MOTUnation.com

Must be a number of experienced ebay sellers out there.
Do you have any tips for a first time seller?
Only interested in tips for selling on ebay, not buying.

Thx.

Others will certainly chime in, but the very first thing that I do is see what others, that have the same item up for sale, are asking.

And checking past closed auctions to see what the "consensus" price is/was.

A starting point!

Buzzy


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What Buzzy says.

Other than that, don't expect to make a profit your first few times — if you do, great. If, however, you take the attitude that the space in your home or studio is more important than the $$$, you will be less disappointed after the postage, eBay and PayPal fees. Those fees always seem to be more than you calculated.

I ship USPS. For the casual seller, it's the least expensive way. There is a small discount if going through PayPal or eBay instead of USPS.com after a sale.

Speaking of which, knowing exactly what a package weighs will let you quote accurately. Guessing will cost a lot of money, since, if you are wrong, you can't go back and charge more and if you guess too high, fewer people will want to bid. The eBay shipping guidelines on any item are always too low unless you enter the correct weight and dimensions. If you don't have something like this, get one as soon as you can justify the expense.
https://www.amazon.com/Accuteck-W-8250- ... B00SMHWZ42

USPS Flat Rate Priority is ok if your items fit those boxes but Priority Mail and other services are often less expensive. If too big, you need to know your costs and options.

Also, buy a few items so that you have some feedback. It is hard to get established so that you have some positive feedback but 4+ increases the trust factor. If you already have that going as a buyer, nevermind...

Craigslist.

Depending on the item I'd also look at Amazon. I gave up on eBay when several people refused to pay and never responded after bidding. On Amazon they have to actually pay to complete the sale but you can only sell items that Amazon has already listed. So no unique or original stuff. Craig's list is ok but you have to be careful as people will often want to pick up the stuff and you never know who you're dealing with. People have died that way! Really.

Spend some time getting really good looking pictures of your item. The better the pics, the faster and higher you'll sell.

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Craig's list is ok but you have to be careful as people will often want to pick up the stuff and you never know who you're dealing with.

Very true. I always meet them at a local Starbucks with the goods.

Ditto on USPS and making sure you know the weight first, including box, and checking completed listings for what to expect. Generally, the heavier and more fragile the item, the more you need to consider if it is worth the risk of a difficult buyer.

You will get requests to sell early, ship to an address other than a Paypal confirmed address, etc. when people see you are a new seller. You can just tell them you are letting the auction run and if you don't like the tone of any of them, you can block them from bidding on your auction just in case, but they usually never do. I would recommend selling your least valuable items first to get a feel for it. Good luck! It is a good feeling to clear that stuff out and knowing at the same time someone is buying it that will enjoy it, and it is also nice watching the Paypal account go up over time:-)

Here's a tip - don't bother with eBay's "Estimated Shipping Cost" calculator. It does not giev accurate estimates, especially for larger bulky items.

I recommend listing the item with "buyer pays shipping". That way, you don't have to add the cost of shipping to the selling price.

I am finding eBay to be less and less of a source for fair prices for what I am selling, to the point that it's more a convenience and time-saver than anything else at this point, but there may even be times where I would have gotten more (net amount after expenses) selling to Guitar Center!

Having said that, it beats Craigslist by a mile, as CL just doesn't seem to attract many buyers -- perhaps due to nervousness about anonymous meetings, even in public/observed places.

It is true, however, that looking at current and past auctions, is a good measure of what asking price might actually work. But to complicate this situation, I think most people are like me and only want to buy vs. bid, as they have a specific need vs. an impulse for something to "collect", and so you need a BIN price, which keeps increasing its required margin for the starting price, leading to high risk of a single bidder at way below an after-commission sale at GC (e.g.).

Photos help the most of anything. LOTS of them, and especially of critical parts. As an example, if selling a guitar, make sure to capture a good photo (VERY difficult to do without distortion) of the neck to prove it isn't warped or cracked.

I write extremely detailed descriptions, and many of my auctions sold primarily because I put the effort into going way beyond the available on-line documentation. Some people only put one line in their ad and wonder why it doesn't sell.

Beyond descriptive stuff and real-world usage anecdotes and hints, it's important to be clear that you only used the gear at home, smoke-free, etc. People really do care about that stuff, and they should, because I once bought a used Hammond clonewheel organ from a heavy smoker and nearly choked when I opened the box, and the smell never went away EVER (no big deal as I have since upgraded to a newer model, which I bought new vs. used).

The shipping advice already given is excellent. These days, USPS is generally the best price and handling, but I understand that can vary by region. I just shipped a guitar by FedEx Ground this week and wished I had used USPS as I paid $37 extra out-of-pocket due to bad on-line estimates, even though my measurements were 100% spot-on perfect vs. what they came up with at the store. Given the $1000 limit on "declared value" at FedEx and lack of "real" insurance options, I prefer USPS now even for oversized packages, and certainly for ANYTHING that isn't oversized.

With USPS, you also tend to have very low prices for in-state or in-region shipping, and often can upgrade your buyer for less than a dollar, from standard shipping to Priority Mail, which certainly wins good reviews.

Be aware that you may occasionally get a psycho buyer who gets more aggressive the more that you give way. I have had to have eBay intervene three times over 15+ years and 500+ auctions, which isn't bad really. But it was super-stressful. Two of the three psychos were audiophile purists. Some of the craziest people on the planet!

As an aside, most small vendors and individual sellers that I know, now prefer Reverb.com to eBay, but I haven't had time to really investigate and figure out their system yet. As you are just starting though, I highly recommend looking into that option.

In terms of payments, I had to "upgrade" to a professional payPal account a few years ago as none of my auctions were selling anymore at any price. It turns out that this was because most buyers only buy on credit (I usually pay cash).

Unfortunately, unless you have two unique bank accounts (I don't) and two unique email addresses (I sort-of-do with Yahoo but never use that one), once you "upgrade" to a PayPal Business Account so that you can receive credit card payments, even your vanilla cash transactions get lobbed the PayPal fees, which is ridiculous as those cost them nothing and even gain them interest!

So, I had to stop accepting PayPal payments for petty person-to-person transactions and reserve my PayPal account strictly for eBay sales, once I did the "upgrade" to accept credit cards.

Not sure what Reverb.com has set up for payment options and user accounts.

As a final aside on shipping, Dave is correct about the estimates on large items especially, using being wrong, but I have NOT found buyers to be understanding or cooperative if I instead set the shipping to be at auction end time, so now just eat the loss as it affects the success of the auction.

The reality is that most eBay sales are vendors and not individuals, and those businesses get special privileges that we don't, such as discounts on shipping, which buyers ASSUME should pass on to them (and which often do, automatically, when the invoice is sent).

There may be a way for individuals to latch on to that in some way, but I don't have a smart phone so am increasingly shut out of things that can ONLY be done with smart phone apps and not on a traditional computer desktop. Plus, I just don't have time right now to investigate the details, as eBay changes so rapidly that I can't keep up with the changes.

As a final word of advice, be careful about international sales. They are super-easy now that eBay has a shipping center in most countries where they handle the forwarding and the customs charges vs. putting that burden on the seller, but the bigger issue is that you must have an extremely up-to-date awareness about what can LEGALLY be exported.

In particular, various parts of the CITES treaty phase in with each passing year, and there are especially a lot of wood species that are no longer allowed to pass across national borders (such as most rosewoods).

HI Babz, I have had a lot of experience with Ebay over the years. You can PM me for my phone number and ask me some questions if you'd like to.... hope you are doing well!