Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search engine – you might find out something you didn’t know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do.  It’s a free market competition on the go!

Do you monitor the competition? Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or similar to yours are selling, and what prices they’re being offered at. There’s usually little point in starting a fixed price auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90.

Have you got pictures of the items? It’s worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don’t have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point.

Are you emailing your sellers? It’s worth sending a brief email when transactions go through: something like a simple “Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment”. Follow this up with “Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item name] today”. You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way.

Also, are you checking your emails? Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.

Do your item description pages have everything that buyers need to know? If you’re planning to offer international delivery, then it’s good to make a list of the charges to different counties and display it on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions (for example, if you will give a refund on any item as long as it hasn’t been opened), then you should make sure these are displayed too.

Have you been wrapping your items correctly? Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression: use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Oh… and always use first class post – don’t be cheap.

Do you follow up? It is worth sending out an email a few days after you post an item, saying “Is everything alright with your purchase? I hope you received it and it was as you expected.” This might sound like giving the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their money and run.

Being a really good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest customer service. That’s the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. Maintain the integrity and professionalism and the money will flow in.. Believe it!

The Right to Receive Your Item

Maybe the seller never sent the item, or maybe it got lost in the post. Whatever happened, you paid for the item. If it doesn’t arrive in the post as described, you have the right to a replacement or a refund, whether it’s the seller’s fault or not.

The fact that you bought something on eBay doesn’t mean that you don’t have the exact same rights that you would have if you bought it in a shop (these rights are pretty much the same all over the world). Plus, under eBay’s rules, the seller isn’t allowed to change their mind about selling you the item: once the auction ends, it becomes a contract – you must buy and they must sell, or face eBay’s penalties.

The Right for Your Item to Be as Described in the Auction

Sometimes sellers don’t wrap items properly, and so they get broken. Occasionally they write descriptions that are misleading or just plain wrong to begin with, leaving out vital details that would have caused you to change your mind about buying. If this happens to you, you again have the right to a replacement or a refund.

So How Do I Use My Rights?

First, you should take it up with the seller – most will be responsive, as do not want to have their reputation damagedwhen an upset buyer leaves negative feedback for all their future buyers to see. If that doesn’t work, report them to eBay.

While eBay don’t have many people handling complaints, they do have a relatively effective set of automatic process to handle common problems buyers and sellers have with one another.

Finally, if that doesn’t work, then you should seek advice from consumer groups in your country, and as a last resort from the police. You should never have to get this far, though: problems on eBay that can’t be resolved easily are extremely rare.

Don’t Be Too Quick

Remember not to get too annoyed and be unfair to the seller: nice sellers have agreed to give me refunds for undelivered items, only for me to find out a few weeks later that they were being held for me at the post office!  Always try your best to communicate and think of everything that might have gone wrong: eBay works best when buyers and sellers sort out their problems together, instead of reporting each other to the authorities straight away.

More often that not receiving what they paid for, buyers have an altogether different problem: they knew what they were paying for, but didn’t realise that what they were paying for was overpriced, low quality or a scam. So, learn all the tricks and open up your eyes so as not be ripped off by those one or two dishonest sellers on eBay.

The reason is obvious: a dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.

They say the item never arrived: Politely asks the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn’t arrived. If it still hasn’t arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. You should be bothered so much on how much it will costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn’t match the description: Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I’m sure you’re spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay – in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let’s say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit. It’s far better to look at it this way: if you don’t give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you’ll probably lose a few weeks’ profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

Don’t bother with eBay clichés: There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like “Super rare camera wow look low price”. These are stupid things to put in your title, as no one is going to search for them.

Think like a buyer: If you were looking for your item, then what exactly would you type into that box?  If you think it’d help, try searching yourself to find someone else selling your item. What were the first things you thought of typing?

Think like other sellers: Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours, and try to copy their title styles – if it works for them, it can work for you.

Be specific: You should be sure to write the item’s brand and specific model number in the title, as people will often search only for this information. Make sure that you also say exactly what the item is.

Here are a few examples of good titles. They’re real, and they were on eBay, successfully made their sellers money. So what made them good?

Example 1: “DELL PC P4 3.0 GHZ DESKTOP COMPUTER WIN XP 2 PRO”

If you know about computers, you’ll know instantly what this auction is selling. It has manufacturer (Dell) followed by a few technical specifications (P4 3.0 GHz is the processor speed). Notice also that the title includes the two words ‘desktop’ and ‘computer’, as the seller wants people looking for any of those words to see her auction.

Example 2:  “OASIS Don’t Believe the Truth CD Album (New)”

This auction for a CD is well formatted: it gives the artist name in capital letters, followed by the album name. It then manages to include the two key words ‘CD’ and ‘album’, as well as the word ‘new’ – that means that anyone searching for ‘new oasis cd’, ‘oasis new album’ and so on will find this auction.

Example 3: “1840 Penny Black stamp, certificate, four margins”

Here’s a slightly more obscure one, from the exciting world of stamp collecting. A penny black is one of the oldest and most famous stamps. It uses a few key words that collectors will consider important: ‘four margins’ indicates that the stamp has been cut out with some margins around it and so isn’t damaged, and ‘certificate’ tells you that the item has a certificate of authenticity – it’s a real penny black. Remember to use every bit of space to squeeze in as much important information as you can in the title.

