2. SELL SMART
OK, we're going to assume that you know the fundamentals of how to sell something on eBay. If you don't know how, then read this eBay seller's tutorial. What we'd rather spend out time doing is giving you those all-important tips to getting the best price possible for your junk.Title your items effectively
Beware of "collaboration"
Title your items effectively
The number one way sellers screw themselves over and not find buyers is by promoting their product with a poorly written auction title. Although this may seem like a relatively minor issue, spelling mistakes and insufficient descriptions can be the difference between an item attracting buyer interest and garnering a high price, or going for a paltry sum offered by one lone buyer.
Remember Jimmy? Let's say that he wants to sell his new TV set (since he needs room to practice with his donkey-bone yo-yo). Jimmy has a number of options for how he can title his item, including:
a) big TV
b) 27-inch television
c) Sony Trinitron 27-inch television TV, model #tbk-889
The last item description is the best, and here's why:
- eBay's search engine favors titles that include the most information. Jimmy's TV will turn up for multiple users, whether they type in "television", "TV," or "Sony TV."
- Listing items in this specific manner allows for more exact matches.
Another example:
Sally is looking for the exact model of Sony TV that Jimmy is selling. Sally doesn't want to have to wade through all the other 27" TV sets on eBay, so she searches for Sony #tbk-889. If Jimmy had used one of the first two auction titles, eBay's search engine would have passed over his listing, because it did not include the words Sally was searching for.
While being as specific as possible is good, don't stress over the capitalization, exclamation points, and dashes - they do not affect the eBay search engine.
Beware of "collaboration"
Collaboration occurs when buyers communicate with one another in order to affect a low final price for an item. Think of it as a Survivor-esque alliance (without the melodramatic speeches about snakes, rats, and "island spirits"). Although traditional collaboration is difficult to pull off, the gigantic size of eBay's bidding community makes it possible for users to collaborate in a modified form. For instance, in a traditional auction-where all bidders are sitting in the same room-collaboration could be achieved if all the bidders interested in an item decided that only one person would bid so that they could later split the profit. On eBay this would be virtually impossible to do, since there is an unlimited number of potential buyers.
The modified form of collaboration on eBay involves bid retraction and bid defaulting. Example example!
Jimmy and Sally (who are now good friends, having met on eBay) decide that they want to both win an auction by collaborating. Jimmy bids extremely low ($2) on a ceramic lawn gnome early in the auction. Sally then bids extremely high ($100), ensuring no one else will outbid him and buyer interest in the auction will remain low. Then, just before the auction ends, Sally retracts her bid and Jimmy's $2 is reinstated as the highest bid. Jimmy will now probably win the auction, as Sally's former high bid scared everybody else away. Alternatively, Sally could also wait until after the auction ends and then default on her bid, forcing the seller to either offer the item to Jimmy, or hold the auction again.
Unfortunately, it's hard to catch slimeballs like Jimmy and Sally. The best way to determine whether collaboration is occurring is to analyze Jimmy's and Sally's bidding histories. If their histories show that they both bid on all the same auctions (or that one or both of them have a large number of bid retractions), then there is reason to believe that they are collaborating. It should also be noted that "Jimmy" and "Sally" could be the same person. A single person could register multiple user names and then do collaboration between these usernames. If you suspect that buyers are collaborating, be sure to contact Security Center.
So our point is that when you're selling, you should constantly check the bidding histories of the people who are placing the bids. If something fishy is going on, then report the names to SafeHarbor and immediately pull your item off the market.
