmas came I stopped selling because of my hectic schedule.

Selling Tips:

The first thing I do when I plan on making something to sell is research the item on eBay. I'll use a paper piecing set as my example. Before I start making the set, I'll do a search on eBay for paper piecings. I want to see what is selling and what is not. I want to see what the current trends are. If my idea is to make punch art, but tags are really what's hot right now, then I may not to bother with the punch art right now. I also want to see what the starting and ending bids are. I personally like to start the bidding on my auctions on the low side. I want to make my auction more appealing than the other sellers' auctions. I know that if I've done a good job and people like my work, it will sell itself.

After I've done my research and decided on my project, I get it ready to sell. If you're doing handmade work, be sure your pieces are neat and clean and that they'll be packaged well for mailing. Padded mailers are good. I've found them at the dollar store in packages of 2 or 3, depending on the size. You can also find cardboard mailers at Walmart or office supply stores. The important thing is that your work be protected so that it doesn't get wet or bent while going through the mail.

Scan or take a digital photo of your item. Try to get the best quality possible because a good photo will help sell your item. If you want to put more than one photo in your auction, this can be done without eBay's additional charges. By using simple HTML tags you can add as many images as you want. However, your photos will have to be uploaded onto another server. (See http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/html_tips.htmll )

Now you're ready to post your auction! After you've set up a seller's account with eBay, click on "sell" at the top of the page. The steps are pretty easy to follow, and you will have a chance to preview your listing before you post it. The first thing you want to do is come up with a title that will land in the most searches. In our example, we are selling a paper piecing set. Let's say it's a Christmas set with a Santa. It also has a title and some tags included. I would make my title say "Christmas Santa Paper Piecing Set Tags." You are limited to 45 characters in your title so try to fit in as much as you can. I left out the word "with" before "tags" simply to save room. I've also found that eBay's search feature is very picky. If I were to do a search for "tags" and my title read "w/tags" there is a very good possibility that it wouldn't come up in that search. Experiment with the search feature and soon you'll figure out what will work best for you in your title.

Your description is next. Forget long winded. No one wants to read a book when looking at an auction. Make your paper piecing sound wonderful by highlighting its features. What techniques and supplies did you use? Be sure to mention it's dimensions, that it's acid free, and whether or not it comes from a smoke free home. If there is a journaled piece included, type it out in the description incase it can't be read in the photos. Be sure to be very specific with your shipping terms. State clearly what your shipping includes. If you charge $5.00 for shipping but the item only costs you $2.00 to mail, the buyer may question you once they receive it. If you want to charge for the packaging, state your shipping fee as a "shipping & handling" charge. I recommend offering insurance as an option. You can get insurance rates at the post office before you post your auction. It's also recommended that you state you will not be responsible for an item once it leaves your hands. This clears you of responsibility if the item is lost or damaged by the post office.

Payment methods: Most sellers accept Paypal, money orders, personal checks and eBay payments. I'm not familiar with eBay's payment method. Paypal has different types of accounts and that determines whether you are able to accept credit card payments or not. (See https://www.paypal.com/ ) Be sure to state in your auction what payments you accept, and when payment is expected.

eBay allows you to preview your auction before you submit it. This gives you the opportunity to make any changes before you list it. When everything is the way you want it, click on the submit listing button and it's done! Keep in mind that as long as there are no bids on your item, you still have the opportunity to make changes to the auction by clicking on the "revise item" link on the auction page.

Now that you've listed your item, you can sit back and watch the price climb! Good luck to you and happy selling!

Buying Tips:

I've learned how to win 99% of the auctions I bid on. The few that I haven't won are either because I lost interest in the item or wasn't available to bid near the end of the auction.

First I'll talk about the Buy It Now feature. Many sellers use this method to offer the buyer the opportunity to purchase the item without having to bid against others. Most of the time the Buy It Now price is higher than the starting bid and it's up to you, the buyer, to determine if you want to pay that price or not. If you decide it's not worth it, you can still bid on the item for the opening bid amount. By doing that, you cancel out the Buy It Now feature and the auction remains open for others to bid on. Using the Buy It Now feature ends the auction when you click the Buy It Now button, and the item is yours.

Bidding on items can be fun and nerve-wracking at the same time. I've been involved in "bidding wars" during the last few minutes of an auction (and I won!). I never bid until the last few minutes of an auction, providing I have access to a computer. When that time comes, I open two windows on my computer, with the auction page open in each window. In one of the windows, I refresh my page every 30 seconds or so to watch the high bid and how much time is left on the auction. In the other window I've entered my maximum bid amount and clicked the "review bid" button. That brings me to a screen where I can confirm my bid. I won't click on "place bid" until literally the last minute of the auction. This almost guarantees that I'll win the auction, because it leaves any other possible bidder very little time to outbid me. Of course, it has happened to me that there are others using this same strategy and that's where the bidding wars happen. I can proudly say that I have won auctions by bidding with only 2 seconds left in the auction (and my heart was pounding the whole time…LOL!). Of course, this method doesn't work for everyone because we can't always be at the computer at the time the auction ends. That's when you need to take your chances and bid on an item at your convenience and cross your fingers!

I need to stress the fact that when you buy or sell an item on eBay you have entered a contract with the other person. You are responsible for carrying through with your end of the deal, whether it's shipping an item or paying promptly.

After the transaction has ended and both parties have carried out their end of the deal, it's time to leave feedback. Many sellers leave feedback as soon as they receive payment. Some wait until the buyer leaves feedback for them before leaving it for the buyer. Feedback is very important to both buyers and sellers. It's what determines your reputation on eBay. If you're happy with the outcome of the auction leave positive feedback. It's the right thing to do for both buyers and sellers. If you've had a negative experience, think carefully before leaving negative feedback. Try to work things out with the other party before leaving negative feedback. By leaving that type of feedback without first trying to work things out, it could hurt your own feedback rating if the other person decides to do the same.

I hope this article has helped answer some of the questions you may have had about buying and selling on eBay. If you have more questions, eBay has areas on their site set up for this specific purpose. There are also message boards where other eBayers share their experiences and can answer your questions, http://pages.aol.ebay.com/community/chat/index.html .