8 Reasons Why It Didn't Sell On eBay - By Dave Bromley

There are people out there who believe that you can sell anything on eBay. And that may well be true but not if you adopt a lazy approach to your listings. A listing is an advertisement for the product or item that you are trying to sell, an item that you are hoping to get the best price for. And if you are to succeed in this you need to spend some time working on your listings and do not become a “lazy lister”.

There are 8 easy ways to spot a “lazy lister” and the first and most obvious is the listing without a photograph. I would find it difficult to imagine any listing, which would not benefit from some sort of photograph either to act as an attention grabber or to show the item you are selling.

Almost as bad as this is the poor quality photograph possibly blurred, out of focus and showing little detail. In these days of cheap quality digital cameras there is no excuse for poor photographs.

The big percentage of buyers these days use Paypal as their chosen payment method and yet you still find sellers who will not accept Paypal. I suspect it is because they do not want to pay the charges but this is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You will lose more because your item does not reach its highest possible price than it would cost you in payment charges. Not accepting Paypal is a real false economy.

Your actual description is short and lacks detail. In the advertising world there is a saying, “The more you tell, the more you sell”. But looking at some listings you would think that eBay charged by the word. If you want the best price tell potential bidders as much as you possibly can about the item.

Also you should avoid a listing full of hype words and slogans. Tremendous, fantastic and similar words do little for a listing and often bring into question the sellers credibility.

There are 2 great mistakes when it comes to shipping. You can give no indication of your shipping charges, which is bad, or even worse you can try and make extra profit by inflating your shipping charges. In either case you are going to put off potential bidders.

Finally if you really want to ensure that your item does not sell start off with a really inflated opening bid price. This is a real winner if you want to have the item left on your hands. Remember, if you start low the market will find the correct price level so do not be afraid to start with a low opening price.

If you are guilty of any of the “lazy listers” bad habits do something now and maybe you will not get so many “Item Not Sold” e-mails from eBay.

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Dave Bromley is the webnmaster and publisher of UK Auctionline dedicated to information about all matters relating to eBay and ebay.co.uk. The monthly UK Auctionline is in its 6th year of publication and you can become a subscriber by going to http://www.ukauctionline.co.uk