Based on my ongoing learning and experience, I think the best time to post an auction is on a Thursday starting at 8 p.m.

[Note: I noticed that sometimes when I list an auction, it took about 1-2 hours to actually see the auction run live on eBay.  So, probably it’s best to start it one to two hours earlier than 8 p.m.]

So, start at around 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday and let the auction run for 3 days.  You read it right, three days!  Some might be asking, why 3 days? Why not 1, 5, or 10 days?? Well, it is all up to you actually but it should be rationalize to the type of items you are selling as well as your pricing strategy.

I think most of the bidders (maybe 90%) don’t like to wait.  So, they will only be interested in and bid for items which auction that is going to end soon.  Taking this ‘common sense’ in mind, it is good to run the auction for 3 days as it will have the advantage over other sellers selling similar items.  Our auction is scheduled to end on Sunday night which is the time where most people like to login and bid on eBay.  Sunday night is normally eBay’s biggest night for bidders!

If a potential buyer finds your auction ending within 1 day and another seller’s auction ending in 5 days, who do you think she/he is going to bid from?  If she wants it badly, it is almost sure that she is going to bid from you.

[Tips: Monday to Thursday is normally a typical day on eBay.  People are home from work and simply browse through the site for items, just for fun (and research) without any much intention to buy them.]

[More Tips: Depending on the items that you are selling, for example if you think that the item you are selling will definitely fetch much higher price and you think that for that to happen you need to provide longer time for potential biddings, then it is BEST to start your auction on Friday at 8 p.m. and let it run for 10 days.  In this way, your auction will run through 2 full weekends enabling more exposure.]

[Note: I had earlier bought an ebook from another eBay seller. The said ebook, then was emailed to me, which I have then downloaded into my PC.  Take note that I also have a picture of the ebook in my PC]

All right then! Here’s what I did:

Step 1: I signed-in to my eBay account.  We would know that we have successfully signed-in when our user ID appears (at the top of the site, just beside the logo).

Step 2: On the top right hand corner, I see BUY / SELL / MYeBAY/ COMMUNITY/ HELP.  I then moved  the computer cursor on SELL, then on the dropdown list appears ‘Sell an Item’.  Click it.

Step 3: On the next page, I clicked START SELLING.

Step 4: On the next page, I was required to select a category (for the item I want to list).   Since I wanted to sell an ebook, I typed ‘ebook’ in the requested field and click SEARCH. A page similar to the one attached below appeared- I then select the relevant category and clicked continue.

Step 5: The next screen appears.  I then scrolled down to study the whole page before I start to fill in the required fields accordingly.

Field #1:   Title (Be creative to come up with ATTENTION GRABBING title!)

Field #2:   I then scrolled down a bit and clicked on ‘Add Picture’.  The following screen appeared.  I clicked on BROWSE, select the relevant picture from my PC, then clicked UPLOAD.

Field #3:   Describe the item you’re selling.  Here I typed in several lines describing what is it that I’m selling, how will it be useful to the potential buyer, how will it be delivered to the winning bidder etc.  We can actually tell anything we like here.  Some people simply put in one line.  Some put thousand of words.  Try looked at how the other eBayers are doing it and you’ll also have an idea how to describe your item.

Field #4:   Choose how you’d like to sell your item. There are options given.  We can either choose to sell using AUCTION style or decide on a FIXED PRICE for the item.  Key in the amount and fill in the relevant fields/boxes.

Field #5:   Decide how you’d like to be paid.  Select PAYPAL (recommended).

Others#:    Fill in other required field/boxes, particularly those marked * (in green color).  Then clicked CONTINUE.

Step 6: On the next page, I then prompted to REVIEW MY LISTING, checked the LISTING FEE involved (Its FREE to list first 5 items every 30-day under auction listing style!).  Upon being satisfied, I then clicked LIST MY ITEM.  I was done!

[Tips: Within seconds, I was able to see my item on auction.  Actually, up to the last several hours before the auction ended, I was also allowed to make certain changes to my listing]

So, try it yourself.   In my experience, it was easier than I had expected.

A great place to check, to start to really learn the ropes, to have some fun, to keep it interesting, and to make some money is ebay.com.  Every single day, thousands of internet users sign up for eBay and become either buyers or sellers.

eBay is huge! And it’s growing every day.  It’s a vibrant community and if you just want to start out somewhere and get a feel for e-commerce with no risk – you are not required to pay a ton of money to check it out, its not complicated, its fairly simple and straight forward! You can learn all the basic things you need to know in a day or so if you are willing to check it out and play around… it’s a great starting point.

The very reason I say that it’s a good starting point is because you can get out there and sell a few things within 2 or 3 hours (depending on which country you live) of checking out eBay.com  for the very first time.  Just imagine, within few hours you can have an item (good or services) up for sale on the internet, have a worldwide internet audience seeing your product, and have all other ebay members/users from all countries around the world bidding on your item wanting to buy it.