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"eBay Profit Buster Tips" 

© Avril Harper, Chartered MCIPD, Dip PM

Very often just a tiny change to how you run your business can help grow your profits on eBay.  That being the case, here are more tips to help you make more money on eBay:

1. Look for Ideas in the Strangest of Places. We needed pictures of our new dog design cufflinks and wanted something special, with a luxury feel. We scan most of our products by placing them directly onto the scanner bed but find the scanner lid makes an unattractive background for most items. We needed something different, colourful, a background to emphasise the quality of these lovely gold plated items. We tried velvet pads from jewellery boxes, plain paper, hankies, nothing worked. Then we tried M & S silk lilac undies, they worked a treat. The lilac looked wonderful against the gold and the silk wrapped delicately around the cufflinks without creasing. Better still, using that background for all of our jewellery lets regular customers spot ours among thousands of competing listings.

2. Scanner or camera – Which is best? Following on from the last tip, we find the scanner produces far better pictures than a digital camera, albeit some items are too big or heavy and might damage our delicate equipment. Use it for smaller, lighter items and place them gently onto the bed to avoid scratching the surface. DO NOT SCAN POINTED ITEMS OR OTHERS WITH SHARP EDGES – that is a definite shortcut to disaster.

3. Don’t write or price directly and indelibly onto delicate items. For example, write in ink on a stamp or book, append a price label onto a second hand toy, tie a tag onto a delicate necklace, and value drops drastically.

4. Do keep items as close to original state as possible. For example, leave toys in boxes, book with dustcovers, sets of postcards in original envelopes, records in original sleeves.

5. Do repair what you can without spoiling the item or reducing its value. Toys, jewellery and most household goods can be cleaned, clothing can be repaired or refashioned, marks can be removed from some pictures and prints. For rare items like paintings, postcards, stamps, consult an expert or leave those items alone.

6. Do consider if something can be done to an item to increase its perceived value and price and interest a wider audience. Prints from early magazines can be removed, cleaned, coloured and framed, for example, and modern dolls and toys can be touched up and combined into multi-item offerings. Stamps are another good example of items often worth little on their own, but sorted into themes, say space travel, Disney, Elvis Presley, bagged and priced low, can attract multiple bids.

7. Do stay within the law or risk fines, imprisonment or a possible end to your business for passing off modern goods as antique, intentionally misdescribing goods, or trading in stolen items. ‘Ignorance of the law’ is no excuse. In most cases stolen items can be reclaimed by their real owners, while consumer protection authorities have wide-ranging powers to confiscate or withdraw ‘iffy’ items from sale. That’s if eBay doesn’t cut you off sooner!

8. Offer a free gift with your products. This helps cut competition where your listed product is available from numerous sources. The gift does not have to be expensive, but it should be unique. Useful examples include: a book you've written or compiled yourself; a gift certificate for a discount on other of your products; a key ring or other small novelty created especially for your business.

9. Sell 'must have' items eBay sellers needed to run their business and attract regular, repeat business. Choose products in constant need of replenishment such as packaging, craftwork materials, jewellery findings. You'll also find people contacting you to buy outside of eBay which helps keep your listing fees low.

10. From second-hand buying sources like boot sales and flea markets look for multiple same-product items in need of repair or renovation. Few people want to repair items themselves so prices will invariably be low for damaged goods. Take the best parts from each item and create one or several perfect or near-perfect items to resell. We did this recently with a pair of Black Americana Money Boxes with movable parts. One box was dirty and paint badly damaged, with mechanical parts unaffected. The other was clean and unscratched but the moving bits were missing. With good bits from each matched and remodelled the money box made £40 pure profit.

11. Make a big thing of proving the authenticity ('provenance') of your products, by including historical details in your listing or as a separate document to go with the product. Or do both and you'll find words used inside your listing will attract greater search engine traffic, while the separate document buyers receive will increase perceived value of your product.

12. Be warned against fantastic eBay testimonials placed for various sellers and products. These testimonials might be fake and placed by sellers or their agents purely to induce confidence in their products which may not actually deserve the glowing accolade.

13. If a description is unclear, be sure to check with the seller or risk buying something you do not really want. For example, ‘old’ postcards can in some people’s eyes mean souvenirs of last year’s holiday, while in purist collectors' eyes the term really means pre-1939 only. Only recently I bought 1000 'old' postcards from a major offline auction house specialising in postcards, only to find they were all less than three years old. For my purposes, not worth the paper they're printed on. But the fault was mine and I was not entitled to return for refund.

