Ebay buyer's love lots of pictures! So use as many as you can!

Yes, it is hard to imagine, but some people do try to sell stuff on ebay without using pictures. If you don't yet have a digital camera, go to Ebay now and make that purchase the first thing your do. It shouldn't cost you more than $50(unless you want it to) and it will end up saving you a lot of money and make your life a whole lot easier.

The only thing worse than having no pictures is having only one picture. Ebay allows you to put up one picture for free, but you do not want to just settle for one!

I don't care how popular the item is you should put a bunch of clear pictures up. This doesn't mean they have to be professional quality, just clear enough that anyone can see what is actually in the picture.

Having lots of pictures is a key to getting lots of bids.

Since Ebay will only allow you to list one picture for free you should sign up with Auctiva.com or another service that will allow you to host your pictures for free.

You can take a bunch of detailed and descriptive pictures and put them all on Auctiva's site for free and viola! They show up in your ebay listing and you didn't pay an extra penny for it.

Item descriptions on ebay matter!

The item description is not quite as important as the Title, but still very important. Without a good title your buyers will never find your item. But once they find it a good description can mean the difference between a no-sale and a sale and an easy sale and a difficult one.

Make sure you list all the good features of the product and the imperfections (if it is used).

Don't try to trick people into buying your broken computer monitor. If there is a crack in it, let them know upfront - it is a lot better to get less money from the sale than to sell it only to have it returned.

Find all the detail you can about the product and list it in the description. This part should be pretty easy. Go to the product's website and there will likely be lots of good information there and you can check out Amazon.com as well. They often have a lot of product details.

Ending your auction at the right time is important

The best time to end an ebay auction is from 6-10pm EST. By default ebay auctions run for 7 days, so in order to have it end then you need to list it at that time - or you can pay a small fee to schedule it for the time you would like.

Ebay also offers 10 day auctions which will allow you to get more exposure for your item, they cost a little bit more, but if it is not a super popular item it will probably be worth it.

If you are willing to pay the extra for the 10-day auction make sure you start it on thursday evening, this will allow the item to be visible to buyers for 2 weekends.

The primary reason you want to do this, is because your fees will be smaller and you will make more money! Ebay charges the seller a fee based on the amount of the starting bid. If your starting bid is $10, you are going to pay a smaller fee than if it is at $500. And there are lots of variations in between.

Another benefit of starting lower is that it will encourage more users to bid. Many ebayers are bargain shoppers, so they are looking for a good deal as they are scanning the items. If your price is too high, they will just move on. If it is low enough to get them to bid, you just got a possible buyer who you would have missed otherwise.

And once you have them bidding, you are in good shape. I don't know what it is about the bidding process, but bidding wars very often will cause people to spend more than they originally intended. I am not sure if it is the adreneline or the thrill of the hunt, but it seems to be true.

Opening an Ebay account is really an easy process. Since you will likely be buying or selling, they do need more than just an email address, but not a ton of information.

Step 1 - Open Ebay in a new window

Let's go ahead and do this together. You can right click here and select "open in a new window". This guide will be more helpful if you are following along each step of the way.

The window with ebay in it should look like this…

You will click on the big red button that says "Register." Once you click that it will take you to this screen…

Step 2 - Fill in the Ebay registration information

Fill in the above information and they will ask you a few more questions and once you have finished, ebay will send a confirmation email to the email address that you provided. The email should hit your inbox immediately, so go find the email from ebay and click the link in the email to activate your membership.

Most ebay users use the search box. Therefore you might as well spend some time figuring out what they are going to be searching for.

With ebay it is crucial that you use a very descriptive title for your item. Since so many users use the search box to search for what they are looking for, it is extremely important that you have all the detail possible that you can squeeze into that box.

So for example if you are selling a guitar amp - you wouldn't want to have a title of "nice big guitar amp." Rather you would want something like "Used Marshall solid state VS100 1 12" guitar amp"

Think of all the details about the product and use as many of those as possible in your title. Try to think about if you were going to search for this product, what would you type? What would your mother or daughter type?

Ever wonder how to sell your stuff online?

The purpose of this article is to serve as a beginner's guide meant to show beginners what they need to know to put their stuff on ebay.

I have been selling stuff on online for about 5 years. Most of what I have sold online has been on Ebay - which I believe is one of the easiest, most profitable, and fun ways to sell stuff online out there. So, for this tutorial I will focus on selling stuff on ebay.

I do have an ebay business that really is only in existence when I need some extra cash. Mostly I just put stuff from around my house on ebay when I am trying to eliminate some clutter. These are some of the things I have learned in the process.

Putting stuff on ebay is much more profitable that garage sales.

