eBay Shopping Secrets

T. Flatval asked:


If you are starting an eBay business, or looking into the possibility of selling your stuff online, you should know that there are several ways in which you can ruin your reputation on this online auction site really easily. So what are some things that you can do that will eventually (or immediately) get you kicked off eBay?

Number One:  Bidding when you don’t intend to buy.  If you are a seller, and you create a false identity to bid on your products, thinking that you just need to get the ball rolling and make it look like a lot of people are interested in your auction; it’s going to be found out, and you will get kicked off of eBay really quickly.  Bidding on your own products (or having a friend bid on your products) is really unethical, and eBay takes a serious stance against it.  Bottom line — don’t do it.

Number Two:   Jacking up your feedback.  If you are a new seller, you might want to get a lot of feedback.  There have been some scams on eBay, where people have sold items for one cent, in order to get good feedback.  Any savvy buyer is going to look at your feedback and then look at the cost of the items that you bought or sold to get that feedback.  If they find a whole bunch of cheap products that you bought or sold to get good feedback, they are probably going to take a pass on your items.

Number Three:  Stealing someone’s photographs.  A lot of the power sellers had professional photographs taken of their products to sell them better.  If you take their photographs, which are copyrighted, and use them for your products, it’s like stealing. Just don’t do it; take your own photos and do the work yourself.

Number Four:  Ditto on the product descriptions.  The same advice can be given for product descriptions.  If you didn’t write it yourself, don’t use it.  Sure, you can look at other sellers’ information for a good guideline and for reference, but you definitely need to change it so it is your own.

Having an honest and ethical shop on eBay can be difficult.  There are many temptations to do things the easy way and to get good feedback quickly.  However, if you really want to be successful, you need to remember that eBay buyers buy on trust and they need to trust their sellers completely before they make a bid.

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PrimoRudy10 asked:


You can’t just throw up an eBay listing and expect it to be successful when selling things on ebay - or in other words - successful as it SHOULD be. There is competition for every single item that you may think you can put up for eBay selling. Think you’ve got the secret product that no one has thought of yet - think again. You could probably find my 3rd grade pair of underwear that someone dug out of my trash on there… It’s that competitive.

So if your just going to throw something up and not put the time and research it takes to making your eBay listing as successful as possible then you might as well go flush a $20 bill down your toilet. There are simple steps that you should follow every single time you start up an eBay listing. It should be a routine thing you do, other wise your wasting your eBay products! These steps are as followed:

The first thing you should do before you even think about listing your eBay product is RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH. Google your eBay product. Look to see what your local store, or other websites are selling your eBay product for. You NEED to know what you SHOULD be making for your product. After your general research is over the next thing you need to do, is to do your research on eBay. Find out what price other eBay sellers are selling your eBay product for. Make sure you look at the eBay sellers that seem to be doing the best. What sets them apart from other eBay sellers? You are going to be doing a lot of copying when your on eBay. Sam Walton (the founder of Wal-Mart) once said, “Most everything I have done has been copied off of someone else.”

Find out how much it is going to cost to ship your eBay product out.

Take great, not good, pictures of your item. Sometimes taking pictures with you yourself in the picture can help. Why? - Because people like to know that they’re buying from actual people on eBay.

Use good colors. Orange, green, blue, and red seem to work really well (there is a reason that the eBay logo has all of those colors in it).

You want your listings to last as long as possible, which would mean selecting the ten day listing, even though it costs ten cents. Three day listings and seven day listings are good for some things but the longer the amount of time you have your eBay auctions listed for, the more the people will see it - and even if they don’t bid right away (remember that most bidding occurs within the last couple hours, or sometimes minutes, of your eBay auction) they might mark your eBay product for watching and bid on it later.

Timing is very important. When are the most amount of people online? I’d say from experience, that the best time to have your auction end is on a Sunday evening, preferably between 5-10 p.m. So if you live on the East Coast and your listing something on eBay, then you should list it at 5 right? - Wrong, keep in mind that the west coast is 3 or more hours behind!! Listing at 9 o’clock p.m. would probably be better. If your buyers are from other countries, keep in mind the time zones that they in as well.

Keep in mind these few easy tips and your eBay auctions will be successful. For any other information that you may need please visit us at our website eBayMysteries.com