How to Increase Bids and Sell More Products Across eBay

Posted at May 9, 2009

Too often, online auctions get few views and even fewer (or no) bids at all simply because the seller didn’t use my eBay tips of taking the time to put the item in the correct category, estimate a fair shipping price and write a convincing ad.

If you’re eBay selling hasn’t been successful, you’ll want to make sure you understand these important tips for selling on eBay that focus on listing and promoting your online auctions correctly.

In this continuation of our “Secrets to Attracting a Swarm of Bidders and Buyers to Your eBay Auction,” you’ll learn eBay tips such as the importance of choosing the right category, estimating shipping and how to design your ad to get maximum response from buyers.

First: Determine Your Item’s Category

Once you know what your ad will say and how much you want to sell it for, you need to decide where to put it. In your eBay selling research, you will learn that eBay has many categories in which you can place your item, and you need to determine which is best. You can determine this, possibly, by searching for other, similar items and see what categories they are in.

Something to consider and maintain as one of your important tips for selling on eBay is that if you have multiple similar items, you can put ads in multiple categories to see which category is more successful for you.

Once you’ve determined your category, you need to decide if you want to invest the extra money to use a Featured Category Auction or a Featured Auction.

As one of the eBay tips many smart sellers utilize, a Featured Category Auction places your ad in a special section at the very top of that category’s listing. It’s seen by more people and is more likely to be bid on. The cost of a Featured Category Auction is $14.95, so you need to decide if it’ll be worth it for your particular eBay selling endeavor.

Unless you have multiple items (like for a Dutch auction) or have an item that will sell for $25 or more, you probably won’t want to invest the $14.95 for this option and won’t use this in your repertoire of tips for selling on eBay. The Featured Auction can be very profitable and used as one of those eBay tips you use over and again, but only for very expensive items or for Dutch auctions that are expected to bring in a good profit.

The Featured Auction puts your item in a special listing, along with the category in which you list it. The cost for eBay selling use this type of auction is $99.95 and many more people will see it. Keep in mind and in your list of tips for selling on eBay that these costs are in addition to the insertion fee and final-price selling fee.

Second: Determine Your Payment and Shipping Requirements

You now need to decide how you will accept payment and how much the postage/shipping costs will be. The most common way of accepting payment seems to be to accept personal checks and money orders/cashier’s checks, but that personal checks will be held for 5-7 days to ensure they clear. This, of course, is your choice, and doesn’t really need to be listed in your eBay tips collection, but is something you definitely need to know.

You also need to determine, as part of your eBay selling strategy, how much it will cost to send your item to the buyer and if you or they will pay for shipping. I suggest you have them pay and state how much more, on top of the final bid price, the buyer must include for postage. Once you’ve decided payment and shipping requirements, make sure you include the instructions on the bottom of your ad – tips for selling on eBay many often forget. You can use the following verbiage if you like: “Money orders/cashier’s checks will result in immediate shipping; personal checks will be held 5-7 days to clear.”

Third: Designing Your Ad

If you are going to just type in your ad’s text without HTML or special formatting, you can skip this step. If you are going to create a visually stunning ad, which I recommend as one of my best eBay tips, then you need to design and create your ad accordingly. The best way is to use one of the many templates provided in this kit. If you prefer not to and if you know HTML, go ahead and create your ad yourself for your eBay selling.

Create a nice title (item name) and a description that includes features and benefits – critical tips for selling on eBay. Don’t forget to include the payment and shipping requirements. Things to consider and always good eBay tips when creating an HTML ad from scratch (along with everything else discussed previously) are the prudent and creative use of font style and size, color, clip art and pictures, boxes around text and background colors.

Make your ad attention-getting and attractive for all your eBay selling activities, but not too busy or confusing. Top tips for selling eBay include this: When there are words, phrases, statements or sentences that you want to have stand out, make sure you use different colors and font sizes.

You can also use BOLD, italics, underlines, asterisks, etc.

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

Tim Black and Mike Perry are the authors of

“eBay Business Machine Training System”