Sometimes just a few small tasks make all the difference between making a few dollars profit on eBay and generating a small fortune each month. These ideas will help you make more from your listings.

* Be warned against fantastic eBay testimonials placed for various sellers and products. These testimonials might be fake and placed by sellers or their agents purely to induce confidence in their products which may not actually deserve the glowing accolade.

* If a description is unclear, be sure to check with the seller or risk buying something you do not really want. For example, ‘old’ postcards can in some people’s eyes mean souvenirs of last year’s holiday, while in purist collectors’ eyes the term really means pre-1939 only. Only recently I bought 1000 ‘old’ postcards from a major offline auction house specialising in postcards, only to find they were all less than three years old. For my purposes, not worth the paper they’re printed on. But the fault was mine, as were the postcards that I was not entitled to return for refund.

* What to do if you under-price an item. If you make a mistake and price a product at

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Posted on December 2nd, 2008 by sowhat2
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When researching a product to sell on ebay one of the important things that you need to know is ‘what will it sell for?’ Obviously no one can guarentee this selling price but Ebay gives you the tools to get a good idea.

The background to this is that a friend has been made redundent and has decided that he will make his living on ebay, which contrary to popular thought is still very much a possibility. His idea is simple, he is advertising to do house clearences and unwanted item removal with a view to selling this on at both offline auctions and Ebay.

He was voicing some concerns over the fact that he obviously has some in depth knowledge in certain areas but in others he has none and hence he didn’t want to be paying to much and leaving himself no profit. So I walked him through a feature that is readily available to all Ebayers and one that is seldomly used to the full.

The feature is the Closed Item Search…..simple really.

This allows the question, “What is something worth?” to be answered quickly and as accurately as is humanly possible. It really is like having a crystal ball supplied by Ebay.

Let me give an example, take the Samsung D600 Mobile Phone..

Log into Ebay and in the search box at the top just type in Samsung D600 Mobile Phone. At this point try to think how the listing titles would be written so as to get the ‘complete’ set of results that will give you your expected selling prices accurately.

Hit the search button..

What this does is bring up the current auction listings that are active for your chosen search term, scroll down the screen on the left hand side and click the box that says “Completed Listings” and then hit the Show Items button. (you may have to enter your Ebay username at this point)

Then click the Price column twice and this sorts the data into ascending format, ie. the highest to the lowest selling price. Like always green means it was sold and red means that it wasn’t.

What you have now is a guide to the expected highest selling price and the lowest selling price and pretty easily determine the average selling price, obviously some of the selling prices will be slightly skewed (particularly in the mobile phone example used) due to the ‘must have’ effect but generally these are very easy to identify and eliminate.

A quick click around the completed auctions can also give you an idea of the best selling formats, titles, categories to list in ect so that you are furthur armed to maimise your Ebay profits.

Now then using my friend as an example. Say he gets a call off someone wanting to dispose of a certain number of items he can, whilst still on the phone, determine his likely selling prices and be able to give them a price that he knows he can make money on…..even if he has never sold that product before.

When it comes to Ebay remember that most people see Ebay as a benchmark as to what they are willing to pay and hence what the value of any goods are. So using this simple but effective free tool you will be able to give yourself the chance of going into a sale pretty much confident as to what you are going to get back money wise.

It really is like having a crystal ball..

Mike - Webmaster and eBay Power Seller at Ebay Selling

We offer free templates, information and product sourcing to enable you to develop your online auctions into a sustainable, long term income stream.

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Tags: ebay auction, ebay templates, ebay selling, ebay auctions, ebay, ebay motor

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Posted on December 1st, 2008 by sowhat2
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Ask most people what Aida is and they will tell you it is an opera set in Egypt. Ask a marketing person and they will tell you that it is the sales formula that all advertising must incorporate if it is to succeed.The letters stand for:

A Attention

I Interest

D Desire

A Action

It is a formula that can also help you write better ebay auction listings.

It does not matter how well your description is written, how good your product is or what terrific value it represents if no one knows about it. So how do you grab people’s attention and get them to read your listing?

We know that the majority of potential bidders will start by going to eBay’s search engine. So the important thing is to get as many key words or phrases that they might use into your title. If I am looking for a Rolex Oyster wristwatch I might type in Rolex, Oyster or wristwatch into the search engine. If you have a Rolex Oyster Wrist Watch for sale at

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Posted on November 30th, 2008 by sowhat2
Filed under: trick auctions | No Comments »