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eBay secrets - How to maximize your eBay selling price
The keys to maximizing your selling prices include:
Traffic
Images
An exemplary feedback rating - "Great service, better than described"
A guarantee
No reserves
Make it easy pay you - Paypal
Start the bidding low
Court your buyers: the importance of repeat buyers
Traffic
- Traffic, or the number of visitors that your auctions receive is the single most important factor in maximizing the selling prices of your auctions. In general, the more buyers that view your auctions, the more bids you'll receive. Sellers are able to increase traffic to their auctions by using thorough and accurate descriptions and by including plenty of relevant keywords.
Images
- Images are another crucial factor in creating a professional looking listings, attracting bidders, and realizing high eBay auction prices. Since condition is an all-important factor in the value of a book (or any auction item), it's crucial to provide your eBay auction buyers with an image of your book to allow the bidders to judge the condition for themselves. This is especially true for amateur booksellers who may not be very knowledgeable about how to accurately grade and describe the condition of a book. Frankly, we wouldn't buy a book on eBay unless the auction included a photograph, but it's surprising to see how many eBay sellers do not use images. Many of these books end-up being bargains. There are a significant number of eBay sellers who surf eBay with the primary goal of snapping up poorly marketed items and then reselling them on eBay for a profit. Some retail booksellers use the bargains they find on eBay to help stock their retail stores. If you don't own a digital camera, borrow one. If you can't borrow one, take conventional photographs using film and either scan them, or take your film to a developer that will provide you with a digital version of your photos on a CD-ROM disc. We can't stress this enough - don't provide the buyers with a bargain, use images in your e-Bay auction listings.
An exemplary feedback rating
- Maintain an impeccable eBay feedback rating. Although we believe that most novice buyers are not quite so particular about feedback records, we know that most veteran eBay buyers check sellers' feedback religiously. From experience, eBay veterans know that sellers who have hundreds of positive feedback comments and a few negative are very common; sellers who have hundreds of positive comments and ZERO negative ones are not. The seller who has zero negative comments has been doing everything that he or she can to keep the customer happy. When we buy items on e-Bay, we always check the seller's feedback. So it is critical to keep your record spotless. Even one or two negative comments, especially if they are recent, can turn away a whole class of buyers that don't want to take the chance of getting burned (Remember? Maximum number of bids). An impeccable feedback record will breed confidence in your buyers, attract more bids, and will drive your final sales prices higher.
Below are some of the most common buyer complaints posted as negative feedback comments for sellers on eBay.
Common buyer complaints resulting in negative feedback:
Item not delivered
Item not as described
Poor packing - item damaged
Excessive shipping or handling costs
Slow or poor service
Poor communication
How do you establish a spotless feedback
record? Keep the buyers happy. Provide great and fast service. Use reasonable shipping charges. Pack your items well. Describe every flaw (if there are any). Offer a no questions asked, 100% money back guarantee.
Make it clear in your correspondence that you want to make the buyer happy no matter what. That they should contact you immediately if the item does not meet their expectations. Communicate and be polite in your
communication (no matter what the buyer may write or say to you), and you'll never have neutral or negative feedback.
“Honest descriptions, excellent service, good communication and a professional
approach will garner exemplary feedback”
A guarantee
- Offer a 100% satisfaction money-back guarantee. Buyers do not like to see the term "as is" used in an eBay auction listing. It’s a huge turn-off. Advertise your guarantee in big bold letters - not in fine print. Make your guarantee a selling point. We would not buy a book from a seller who uses the term "as is" in their auction. If you're worried about being overwhelmed by a flood of returned books, you shouldn't be. In 5 years of selling on eBay, we've only had 3 items returned. You'll rarely have a book sent back to you if you use photographs and ensure that you describe your books accurately. We have provided below, the verbiage that we have used in our auction listings. Feel free to copy and paste it verbatim into your own eBay listings. Although you may notice that our guarantee states that eBay listing fees, commission, and postage will be subtracted from a refund, in practice, on those few occasions where a buyer has requested a refund, we have always refunded the entire payment. The buyer should understand that that if they're not happy, they should let you know immediately - this is the way to avoid negative feedback. The promise of a guarantee will maximize your eBay auction prices, keep your customers happy, and will result in lots of "positive" feedback.
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