Monday, September 11, 2006

5 Hot Tips for Increased eBay Sales - By Peter Andrues

Have you ever wondered how those Powersellers sell hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on eBay? Once they have the buyer in front of their auction, and they’ve read the description, what encourages them to place a bid?

Include a Picture: You MUST include a picture with your listing. Statistics show that auctions with at least one picture in the listing will sell 65% better and for 23% more money than an identical listing without a picture, and the quality of that picture is also important. Make sure that you use a high resolution scanner or a good quality digital camera for your picture. Remember, a picture with bad lighting or out of focus looks amateurish and won’t make anyone want to buy from you.

Clearly Define Your Terms: Let your buyers know up front what your expectations of them are. Have the "small print" clearly visible in the listing and give specifics on things such as: payment methods, shipping methods, estimated delivery time, refund policies and any other business practices you might have. Remember your buyer must feel confortable with you, they are about to send money to someone they don't know and are naturally suspicious. The absolute best way to put your buyers at ease is to offer a 100% no questions asked money back guarantee. Sure you may get a couple of buyers who'll take advantage of your generosity, but you will entice many more buyers to take a chance on you and in the long run will increase your sales figures dramatically.

Show off your feedback: eBay feedback is the only way your buyer can tell about you and your business practices. Hopefully, as a conscientious seller, you have an excellent feedback profile. A great way to take advantage of your positive feedback is to copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you’re most proud of directly on the item’s description page. If you have 100% positive feedback, make sure that every prospective buyer is aware of it.

Buy some upgrades: eBay offers a wide selection of listing upgrades to accentuate your auction listing. Homepage Featured, Gallery Featured, Bold, Subtitles, and Border are a few of the upgrades available. Some of these are quite expensive while others are only a few cents each, but, if you are listing in a crowded category a listing upgrade can be just what you need to make "YOUR" auction stand out.

Create an About Me page: Bidders love "About Me" pages and you can create a simple page just by putting a little bit about yourself or your business on there. You can also offer a link to your mailing list or a special offer such as "Free Shipping" to the people who seek out and find your page. Your "About Me" page is also the only place on eBay where you can have a link to a webpage other than an internal eBay page. These outside links are the place where you refer your buyers to your business website where you can sell to them directly. With hundreds of buyers a week looking at your auctions and your "About Me" page you will have a continual stream of new customers visiting your site.

This year over 500,000 people will make a full or part-time income on eBay. By utilizing some of the tips we have covered, you have the opportunity to increase both the volume and amount of your sales.

Peter Andrues is an author, publisher and internet expert who helps people become successful Online Marketers. Would you like to become a Smarter eBay Buyer? We're offering a 25 part Free training class to teach you the tips, tricks, secrets and strategies that will make you successful. Sign up today at:
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