How to Sell on Ebay

From Chris Pirillo, how toselland buy on eBay.

Tech InterviewsHow to Sell on EbayHow to Buy on Ebay How to Watch a Show How to Get Started with Linux How to Cook at Home How to Save Money on Mac Software (With Santa!) Remote Control Robot: Dalek from Doctor Who How to Buy a Laptop (Notebook, Portable Computer)

government equivalent of junk mail _ meeting announcements, tips … Marijuana Appears to Slow Cancer Growth in Laboratory Setting Researchers: 1 Out of 1,000 People May Smell Sounds Auction House … Local Briefs (Tallahassee Democrat) TallahasseeHow to Sell on EbayHow to Sell on Ebay Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed Here are some great tips for being a good Ebay seller. Building up an excellent feedback rating is critical to becoming a successful seller. Following these tips will help

How to sell and buy on eBay From Chris Pirillo, how toselland buy on eBay. December 28 at 12:01 AM in Consumer, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | |

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/12/23/how-to-sell-on-ebay/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh7bm9i6hic Exclusive Special Offer! Learn the secret power seller techniques that get bids like crazy and explode your profits, in this FREE eBay Insider Report.

We hope to have the winter schedule of classes any day now. Registration is coming up soon so check back often. For those of you who can’t wait to continue learning, here is a link to some good tips on selling on ebay:http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/12/23/how-to-sell-on-ebay/

These are good tips to know. Wish I knew of them before I made my sale middle of last year on ebay. :(

I persoanly Like Craigsist better, no shipping, you get to meet face to face, no charge for posting, cash. Anyway, great list. keep these top 5 coming Chris =)

My eyes tend to lock on listings in bold print, so I think paying the extra dollar to highlight your listing is a no-brainer. Also, .35 cents to put a picture next to your listing isn’t a bad idea, but make that pic stand out from the rest. I know it’s just a thumbnail pic, but it’s more eye candy that will entice someone to click your auction listing.

Phil

chris man, i used to watch u back on tech tv. I love ur tips and stuff, admire ur knowledge of technology in general. randomly stumbled upon ur videos on you-tube, brought back memories. good to see u again

hello, well i like how is going all the way in the live show’s, btw im from mexico and of curse i like how u explain in details on many ways how to do or how to work many devices, and life style. well btw happy xmas… and have fun =] .. take care.. bye..

Thanks for the advice, I’m a bit of a newbie to e-bay but want to get into it to sell homemade computers as well as some other things.

Great tips Chris! I have one other tip though. Keep your item clean! Nobody is going to want to buy an item that has dirt and fingerprints on it.

One thing that I find very helpful is always be courteous to the seller/buyer. I bought an item once and the seller sent the wrong item twice. Instead of getting angry at the seller, I emailed him about him in a kindly manner. Ended up the seller telling me to keep the 2nd item for free and the seller went ahead and sent the right item.

Thanks for the tips Chris, I have been needing to get some stuff sold on Ebay but I just haven’t gotten around to it. These should help me a lot.

Chris, glad I could help. I honestly started the tips for sellers as a joke to you. I saw the price and shipping on the ice cream maker, that Ponzi was selling, and shied away from it for that.

Glad to see that something I did as a joke could still even be used as a good video to help the people who are attempting to sell on eBAY and that didn’t know some tricks and tips.

I don’t sell on Ebay, but I do buy. I’ve been getting all sorts of offers to for a second chance purchase for a particular item that I’ve been bidding on. Now what I’m bidding on is no longer made, and the price that these things are being sold at is between 2 to 4 times what it sold new. MS Trackballs if you want to know. Because my handle on Ebay is my email user name on Yahoo! and Hotmail (and they even guess the correct version of it for my Gmail account!) but none of those are my Ebay address, I just assume that they are scammers, or else trying to go behind Ebay’s back on selling an item. Although I’m really only offering about $50, which isn’t even close to what they usually go for. But I bid just in case, even if xap6kob keeps overbidding me on that right now.

