Making eBay REALLY Profitable

Can any of you more experienced sellers tell me why my picture is not showing on my listing (the plastic horse shoes)?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=....c0.m270.l1313

Thanks

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I saw something nasty in the woodshed

I've had that happen a couple of times. Even eBay customer service didn't know why. About the only thing you can try is to revise the listing, delete all photos and then repost with same photos.

Thanks Ken, grrrrrr

I'll probably just leave it for now and hope it shows up if I have to relist next week.

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I saw something nasty in the woodshed

DH has been selling on eBay for years. He did what Ken S did and he tried just waiting a while (sometimes 24 hours) and both worked.

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The three divine teachers of man: worldly calamity, bodily ailment, and unmerited enmity, and there is but through God alone a deliverance from them. Maine Farmer's Almanac

Just checked again and the pic is up now.

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I saw something nasty in the woodshed

I can't even BUY on eBay anymore unless I want to give them access to my PayPal account. Used to sell quite a bit, but now what with the requirement for PayPal and the charges to list, the charges to accept payment, the added shipping charges, etc., I've found other avenues to sell things.

Good thread!
I used to sell quite a bit on ebay, but only a few odds and ends over the last couple of years.
Just recently been noticing some stuff sitting around my place that I want to put out there, and I sure can use the money this time of year!

One thing not yet mentioned here... do you find a certain ending day/time to be more successful? For example, I used to put all my listings up to end on a Sunday eve, usually around 9 or 10 pm.
I figured that's when people are sitting around browsing... you know, Sunday eve, no parties to go to, work tomorrow, etc.... and the time window allowed for all US time zones to be reasonable.

Any further ideas on this? Have YOU found that you have a "higher success rate" day/time window?

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[QUOTE=EasyDay;5522982]Good thread!
I used to sell quite a bit on ebay, but only a few odds and ends over the last couple of years.
Just recently been noticing some stuff sitting around my place that I want to put out there, and I sure can use the money this time of year!

One thing not yet mentioned here... do you find a certain ending day/time to be more successful? For example, I used to put all my listings up to end on a Sunday eve, usually around 9 or 10 pm.
I figured that's when people are sitting around browsing... you know, Sunday eve, no parties to go to, work tomorrow, etc.... and the time window allowed for all US time zones to be reasonable.

Any further ideas on this? Have YOU found that you have a "higher success rate" day/time window?[/QUOTE]


Back in the day, yes. Not so much now. I've been selling on ebay since '99 and calculating when auctions would end was the way to maximize sells. Now with SO many users it doesn't really matter when the auction ends, IMO.

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" It's better to ride even if you get thrown, than to wind up just wishin' ya had."

Chris Ledoux

I've been selling lots of custom made square dance clothes. Sunday evening around 9'clock has been a good ending time for them.

I think the ending time still depends on what you are selling and what your target buyer's lifestyle is. Keep in mind that while it may be 8 or 9pm on the east coast, that it is only dinner time (at best) on the west coast. I used to end my auctions at midnight in an attempt to try to capture the west coast dollars.

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~TheMartianChick~

My latest novels:
Bystander: A Tale of the End of the World as SHE Knew It!

Christmas in Bystander & Other Village Tales

Coming Soon: A Slice of Heaven

I use to only list after 7 pm to target the majority who don't get off work until 5. But there is the time difference coast to coast.
Now, if I only listed after 7 I would not get enough done. So I list at any time now. I figure if the auction's going to end while their at work they'll bid before they leave. I list anytime, and usually have items to list every couple days at least.

Big deal of this week was I found a collection of model trains on Craisglist, and my brother went to the guys house and bingo! Got a $500 NIB rare challenger, huge turntable, entire Digitrax DCC power control system + 2 throttles. He's keeping the challenger, and by the time he sell the other things on eBay, he'll have made enough profit to make the challenger free + $100!

"I can't even BUY on eBay anymore unless I want to give them access to my PayPal account. Used to sell quite a bit, but now what with the requirement for PayPal and the charges to list, the charges to accept payment, the added shipping charges, etc., I've found other avenues to sell things."

eBay requires PayPal registration but you can still use other payment methods. Four other than PayPal listed on their sales form. Other payment methods are between buyer and seller.

I can't fault eBay for requiring PayPal registration. I've heard a large percentage of their buyer/seller problems were first time or few purchases members. eBay (backed up by PayPal) is essentially a way to try to keep out fraudulent buyers, such as bad checks or money orders (particularly Western Union).

eBay accepts an e-check and it doesn't clear payment to you for 3-4 days to allow time for it to clear. If you accept a bad check directly, it is between you and buyer.

Same basically for a credit card, although they don't have a hold on them.

PayPal has made it sooooooooooooooo much easier on payment acceptance and ease of shipping.

I buy in bulk from one supplier. When I am running low I send them an e-mail asking for a PayPal invoice. When it arrives I pay it through PayPal. If we are both on line, has taken as little as five minutes to complete the order/payment process.

Remember PayPal doesn't cost the buyer anything. Seller pays their fees.

