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I just did my very first listing on eBay, a sculpture by Lonnie Holley. Does anyone else ever sell stuff online? Do you have any comments or suggestions for online selling?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I've never sold anything on ebay, but I was just thinking that, as a buyer, it's hard to bid on something for $700 when the seller has never sold anything before and no positive reviews confirming that you actually ship the products. If this doesn't get sold, maybe you should try selling a cheaper sculpture, if you have one, so you can get a positive review and give the buyer some confidence. I'm not speaking from much experience, though. Just a thought.
Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I would suggest adding some reassurance that you have provenance on the sculpture in question, where reassurance includes a scan of the document(s).
You're also probably going to want better pictures of the sculpture, from multiple angles and with clear lighting.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Do you know anyone that could sell it for you on their eBay account? Someone that has a high sell number? I only have a few (15, I think) or I'd offer.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I actually work for an eBay consignment company - if you'd like some detailed advice, e-mail me...or I may just be un-lazy and write something up and post it here for general benefit ^_^
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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1) Your auction title does not have to make sense - it should simply include as many keywords as possible, because the default search settings for eBay rely solely on title. Most people do not search descriptions.
2) Regardless of what eBay might tell you, ALL of the listing boosters - featured, featured plus, bold, highlight, etc. - are a waste of your money. Typing your title IN ALL CAPS is more effective than any of these other methods.
3) Always, always, always, always, always include a gallery picture. Make sure your gallery picture is actually comprehensible thumbnailed, the way it will appear in search results.
4) The more pictures, the better. You do not need to host them via eBay: eBay lets you write your own HTML descriptions which lets you link pictures, and ideally you will host your pictures somewhere else for free where they will be any size you want them to be.
5) Put as much painstakingly accurate information about your item as possible in the description. Information like measurements, materials involved in construction, maker, date of creation, country of origin, historical significance, etc. is important. Even if you think the information is trivial, put it in: auctions with well organized paragraphs of information consistently outsell listings with a one paragraph description.
6) Play with your listing! If you use six or seven paragraphs of nothing but plain size 12 Times New Roman, your description becomes harder to read and casual browsers may lose interest rather quickly (I know I do). Bold, italics, caps, face & size changes are your friends. With that said, no one cares how "professional" your listing looks - templates and heavily graphical auctions do not get any more or less attention than other ones, the most important thing is to make the information about the item easy to find and understand.
7) When listing something, always do a search in "completed listings" first. Check the auctions that are selling best, and use the same category they listed in for your item. This is especially important for more obscure items, e.g. furniture, tableware, antiques, etc., where maker information and condition vary greatly.
8) Do not use reserve prices. Just start the bidding at what would have been your reserve price. Reserve prices are a great way to waste everyone's time and your money.
9) Offer as many payment methods as you're comfortable with accepting. Always mention, if you take personal checks, that you will need to wait for the payment to clear the bank before shipping.
10) Refuse to ship without insurance: this will save you a TON of headache and bad feedback.
11) Make sure you have fine print in your auction. Specify whether or not you will accept returns, and under what conditions you will accept them - including whether the buyer has to pay for return shipping, and whether or not you will refund shipping. ALWAYS be as specific as possible about the condition of an item: eBay's dispute program will reference what information is actually contained, in writing, in the auction when handling disputes & claims.
12) Do not pay your eBay fees until you have completed the transaction.
13) Always remember that eBay is the world's largest marketplace, and your item will almost never sell for the same amount of money it would in an analogous real world setting. eBay is a murky, violent sea of trading and nothing is guaranteed!
14) Be aware of the fees. Always make sure you have a keen understanding of what you have to pay for and how you can maximize your spending to promote a listing. Like I already said, most of the promotion features are worthless (bold, highlight, featured, etc.). Subtitle is selectively useful, but it's only necessary if you really can't squeeze all your keywords into the title. Insertion fees are especially important to keep in mind, because the ranges in which the insertion fees change are very bizarre:
quote: 1) Your auction title does not have to make sense - it should simply include as many keywords as possible
2) Typing your title IN ALL CAPS is more effective than any of these other methods.
4) The more pictures, the better....ideally you will host your pictures somewhere else for free where they will be any size you want them to be.
6) Bold, italics, caps, face & size changes are your friends. With that said, no one cares how "professional" your listing looks
*brain bleeds* Egad. You're Satan. The last time I went to eBay, I found myself beset on all sides by auctions with titles like "COMPACTFLASH FLASH CARD 1GB ONE GIGABYTE GB DRIVE MEMORY RAM," with 72-point flashing red header text and eight different colors -- and at least one use of Comic Sans font -- in the description, along with no fewer than three images, each over 1MB in size (of a CF card, no less.)
You are my sworn enemy. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Perhaps, Tom...but it got your attention, didn't it?
With all that said, my OWN listings are pretty conservative - My auction title keywords follow the actual title e.g. "NIB Compact Flash Card 1 GB gigabyte cf memory." And my advice about playing with fonts was designed to point out that a block of uniform text is visually unappealing and hard to pick important information out of, where as simply bolding measurements and making the size of the item name, condition and Buy It Now price (if applicable) larger (a BIT larger, not 72 point flashing font...ugh, thank God the blink tag is deprecated).
But I totally see your point ^_^
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Oh, and Comic Sans font makes me want to stab someone in the face. Although these days, lots of fonts are working on adding themselves to the "stab-in-the-face" list...Tw Cen MT comes to mind, as does Curlz, and that really intensely girly one whose name escapes me at the moment. Not to mention Edwardian Script, the world's most overused illegible font of doom.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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erosomniac, thanks so much for the detailed advice. This is the sort of thing I really need to know.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Tatiana, don't listen to erosomniac. I don't buy from people whose titles and listings don't make basic grammatical sense, on the basis that they're evil and possibly stupid and will probably screw me over.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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(Although the thumbnail tip is a good one. Always get a good pic and pay extra for the gallery listing. If there's too much to show in one pic, fork out the extra for one or two more. *buys fancy baby dresses on deep discount and sells them on ebay* )
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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You guys are going to give her more of a headache than the actual auction will with all of you giving her advice that contradicts each other Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: Edwardian Script, the world's most overused illegible font of doom.
I like that description!
I agree with kq on the grammar thing - I'd make sure you use at least one comprehensible, intelligent-sounding phrase in the title, perhaps with eye-catching adjectives. The rest of erosomniac's advice sounds great.
My only other suggestion would be to use a picture that isn't taken at a crazy angle - I had to think for a bit to figure out which way was "up" in that one, and if I were looking for something to buy, I'd skip it if I couldn't figure it out at first glance.
Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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