I want to learn to sell on ebay now that i have this info im going to try

The 5 “tips” for sellers are as true as they are obvious. What you didn’t say Chris is that eBay doesn’t give a hoot about sellers, protecting sellers, etc. It cares about one thing: Money. Meg’s and Bill’s multi-million dollar bonuses are a close second. Almost every seller-related decision in the last 18 months has reflected that–at the cost of the seller.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m just spouting polemics? Of the seller-related policy changes in the past year, how many have benefitted or protected the seller??

Raised fees, stiffed stores, and consistently shifted risk to the seller (example: demanding that Express sellers ship to unconfirmed addresses).

Case closed.

Now, I don’t sell at eBay at all. But I find these tips really good! I might actually try and selling some of my games now, since I switched to Linux.

Nice blog, Chris. :)

ebay rocks

I think that your opinion should be taken seriously! I really agree with all of them and i think that they together help to make the buyer feel more secure. If you saw two posts one had only a sentence and the other had paragraph upon paragraph of information and multiple pictures, you’re probably going to go with the one with detailed information and a clear view of the item! I have had luck by following these tips! I sold multiple items in eBay–with great success!

Thanks for this. I’ve been wanting to sell for a while now but needed some encouragement, I’ll start selling soon now. Thanks Again. :)

Hey chris… Great tips for any level of an ebay seller.. Also put a reasonable shipping insurance cost as an option…and make sure the money transaction is clear before sending the item to the ebuyer… thanx for da tips chris

This is a Great list. Its Gonna help me out a lot went i start selling stuff on eBay. Thanks Chris this is a great video.

As far as the information on the item page goes, is it best to have a simple font only description or a more eye-catching flashy, bright and colourful display? If its the latter, are there templates available for something like this?

hris,

Saw your vid on YouTube and based on your review purchased one for
parents…thought it would be great way to keep them up to date on my
travels and let the rest of the family send pics simply and easily to
them. It was delivered around Thanksgiving, set it up, tried it
out…all worked pretty well and couldn’t wait to set it up on
Christmas.

Well, it’s the day after Christmas and maybe it’s due to the success
of the product or maybe it’s just poor planning on eStarling’s part.
Yesterday was mostly a denial of service day with the SeeFrame Live
website. You could get in, but pictures e-mailed over were never
received, RSS feeds wouldn’t refresh, uploading pictures would get
them to the server, but not the frame. Basically the hosting
infrastructure collapsed. Today is marginally better. Still no e-
mail pictures getting to the server, although a couple hiding out from
yesterday in the ether some how made there way in in the early hours
of this morning.

I thought you might be interested given you did the review. I would
consider giving this one yet another “review” given the problems. I
also confirmed that there were and are issues going on over there.
There were other eStarling owners that posted on a forum where the
frame was also reviewed and the following email was sent by eStarling
Support this morning:
===========
Hello,
Can you pls re-send the photos you emailed once again?

We reset the sever recently,pls click the “refresh” button under
RSS and just waite at least one day,the photos should show in the
seeframe and your frame again.

On 25 Dec 2007 13:40:38 -0700, johnjeandron@mac.com

I want to sell a few things on ebay later. Just those snipers out there. Have some items that could go for a lot of money and they should have been sold before Christmas.

I’ve been trying to get my parents to go for ebay for weeks now. It seems like a pretty easy concept, but they are worried that they’re not going to be able to really sell anything since no one has ever purchased anything from them before on ebay. My parents also got ripped off 3,000 USD on some other site from someone in Nigeria. I do agree that when you sell a product you should apply plenty of pictures to one product, especially the front picture while you are browsing through products because even when I’m just browsing I skip the ones without pictures. Well I wish everyone good luck for the big giveaway later on!

hmmm sell in e-bay is nice.. but shipping become my main problem becoz I’m in Malaysia….

wow thanks Chris you are a superman!

