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A Dozen Common Ebay Mistakes to Avoid
12 eBay Seller Mistakes to Avoid when Selling on eBay
Entrepreneur Girl – On this “Tracy’s Tuesday Tips” focuses on a dozen common Ebay mistakes that Ebayer’s make. First mistake is bad photos. Tracy discusses the importance of a thumbnail that is interesting and will attract viewer’s attention. She explains why your best image, should be your main image that you use as your thumbnail and that photos can either make the deal or break the deal.
Next, mistake is scheduling the auctions at the wrong time. Scheduling ebay auctions at the optimum times to allow you to get the most amount of viewers to be watching the auction and be bidding on it. It is ending at 3am, you can be sure that you will not have a lot of bidders watching it. Ending in the evenings when everyone is home from work, or on the weekends will guarantee you more viewers and hopefully more bidders. Tracy shares that Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the busiest times for you to end your auction.
The next mistake that Tracy shares is poor or confusing titles. If you get something at a garage sale, research your item to see what it is that you have so you can price it appropriately. Many people buy things at a garage sale and do not know what it is that they have and could possibly miss out on a great profit, simply because they didn’t research the item. Your title is 55 characters and you need to use it wisely. Look at what the competition is using as their titles. Also, look at recently completed auctions and see what the highest ending price titles were. This will help you choose the best title for your items so that you will be able to hopefully have all the right keywords to attract as many buyers as you can.
Little or no description is another huge mistake you will want to avoid. This is your chance to put as much detail about the item that you can. State the size, color, condition, measurements, and any imperfections that the item may has. You want to be honest and reveal anything that is wrong with it so that you will be able to avoid getting any bad reviews. You will not want to hide a flaw to get the sale. That is a sure way to have a disappointed buyer and earn a negative review.
Also, make sure that you tell about all the benefits about owning the item and discuss the shipping charges so there are no surprises. If you are offering free shipping, this would be a good time to mention it again so that buyers will know that and be able to take that into consideration when they are bidding. Post it in huge letters so that it won’t be missed and give them a call to action. Ask them for the sale! Tell them “don’t miss this opportunity, bid now!”
Entrepreneur Girl lists mistake #5 as: not falling for all the fees. Ebay will try to up-sell you on your listing with added things like: subtitles, bold titles etc.. If you are listing an item under $50, you are going to be eating into your profit if you start to add on all the extras that they will try to get you to purchase. Tracy tells us to save those extra features for the special or higher end listings.
The 6th mistake is not knowing what a keyword is. Keywords are the words that someone would be searching for when searching for an item. Color, size, model number, brand,etc. These are all the things that someone would type in the search box when they are looking for a specific item. You will want to use it in your title as well as in your listing so the ebay search engine will be able to locate your listing. The search engine will look for the closest match for the words searched for. It will look in the title, the description and in the specifications. Repeat the key words in all these of these areas and try to use them as many times as you can without sounding ridiculous.
The next mistake to avoid is spelling errors! Tracy discusses how buyers will just move on to the next seller if there is a listing that has spelling errors, incomplete sentences, bad pictures, etc. She says that when she comes upon listings like that, she moves on because who knows if they are legit, or will they even ship it or if something is wrong with it, will they even take care of the issue? Who knows but who cares! There are enough sellers out there that have nicely written, professional listings that buyers won’t even waste their time with the poorly written listing with spelling errors. Also, if your words are spelled wrong, you will miss out on the search engine finding your item. If you are selling Nike shoes and you misspelled it with Neke shoes, no one will find your listing. Read your listing over a couple times and if possible, have someone else look it over as well. That way you will make sure that any corrections are made, before you post your listing.
Entrepreneur Girl lists mistake #8 as charging too much for shipping. Sellers used to try to make money with the shipping because they wouldn’t be paying their fees based on shipping fees. But buyers have caught on and will get angry if they purchase something and then at checkout, they find that you are padding the shipping. That is a quick way to get negative feedback. If they report you, Ebay might even give you a black mark for padding the shipping. If you want to make more on the item, just go ahead and include it in your price. It is more important for you to be an honest seller than making a few extra dollars in a sneaky way.
Another mistake that you will want to avoid is by putting symbols after characters in the title. Meaning, if you are selling a Nike shoe, do not put: Nike!!!!! The search engine will be confused and your listing might be missed. You should at least allow there to be a space after the character. So it would look like this: Nike !!!!!. Notice there is a space before the exclamation points. Additionally, people who have vision issues, might have a hard time reading your title with all the symbols. Keep it simple and easy to read.
Tracy lists mistake #10 as not utilizing the “completed listing” for the last 30 days. It is a section listed off to the left hand side of listings. Take the time to research the item and see what this type of product sold for in the recent, past. There is no sense in wasting your time and money, listing an item and none of them have sold in the past or if they did, they sold for a very low price.
Mistake #11 is picking the wrong category. Search engines find products first by the category. So if you have it listed in the wrong category, it will not be found. If you are unsure what eBay category you should list your item in, look and see what others are listing it in. That way you can be sure that you have picked the best category to showcase your item.
Lastly, is communicating with customers well. On eBay, your rating is the most important thing and the customer is the one who gives you your rating. If you are not communicating with your customer, they will give you a bad review for sure. They won your auction and now they want to hear from you. You need to keep your customer super happy and one way to do that is to communicate with them. Congratulate them on winning the auction and thank them for their business. Be polite and use their first name if you know it and sign the correspondence with your first name. Tell them when you will be shipping your item, etc. Keep the doors of communication open and if they have questions, answer them as fast as you can. Check your email twice a day that way you can answer any questions from possible buyers or from ones that have already won auctions. Keeping on top of email is the best way to guarantee that your customers will be happy with your quick, polite and helpful response.
Hope that this information was helpful to you! If you can think of any other mistakes to avoid, please post your comments! See you next time!
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