Think about it how much smaller of an audience you have for your garage sale - maybe 100 visitors and they are looking to get your item at a ridiculous price. Ebay is much more profitable because you are selling to the entire world. So, rather than having maybe 1 in your 100 visitors at your garage sale interested in your item, you have your item on display for anyone in the world to buy.

Surely you remember the Economics classes you took- the more people who want your item, the higher the selling price will be. And that is why you should put your stuff on ebay rather than having a garage sale.

So, let's get started.

Creating an ebay account

If you haven't created an ebay account yet, go ahead and right click here and select "open in a new window". This guide will be more helpful if you are following along each step of the way.

The window with ebay in it should look like this…

You will click on the big red button that says "Register." Once you click that it will take you to this screen…

Fill in the above information and they will ask you a few more questions and once you have finished, ebay will send a confirmation email to the email address that you provided. The email should hit your inbox immediately, so go find the email from ebay and click the link in the email to activate your membership.

Create a Payment Account

If you are going to be selling much on ebay at all, you probably will want to get a paypal account. Paypal is basically just an electronic way for ebay buyers and sellers to exchange money. It is very easy to use and probably the most secure option for receiving payment from your buyers.

You can accept checks, money orders, and probably nickels if you really wanted to, but technology has really simplified the process of exchanging money.

One last thing about paypal before we move on. Using paypal provides buyers and sellers protection if there are any disputes.

Paypal does charge a small fee for their services (a % of the sale price), but for most casual sellers the convenience of paypal is worth the small change paid to paypal.

You can open a PayPal account here. Since you are going to be selling you will need to select "Premier."

Before you put your items on Ebay

Before you start selling your stuff on ebay there are a few things to consider.

Ebay is a good-faith community

Ebay was founded on the idea that buyers and sellers will be honest and will do what they promise. From my experience I  have found that almost all ebayers are reliable. Of all the things I have sold over the years, I have only had one buyer not pay me for the item he bought. I let ebay know and they refunded my listing fees, so it really wasn't a big deal at all.

That said, your reputation is created by the ebay feedback system. It has become better and better over the years and it now allows you to leave detailed feedback for transactions. This feedback follows the ebayer to provide other ebayers with a good idea of how reliable he/she is. This is why it is important to pay when you buy and deliver when you sell.

Get some feedback first

Since your ebay reputation is so critical, you should consider buying a few small items to get some feedback. If you do not, you still may be able to sell your items, but buyers are going to be wary of you since you have no feedback. Your selling prices will likely be lower since buyers are taking on additional risk by purchasing from a brand new user with no feedback.

Research your item

I don't know about you, but I like to know how much I can get for the items I am selling. Lucky for us, ebay makes it very easy to see what similar (or the same) items have sold for.

This is particularly useful to determine which items may or may not be worth the time. I mean is it really worth listing, packing an item, driving to the post office, etc only to make $1.00. Not to me, but that is why you should check.

If you look to the right of the ebay search box you will see "advanced search." Click this link.

Then you can enter the item you are looking for and make sure you click the box that says "Show completed listings only."

You can now scroll through and see what price your item has been selling for. Don't just look at the highest price, nor the lowest. It will probably be somewhere in between the two. To make this simpler you can sort the items by price.

There are some things that can not be sold on ebay

Actually there are lots of things. I think ebay has to constantly keep updating their lists because people are so creative. I am sure you have heard of people selling potato chips that look like Jesus or a grilled cheese sandwich with the Starbucks logo on it. If you haven't - believe me it's true people sell stuff like that.

Some of the more interesting things I have heard that are NOT legal: a husband trying to sell his wife, someone trying to sell a baby, and a someone trying to sell his vote in the presidential election.

Just in case you are unsure whether or not your item is legal to sell on ebay you can check out their list of prohibited and restricted items.

So, how do you sell stuff on ebay?

Taking Photos of your ebay items

This is one of the mistakes that I see a lot of new ebayers make: not taking a photo at all or only taking one. From my experience the quantity and quality of my photos has a lot to do with the final selling price. I have tried both. I used to only include one photo just to save time listing. Since I started adding more photos I make a lot more from each sale than I did before.

Here are a couple pointers:

• Use good lighting
• Take close ups of the items
• Take pictures from different angles
• Use the pictures to show the flaws - not to hide them
• Only include the item you are selling in the picture
• Use a blank background for the picture to make your item stand out

Ebay allows you to post 1 picture for free, but charges a few pennies for each additional picture. You can avoid this fee by using a free hosting service like Photobucket or TinyPic. When listing your item you will have to click on the "self-hosting" tab to tell ebay where your pictures are located.

Having lots of pictures is a key to getting lots of bids.

Use descriptive titles for your ebay listings

When you put items on ebay it is critical that you use a very descriptive title for your item. Since there are so many ebayers who use the search box to search for what they are looking for, it is extremely important that you put as much detail about the item into that little box.