I’ve been using Amazon, Craigslist, and Ebay to sell a lot of stuff I don’t need or use anymore. Ebay is a really great place to make money. Great tips Chris!

One of the main things you have to be careful with is listing your auction clearly. There are tons of cleverly written auctions that try to deceive people.( i.e. autographed photos)

hm this helped me think about selling on ebay cause i have alot of stuff i dont need/use lol
so thanx again :)

Kool. Iv never sold anything on ebay and iam still uncertain wither i should sell anything. It seems too difficult and when i tried setting up an account it was hard to find out how to sell and buy stuff. Next time just make a “how to do video” on exzatually how to sell stuff “step by step”. For now Ill just stick to buying stuff on amazon.com.

Hey Chris, I have bought and sold on ebay b4, but thanks for the tips on selling on ebay! :) Shipping is the problem for selling cheap things on ebay from canada cause usually the minium shipping costs are $10.00 for the parcel and the same thing u can ship for $1.00 in the states.

Thanks for ur vids on ustream :)

Chad

i had an issue with receving money. make sure that you can take ALL forms of payment that you claim to accept

good commonsense tip, tell people exactly what your selling be upfront on any faults and blemishes, once they get it there will be no hiding them. the more pictures the better they can see it. dont try to use shipping charges to add to the price, when the transaction is complete be sure to leave fitting revue on the buyers page, or sellor if your buying. the biggest thing is to be honest in everything from beggging ot end. honesty is the best policy.:)

Thanks chris that is some great info. I will definenty look back here when i am ready to sell some stuff on ebay. I posted this so i can win the computer.

Selling on ebay is fun and buying items.
But,somes times you get burn. also,when people typ out there description,some of them typ in all CAPS! I mean,they need to typ in lower case letters. it feels like there yelling at you.

good tips.

1.don’t typ in all caps
2.make sure your spelling is correct.

38971

Another good tip is to always offer people to ask questions through “Ask Seller A Question” but NEVER stick your email address in the listing. It makes you a prime target for a fraudulent user to contact you “off record” so to speak. This isn’t a huge deal, however, should you initiate a transaction with this user and the deal go sour, you have no way to prove what was said outside of Ebay’s contact system.

Prime example. About a year and a half ago, I was trying to sell a piece of musical equipment on Ebay. I posted my email address on the auction listing. The next day I get notification that my item has been sold. I also received an email (outside of Ebay’s email system) from the user who “bought” my item. Long story short, he turned out to be a fraudulent user. Fortunately for my sake, I am not naive about such things and knew something was fishy just by the emails I received from him. I reported the username to Ebay and they refunded me for the listing fee and final value fee.

Ebay is a great way to make a little extra cash. So long as you stay alert and use a little common sense, you should do just fine.

Happy Ebaying!

Ryan

My parents were freakin out about this topic on ebay, even buying. I don’t use it, but my parents do. they started using it a month ago, and they freaked out on what to do, obviously on BUYING and SELLING stuff online. I was irritated that they keep asking me. I said all the time, “I DON’T KNOW!” So really thanks for making those videos so that they can stop asking all the questions.

I found your tips most helpful. My wife likes to make quilts and we’ve been thinking of ways to turn her hobby into some cash. I looked at setting up a small ecommerce site of my own but it really didn’t seem like a cost effective option after doing some research on what a secured site costs. Ebay seems like it will have all we need for a small operation and is expandable if the need arises. Great tips and love the vidcast. A fan from back in the TTV days that don’t get on here like I’d like to.
-Dale C.
Springfield, MO

Very good tips!

One thing that really makes me mad is when someone is selling a product, and they put a stock photo instead of images of the product that they actually have.

They don’t want to see a new item in prefect condition, they want to see a picture of the item that they will have HAVE!

Always keep an eye out for bidders, and watch out for someone with low feedback, if its an expensive item or an item you really want to get out of your hands, you want to sell it to someone that will really pay!

Thanks for the Tips,
Hopefully more honest individuals and make ebay a better place!