I do think auctions do better in the evenings. I know when I am watching items-- like a circuit cartridge. I will watch 10 of the same one & the evening auctions will sell for $1-$5 more.

One BIG note---- pay attention to holidays. I plan on listing alot of stuff in the up coming days. It is the biggest shopping weekend of the year next weekend plus cyber Monday.

Make sure your auctions don't end @ times when you know everyone won't be around. Like new years eve & 4th of July.

Also keep seasons in mind-- I wanted to list my kids band instruments, but waited until I knew band season was starting. Not many people buy instruments in the middle of the school year.

Another really hot item I have noticed I the past is book series & specific bred items. Like Scottish terriers English bulldogs etc. avoid the common ones like labs & yorkies --- market is already flooded. Anytime I find cheap bred specific item I pick it up. At yard sales I will get books cheap & make a lot of the same kind of book-- box car kids, magic tree house, and such. Just start of box of each kind in the shed. When I have 10 or so list them. Usually will bring $1-$2 a book. Not bad when I pay 10c @ yard sales ----- again these are not things I invest much money into-- but even if it is a few hundred a month gives extra spending $$$$ for me to play with.

I never list on amazon but some people do really well with that. I prefer eBay for the quick turn around time.

My sales are increasing all the time, my positive feedbacks are over 400, 100% positive. However, the more people I sell to, the more I'm running into those occasional 'pain-in-the-butt' buyers who don't just want their money back, but are overly rude, swearing, blaming, insulting and being generally unprofessional. I have handled this in the past by staying neutral and doing my best to work with them (partial refund, doing a return, etc.) I've had 3 of these people this week alone.
Right now I check 'no returns' when I list something, because I don't like doing them, they drag everything out and it can usually be settled with a small refund. But eBay lets the buyer get away will just plain lying, and with 'buyer protection' I end up sometimes being forced to do a refund anyway. I'm starting to wonder if I should say I accept returns, but make a return policy. One that states that I will refund entire purchase + shipping cost in the case of a return - BUT the buyer has to pay the return shipping.
One of these people wanted money for the return shipping AND money for their time and inconvience of taking it to the post office!!
What do you eBay people think? What do you do? Some people can't be reasoned with!



That is a good point, I make sure I don't list when the World Series or Super Bowl are going, everyones just watching TV.

100% agree on the occasional buyer.

I have so many more non paying bidders now than I ever have. I send 1 email and ask them to please contact me and let me know when payment will be made. In that email I tell them the payment was due when the auction ended. If I don't hear from them I file a non paying bidder case. About 1/2 of the time they go ahead and pay me after ebay contacts them. I have no idea why they won't respond to my nice request for payment and will to ebay's email, but people are just people. Also, quite awhile back I had a buyer that contacted me and told me he had purchased 3 items from me and 1 had a stain. I am meticulous when it comes to items I list so I was skeptical. I asked for him to return the item and I would be happy to refund his money. He told me it was too much trouble to return it and he asked for me to refund all but the postage. We finally settled on him keeping the item, I refunded 1/2 of the purchase price and he was okay. Well, then he bid on 5 more of my items and when he received them he claimed 2 of them had something wrong with them. I refused to refund unless he returned the items. He threatened to sue me for fraud because I had listed items as good condition. In the meantime he was bidding on more of my items. I finally blocked him and he did not try to sue me for fraud or even contact ebay, so he was just trying to get something for nothing. Again, people are just people. Some are easy to do business with and some are not.

I have stopped ebay auctions altogether. Now I only do Buy-It-Now listings, which I list for 30 days at a time (costs me $0.50 per listing).

I also hit the button that requires instant payment for BIN listings, so I don't have any more issues with non-paying bidders - if they don't pay immediately, the listing isn't sold to them .

I have occasional instances where people want their money back, even thou I state no refunds. There ARE scammers out there who want the merchandise for free and know how to work the ebay system to make that happen. Luckily I haven't had that crop up for a while now (knock on wood) but with the holidays approaching I'm afraid I may be seeing more of it. FYI - for some reason I get more scammers in the months of Dec and Jan than any other time of the year .

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I haven't sold for a while but I'm getting ready to again because we're moving out of state. I sorted through stuff then went to eBay and looked at the item by sorting "auctions" to weed out BIN to see if people actually bid on the items. If they do and it's more than $10, then it's in my sell pile, the others go to Salvation Army (my time is limited so I have to sell things that are going to be worth my time.)

In the past my best selling items have been genealogy-related, especially out of print family histories. Old ag-related books also do well for me. It's really important to have in-depth descriptions and stress that it's OOP (I do my research on Amazon). General reference material for genealogy isn't selling because so much of that is now available online. The other things that do really well is unused hunting stuff of my husband's and (a shock to me) old high school yearbooks which I find at auctions, library book sales and yard sales.

How does the buyer and seller work out "Other" payment methods? Do you get their E-mail address after the sale so you can reply to each other with out going through E-bay? Thanks

You click on the item you want to buy, scroll down to the bottom lefthand corner and click on 'ask a question' and ask if the seller will accept a bank check/money order etc. If they say yes, then bid on the item.
At least, that's how I understand it -