So, for example if you are selling a guitar - you wouldn't want to have a title of "nice guitar." It would be much better to use something like "Used Black American Standard Fender Telecaster guitar." Think of all the details about the product and use as many of those as possible in your title. Imagine if you were wanting to buy this item yourself. What would you type? What would your mother or daughter type?

Use a low starting bid

You will have lower ebay fees

Ebay charges the seller a fee based on the amount of the starting bid. If the starting bid is $5, you are going to pay a smaller fee than if it is $400. There are lots of variations in between, so this is a good reason to use lower starting bid.

Another benefit of starting lower is that it will encourage more ebayers to bid. A lot of  ebayers are bargain shoppers, so they are looking for the best deal possible as they are skimming the items. If the starting price is too high, they will just keep looking.

If the starting price is low enough to entice a bid, then you are potentially reaching buyers that you would have otherwise missed.

Time the ending of your ebay auction

Ending your auction at the right time is important

Generally, the best time to end an ebay auction is from 6-11pm EST. A normal ebay auction runs for 7 days. So, if you start it on a Tuesday at 5:00am, it will end the next Tuesday at 5:00am. You can schedule it to go live in advance for a small fee.

10-day Auctions

Ebay offers 10 day auctions which provide you with more face-time for your items.

If you are willing to pay the extra pennies for the 10-day auction you can start it on Thursday evening. This will allow the item to be visible to buyers for 2 weekends. I have also read articles that suggest that selling prices are a lot higher for 10-day auctions.

Create a detailed description of the items you are selling

The item description is very important. Once they find your item a good description can mean the difference between a no-sale and a sale and an easy sale and a difficult one.

Make sure you list all the flaws (if it is used) as well as the features of your item.

Don't try to trick people into buying your junk. If it is torn or has a stain, let them know about it. It is going to be much more beneficial for you to get less money from the sale than to sell it only to have it returned because you weren't truthful with the description.

Find every detail you can about the product

Go to the product's website and copy as many details, specs, technical info about it and add it to your description. Amazon.com is also often a good resource for product details.

Answer the buyer's questions

I used to get frustrated every time I got questions from my buyers about the products. Then it dawned on me that each one of these questions represented a person who must be seriously interested in my item. If not, they wouldn't waste the time emailing me!

I now look at the questions as part of my job as the seller. Depending on what you are selling you may or may not get a lot of questions. But regardless you should answer them quickly and with as much detail as possible. There is a good chance you will find a buyer behind one of the questions.

Also, always use the ebay internal email system for responding with buyers. This will provide some good documentation for you if there is ever a dispute.

Ebay: After the sale

Shipping your item

Great! You sold your first item - but now what? Well, don't just sit back and relax. Try to ship the item as soon you receive payment. Part of the feedback you will receive from the buyer is based on how quickly you ship the item!

• Use a sturdy cardboard box to keep the item safe
• Pack it up carefully using newspaper, bubble wrap, Styrofoam peanuts, or something else to keep it safe during transit.

Leave Feedback for the buyer

Once the seller leaves feedback for you, go ahead and leave feedback for them. If they don't leave feedback for you within a week or two, you can leave it for them.

Ebay selling FAQS:

Is there someone I can pay to sell my stuff on ebay?

There are trading assistants who can greatly simplify the process of putting stuff on ebay. You can also use a service like i Sold It who does all the work for you for a little bit less than half of your commission.

What is the most time effective way of putting my stuff on ebay?

This is an article that shows you how to sell your stuff on ebay quicker to increase your ROI.

How can I increase my profits on my Ebay sales?

Here are 7 ways to increase your profits on your ebay sales.

I have a bunch of items to sell on ebay. Is there any way to save time?

Yep, Ebay's Turbo Lister program will help speed up the process. Auctiva.com is another service that is similar and they also allow you host images for free on their site.

Yep, it is hard to imagine, but some people do try to sell items on ebay without a picture. If you do not have a digital camera, go ahead over to ebay and make that purchase the first thing your do. You will be able to find something suitable for under $50. It won't be great, but it will do. If you want it to be great, spend $100.

2. Only including one picture

The only thing worse than having no pictures is having only 1. Yes, ebay charges for additional pictures, but that is why you use Auctiva or some other tool to store the pics for you. You can take a bunch of detailed and descriptive pictures and host them all on Auctiva's site and viola! They show up in your ebay listing and you didn't pay an extra penny for it. The reason behind this, is that since buyer's can't hold and examine your item before purchasing it, you need to help them become as comfortable as possible with your item. Having a bunch of detailed pictures of the item is the best way to do this.