I have never sold anything on ebay because we are not into it here, but this is a very good video. Some things I did and didn’t know. I’ll definitely use this if I ever plan to sell things.

Very nice list. My mom and I have been using ebay for some nine years now. These are all great points.

Good points Chris, when I list items I search ebay first and review completed auction and get an idea of a good starting price. Search is a great tool on ebay.

BadSector

Those are good tips remember to always have pictures and be very clear about the product you trying to sell

Thank you Chris I will now reply more quickly to the buyer..
This is really really helpfull.

nice vid chris, I love ebay , I just sold a psp a few days ago.

Chriss thank you man as MrBuzz said ive had similar problem but hey its the net and as macworld yeah i heard somthing about the pop station and some one bought it on accident ( i dont know how they are completely diffrent) ebay can be good to you but there is a dark side so be careful.

VV0VVDave
Peace Out!

I have another great tip for selling on Ebay. When you accept personal checks or paypal on Ebay. Do not ship your products until the personal check clears the bank or if they use e check wait until they clear before shipping the products. Another great tip is if you ship something package the product well like with packing peanuts and bubble wrap. You would be suprised how sometimes people do not package product well and get damaged. Great tip on buying something is get insurance when you buy something.

These are great tips, but I would also like to add a bonus tip.

To make you EBay items sell better, set them up to look a bit more professional. While photos and test work well, templates that format text and give nice background graphics make your look more professional. Take a look at http://www.auctiva.com . They provide great templates and image hosting for free. This beats EBay who charges extra, and you get more choices that EBay.

thanks for the awesome tips man, i was always afraid to sell on ebay. Keep it up

I have sold On Ebay & your Tips are right on . My Sister is Trying to sell on Ebay & having issues I’m going to link her to your blog post to help her

So Thanks

Sometimes its good to list an item for 3 days or less. For example, if it is a fast selling item like the iPhone or the Wii, it wouldn’t make sense to put it up for 7 days. People don’t want to wait so long to get their item and I’m sure you would like the money as soon as possible also.

Since I am a seller, I have shipped out quite a few things already. A good tip is to insure your items. I had shipped an item a couple of months ago and received a friendly call from the buyer telling me that it arrive broken. Since I did not insure the item, the fault was mine. We had agreed on a partial refund. So the tip is, INSURE!

Thanks Chris.
That really helps because I was interested in staring to sell my stuff on Ebay.

Chris, I just want to thank you for all the help and information you give out thru the year – Its great to listen to your YouTube videos-

I wish your all the luck in 2008 -

Thats some good info Chris, but is there a way to send an item as a gift instead of waiting for someone to buy it?

one more thing is have more than 5 or 10 lines of text with a white backgroud

Wow. These tips have worked for a lot of people. Even worked for me once.

Ebay is great to find whatever you might need, but I like Craigslist better because you don’t have to worry about shipping

Very helpful for those sellers that need help in making more money by making simple improvements to their auctions. I do like auctions that last longer than 24hrs. just to give me enough time to bid. Otherwise auctions could miss bidders that did not login to check for items of interest.

All of these tips are great, and all of them will maybe help you sell whatever.

One problem as I see it for new users of Ebay: how do you establish yourself as a honest user?

The world of Ebay is full of fear on both the buyers’ and sellers’ sides. The new seller is trying out Ebay for the first time and also trying to make some money. The new buyer is probably looking for good deals.

Take the role as a first time buyer. Now there might be some tension but it easily fades away when the buyer (you) finds a seller (the fraudulent user) that looks professional enough. The first time buyer will place a bid on the object. The buyer wins the bid, but they start to worry because they realize that this wasn’t the most honest user. So the money transaction takes it place, but the buyer doesn’t get the item they though they ordered on Ebay, instead they got a similar item that doesn’t work or is defective.

You have just been scammed.