14. What to do if you under-price an item. If you make a mistake and price a product at £1 rather than £100 which someone buys before you realise your mistake, you do not have to part with the product. Under what is known in the UK as 'Invitation to Treat' the law holds that a contract is not formed when your buyer agrees to pay your price but when you actually take payment. Until you take payment the contract is still incomplete and you can withdraw your offer at any time. Some will say it isn't ethical, you could get negative feedback, but it's still good to know the law is on your side.

15. In the UK if you buy stolen goods, even innocently, they do not belong to you but remain the property of the original owner. You could lose money if goods are seized and returned to their true owner, and you could seriously damage your eBay reputation.

16. Get a receipt for all major purchases. Ask the seller for name and contact details. Of course, moonlighting professionals and thieves will refuse, but most genuine sellers will oblige, at least proving you bought the items in good faith.  Many major boot sale organisers now insist on sellers registering on entry and providing name and contact details which are displayed on site.  Day-long police and police vehicle presence is a sign of a particularly high incidence of stolen items being offered at outdoor events.’

17. Profit from other people’s mistakes, such as items listed in inappropriate categories, consequently attracting few bidders and low finishing prices. Finding these mistakes is more down to good luck and careful research than anything else but the results can be hugely profitable and available entirely to you. I spend at least one hour every day searching eBay, looking for profitable items attracting few bids. Sometimes I bid on those items, more often I don’t, but I always earn more from that one hour than all the time spent acquiring stock outside of eBay.

18. Look regularly for last minute listings with few or no bidders in your favourite product category. Bank holidays, late at night, very early in the morning, when something important is happening like a celebrity wedding or major sporting event features on television, bidder turnout is often low and some amazing bargains are possible. Years ago, as a trader at flea markets and collectors’ fairs, I quickly learned never to book any fair coinciding with a major football match, Wimbledon Finals, the Great North Run, Easter weekend. The reason was simple, no one showed up, the hall was empty all day. Now most of my Bank Holidays are spent snatching last minute no bid bargains on eBay, where you’ll also find me during World Cup matches and other spectator events.

19. Spelling mistakes in listings restrict visitors and bidders, especially if the product name or main feature itself is misspelled and unresponsive to keyword searches. I’ve lost count of the times I have found valuable items with misspellings and no one bidding but me. Just recently I found a listing for postcards by Muscha; elaborate designs, great condition, valuable collectors’ items. There were five cards, starting price £49.00 and no bidders. Not surprising really because the artist’s name is Mucha and his designs regularly fetch £100 plus – each! I’ve found valuable Bonzo dog ornaments worth about £50 each listed as ‘Bonso’ with me the only bidder. I’ve bought albums packed with high value postcards listed as ‘pstcads’, and many more things at a pittance of their true market value. See the next tip to learn how to profit quickly from other people’s spelling and typing mistakes. At www.fatfingers.com you can key in the correct version of an important keyword for your product and receive all the common misspellings and currently misspelled listings for your item. I found those cards mentioned in the previous tip by keying ‘Mucha’ into fatfinger.com. Don’t waste time bidding as soon as you see these items, except for listings due to end soon. Instead store the listings to your computer, scan them quickly, bid on most valuable and soon to end items first, take your time checking the rest. Save the listings by noting the web address or by clicking on ‘File’ on the toolbar, then on ‘Save As’, choose ‘Web Page’ or ‘html’ and store the file on your desktop. Move in fast, bid before the auction ends and sellers relist unsold items, with or without spelling mistakes.

20. A major source of misspellings is template listed items, where you can expect that one misspelled item is followed by numerous others from the same unsuspecting seller. Sellers using Turbo Lister are also inclined to upload previously created templates with misspellings and other listing mistakes. Today I found someone offering 24 sets of wonderful vintage cufflinks, spelled in her case ‘cuffflinks’ – 3 Fs. Her starting price was low, profit potential was huge, and no one was bidding. Should I or shouldn’t I? Actually I didn’t, but I told her about the mistake.

21. Be careful, learn from other people’s mistakes, check your listings thoroughly for spelling mistakes and typos, look for newer or different categories for your regular products. For Turbo Lister be sure to download updates every few days or miss out on better categories for your products, more attractive free templates, and other changes to eBay listing policies.

22. Guard against your own spelling mistakes by creating titles and descriptions in Microsoft Word first or other editor with spell-checking facilities. This way errors can be highlighted and corrected before uploading, unlike entries made directly into eBay or via Turbo Lister which lack spellcheckers.