3. Not buying a few items to get a feedback rating

When you first thought about selling on ebay, you might have thought, "what if the buyers don't pay me?" This is why ebay's feedback system is so valuable, it allows sellers and buyers to "prove their worth" by getting rated on each transaction they complete. So let me ask you this - would you feel more comfortable selling to someone who you knew nothing about or someone who you knew had 15 examples of positive feedback? Easy answer, right? So, if you have no (or very little) feedback, you should probably make some small purchases to get some positive feedback before trying to sell some items.

4. Hiding the flaws

Selling something on eBay without fully disclosing it's flaws is just asking for trouble. Yes, you may get by with it, but chances are good you will get a buyer who will do his/her best to make your life miserable until you fix the problem. It will likely end up costing you a lot more in shipping fees, energy, and time than you would think. Provide a clear description with the details of the item - good and bad.

5. Picking a poor title

When selling on eBay a detailed title is one of the most important keys to selling the item and to getting a higher price for it. Most buyers use the eBay search box to find the item they are looking for. So, make sure you include a very descriptive title of the item you are selling. Don't just use "mens dress shirt," use "New Brooks Brothers blue men's large dress shirt french cuffs." By including all this detail you are going to catch a lot more searchers and ultimately get a lot more bids on the item.

Click here to open a Free account at Ebay!

Bad pictures could possibly be worse than not having any pictures - hmm… no not that bad, but close. With no picture, potential buyers just skip right over your listing, with a bad picture they look at the listing, get frustrated and move on.

2. Take multiple pictures

and use something like auctiva to put them on -you wont have to pay ebay to list the extra pics and it will give buyers a lot more info about the product.

I don't care if it is still in box or not - even when I buy from amazon.com I notice that I am more likely to buy products that I can see multiple pics of. The downside of online shopping is that we can't pick up the item and hold it. Help your buyers out by taking a lot of pictures

3. List every detail you can possibly find about your item.

If you don't you can bet some buyer will ask you those questions that you leave off. This is especially true if you are going to be selling the same item multiple times. If so create a template so you only have to do it once.

4. Watch mis-spellings

You don't want to accidentally mis-spell the brand of your item, this very well could lead to the item not selling because no one could find it. However, you could use mis-spellings to your advantage. Lots of people spell things wrong. This is good for you if you include that mis-spelling in your title. You may be able to eliminate a lot of your competition by using this method.

5. Make jokes when communicating with your buyers.

Laughter creates uniquely strong bonds between people. Have you noticed how making a joke at an appropriate time can change the atmosphere of a situation? Being able to add a social element in a very sterile email will be very helpful, it will help you to convert prospective buyers and make them more likely to pay quicker and leave positive feedback.

6. Use first class USPS for shipping

This will save you money in shipping costs and believe it or not, USPS First Class often gets delivered quicker than USPS priority mail. I know this is not what they say, so see for yourself.

7. Have your auctions end on the weekends

An ending time of 8-9pm EST on Sundays seems to work well. If you have the time, you will probably get a higher price for your item by doing a 10-day auction starting on Thursday night. This allows for two weekends of exposure to buyers.

Shipping is a balancing act because on one hand you don't want to spend too much time and money on it, because it eats into your profits, but if you look for the cheapest solutions you will likely end up paying more with some great hassles in the end.

You have to remember that USPS, Fedex, UPS or anyone else for that matter isn't exactly going to handle your package like a loaf of bread. It is going to be tossed around, stacked upon, hot/cold, and under various other tests. Your job as the shipper is to do everything in your power to make sure that your item arrives in the same condition that you sent it. Of course, when the disgrunted UPS worker uses your package as kindling for burning down the building you are just out of luck, but you really can do a lot to protect it.

I remember an experiment from my 4th grade science class: the challenge was to drop an egg out the second story window and keep it from breaking. We could package it however we liked. This was a great lesson and honestly has helped me with packaging my items.

Packing Material

Bunched up newspaper, styrofoam peanuts, and bubble wrap all work well. If you get the daily paper, definitely keep them and use it for packing your item. You can also join your local Freecycle.org list and let them know you are interested in newspaper or packing peanuts. You would be surprised what people have to giveaway. The free page of Craigslist is another good place to look.

Shipping Boxes

There are a lot of places you can find these. From work, from things you buy, and about 100 other places. But, if you are going to be selling a lot of items, you will probably have to bite the bullet and just buy some boxes. There are a bunch of places you can purchase boxes, but my favorite has been uline.com. There prices are pretty good, they have just about any size imaginable, and they ship it very quick.

If buying the boxes in bulk, go for a size that is a couple inches wider, taller and longer than your product. You don't want it too much bigger, because then you will have to use too much packing material, but you also don't want it to be a perfect fit since it will have little protection.