I can’t offer any good tips, since I’ve never used Ebay before, except that it’s most perferable to stay away from Ebay and the similar. Even if you have had some success with Ebay it’s best not to place too must trust into the world of fear called Ebay. To answer the question at the beginning, there is no way to establish yourself as an honest user, it’s just a matter of trust, which you don’t find alot of today.

Thanks,
thequiet

I wish everyone would follow these…

hey chris love your show and avices on technology
keep it up and it is very helpful.

I agree that the key to true selling success on ebay is your reputation. From the buyers perspective, it only makes sense to purchase items from trusted ebay sellers with great ratings. Make sure that you are consistently reviewing feedback that is submitted to your account. If you find that you have received a poor comment, you need to make sure that you document your side of the story. This allows a potential buyer to see both sides of the story. Ebay buyers want to know that the seller that they are buying from has a good reputation and that they will receive what they were sold, in the condition that it was sold, quickly. Since your feedback score plays such a vital role in your selling success on ebay, make sure that you send a little reminder note/feedback request, with each of your items. Include the ebay item number within your reminder note so that the buyer will know where to leave feedback, and what to say.

That’s All I Got!

I remember when I first started ebay and introduced a bunch of fam to it.. Unfortunately I am in the habit of not selling anything unless i can get at least 10$ + shipping for it :P Else its worth keeping. Keep up the great work chris.

Nice article. Never sold on eBay before. But this is helpful. thanks.

nice tip chris i was infact wandering how to sell it was quite confusing and this video has helped me to learn more about the ebay world and its buying and selling on ebay
thank you

Chris Great advice. I am starting too sell stuff on ebay and was looking all over the internet to find some advice. And of course, every tech question brings me right back to live.pirillo.com :) Thanks for all the advice Chris. Who knows. Maybe one day I can make a living by selling on ebay.

Hello, I think these are very good tips. I did a video showing my HP Jornada that I once sold on ebay. I used youtube. I think I did better than I normally would have if I did not have the video. I also try to have as many good pictures as possible. You don’t have to use ebay’s picture upload service which cost money. I sometimes use imageshack.us and make thumbnails of the images to make it look nice on the ebay auction site.

Hey Chris, this may help me when selling my items on ebay. I was thinking about doing it and this will help out.

Ebay is very tricky. There are times that i trust it and times that i do not. most of my auctions have gone fine, but i always see spams o Ebay that make me feel like ebay is not safe at all. thanks for the tips though, i will take them in hand the next time to go on ebay. Thanks chris and great blog.

These are a great help as i have just recently started buying on ebay. I would recommend them to any new ebay seller or buyer.

These are great tips! Especially if you need to sell some things. I’m not a huge ebay seller but if I ever do I’ll be sure to use these tips.

a very informational video, and im glad u made it chris. Kudos to you!

thats is some good tips I’ve been wanting to start selling stuff on eBay. now i have the tip to start thanks alot chris

Along with the allowing questions to be asked, ensure constant communication. User ratings dictate a lot. Keep up with questions, and if one is asked frequently, add it to your item listing. Communication throughout the process, inclusding the payment process, ensures higher user ratings and people will like you more. This means higher chance of success in future sales.

MESSAGE TO EBAY SELLERS:

If you are selling a product you will be exporting to another country. Try to find out about customs and explain any extra fees in the ebay listing.

Thank u chris for the great info. I didnt know how to sell on ebay before, But this help me alot.

Thanks.

I would sell on ebay… but I have nothing valuable to sell (that I don’t want).

nice! All of thease are obvious, but most people dont take them in to consideration. Another good one is to NOT PUT YOUR TITLE IN ALL CAPS!!! Its annoying and scares people away. Nice one chris! E-Ya Later!

Awsome. I personally use ebay to buy and sell so this post really helped me out and reminded of a couple tips! Thx.

The thing that annoys me is auctions with too many rules and stipulations. I’m not gonna bother reading all that stuff for the honor to bid on an auction. Keep it simple!

