How to Attract a Swarm of Buyers to Your eBay Auction

Posted at May 13, 2009

Knowing exactly what you’re selling, writing a good description and setting a solid price are eBay tips crucial to making money on eBay. Oftentimes, many eBay selling newbies write up a brief description, set a price and then leave the auction alone. Wrong move!

When it’s over, many of them, with no tips for selling on eBay to take advantage of, wonder why they didn’t get any bids and consider this whole “make-money-online” thing a wash, and that’s simply not true. You CAN make money.

Don’t let that happen to you! Here are some eBay tips on how to write a powerful description and set a great price that will get your auction noticed.

Step One: Determine Exactly What You’re Selling

This may sound simple, but it is important that you understand in your eBay selling exactly what you are offering. I don’t mean just the item itself, but its features and benefits. In other words, what the item DOES for the buyer.

At top of your list of tips for selling eBay, do this: Before you enter the ad on eBay, write down everything about the item: its description, its features, its benefits and why someone would want it. This takes a bit more time than just typing it in to eBay, but if you want to sell your item and get a high price, then take the few extra minutes you need to employ these eBay tips and determine exactly what you are selling.

Obviously, for simple items you list in your eBay selling endeavors, this process takes less time, but for more expensive and rare items, take the extra time to do it right. I suggest, as part of your list of tips for selling on eBay that really work, that you write and rewrite the description until it sounds “just right.” Keep out the fluff and retain only the interesting information. List out the item’s features (what’s great about it) and focus on its benefits (how it will help the buyer).

Step Two: Determine Your Price – Look at what similar items sold for in the past

The next of these surefire eBay tips is to determine how much money you want to make on an item. Since this is an auction, you may or may not get the price you want. When eBay selling, you enter a starting price at which the bids begin when list the item. If you ask for $5 as a starting price, for example, then if only one person bids, your item sells to that person for $5.

Step Three: Make your item desirable for the prospective buyers

Hopefully, if you employ these tips for selling on eBay, your item will be desirable enough to get multiple bids and make you even more than you expected. If your item is something common, it’s worth the time to search eBay for other items like yours and see what those are going for. If you see it’s a very popular item and is selling for a high price, put this on your list of smart eBay tips and use that knowledge to determine your price accordingly.

Don’t make it priced too high to start, however, or nobody will bid on it. You can also take advantage of a Reserve Price auction as one more of my favorite eBay tips. This allows you to set a starting bid price (low) and a reserve price (higher).

The reserve price is an eBay selling price that must be met before you are obligated to sell your item.

Reserve Price auctions should be a fixture in your list of tips for selling on eBay and work like this: For example, if you set a starting price of $5 and a reserve price of $10, people can bid (starting at $5), but unless the bids eventually get up to at least $10, you are not obligated to sell it.

Using a Reserve Price auction is one of several excellent eBay tips. They allow you to get a better price, but make sure to have the starting price low enough to entice people to bid. For more tips for selling on eBay using Reserve Price auctions, check eBay’s rules and Help section.

Other eBay tips include considering insertion fees when determining your starting price. This is the amount of money you will be charged by eBay to insert your ad for your eBay selling activities and will vary depending on quantity and the initial listing price.

The other charge to be aware of, although you often can’t predict this one since it is based on the final selling price, is the fee you are charged once your item sells. Remember that this includes PayPal fees and any tips for selling on eBay should always include keeping this in mind.

But as always, good eBay tips should remind you to check eBay’s Accounts and Fees section to be aware of current fees and charges.

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Tim Black and Mike Perry are the authors of

“eBay Elite Trade Secrets Revealed Training System”