HEY cp i wanna sell on ebay

Good Job i was new to ebay and this helped me alot

I love ebay.

I allways wanted to learn to sell on ebay, now that i have this info im going to try.

I love buying on ebay. But I cant sell anymore because you need a bank account registered :(. I dont want to spend the time!

Good and informative video for the novice ebayer.

If only I knew this earlier…Selling would have been a better experience..

:O thx it helped

Wow some really good stuff here, now I can finally learn to sell stuff on ebay ! Thanks!

Ebay is great for finding details, I’ve gotten probably 20 things off there in the 2 years i’ve used it.

These tips are very good! Setting your auction price low helps draw in more people in and keeps them checking your profile for more items. It works every time! Great work on these tips, im sure you helped a lot of people.

I’ve tried to sell stuff on eBay before and to me the hardest part is shipping the damn thing. Estimating the cost, then actually having to mail it. If it weren’t for my laziness and desire to stay at my computer all day, I would’ve sold a lot of crap that I’ve got sitting around. Wanna buy a guitar?

Cheers,
Rich

Great tips on e bay. It is really hard to get a market out there. I prefer Amazon but these are key tips. Great job!

Pictures are allways helpful. If i was going to buy somthing on ebay i would more likey buy somthing with lots of pictures then we only one or two.

thanks man, this was really helpful

I always put a video up and embed it in the page. I only buy from pages that look legitimate and have never had a problem. Good thoughts chris.

thanks for the info, I too must have a clearout.

Support all good men! stop teh race wars fool!

good tips

Nice tips

I found this video very useful because recently I have been cleaning out my drawers and boxes full of stuff and found a few things that I want to sell. Also the “How to buy on Ebay” help also because I also want to buy stuff that isn’t avaible in stores. Thanks for everything Chris I hope you keep making videos and I keep watching them. See you in the chatroom!

-HB_Punk14

eBay = good

thanks a lot bud that was really helpful :)

i started selling on ebay when it was free i’m a power seller i run 2,000 auctions a week now

Trust me, after all the sellers fees, paypal fees, final value fees, you made shit while eBay made a small fortune off you!

ebay everyday!

Great advice! Thanx Chris!!

I enjoyed your tips! Keep up the Good work! Danna, aka: PowerSellingMom (dot com)

NICE…THANKS

Try Bidville(dot)com for the ebay alternative.

oh yeah def read the comments first

Meh, at least I can get rid of the junk I don’t want while still having the illusion that I made some money.

Nice Movie Guys – hes a legend! atomicfeedback.com

Forget Ebay, close your accounts and open one with NO FEES at Ewaey! First 5000 that joins NO FEES FOR LIFE

i’m addicted to ebay as well.

NERRRRRRRRRRRD!!! Oh and I think you might be Jewish too. LOL

chris i have this problem man i don’t know how to register your live stream i don’t understand how you register so please can you please help me out i know i have asked you but i still didn’t understand .
Thanks
hope you help me

ebay your computer to me for 5 dolla…

One of the top visited websites in the world is craigslist. com. With so much information on this site, it can be hard to find what you are looking for. Not any more! All the information you need can be found motiont.com_ . Download CraigsList Reader. You will be able to search multiple locations and categories at once. Searches are fast and you can search thru the whole world, or narrow your search down to a state or city. You can search by using locations,category or headings. Motiont

Ebay yourself a new haircut and wardrobe

Ebay his balls in ur moth

Why are you all being so Rude and LUDE here, the man is trying to help people…..it would be different if he was standing on some corner trying to sell you drugs but it people dont’ appreciate educational nothing now days. its a shame!!!! :(

This was truly enlightening. I will take what I have learned and make you proud. I thank you sincerely.
Valerie DeLingua

I applaud you trying to get people to other auction sites CA Guy but free is not always good. They can never really keep a site open for the simple fact unless they are someone with the funds you have to atleast charge a small fee.

cMy Bid actually has become a new home for some of the other auction site listers on other auction sites that closed down.