This Hub is written from my experiences of selling on Ebay I have a personal account and a business account with an Ebay Store. You can click on the link to my Ebay store to see my feedback etc. I started selling on Ebay about 4 Years ago and was a power seller for about 3 Years.

So this hub is based on my experiences of selling on ebay not based on some ebook that i have purchased (I have never purchased one on how to sell on ebay - Maybe i should - lol).

In many ways Ebay is the Perfect marketplace in theory because the price is largely determined by the laws of supply and demand. The greater the demand for an item and the lower the supply the more expensive the price will be - This is pure Economics Thoery here at work.

There are exeptions to this such as you only need two people to bid on an item to push the price way up and this is not reflective of the marketplace.

I quite often sell the same items time and time again and the price can vary wildly. Some people get a bargain and some people less so.

There are two ways to find good products to sell:-

1. List a variety of products and see what sells. However this can be costly as you want to start your auctions at a low price to enchorage interest and if there is not enough demand then you will not sell your product and end up with loads of fees and no income pr even worse you will sell your product for less than you paid for it and still end up with the ebay fees and paypal fees to pay.
2. Look at what other paople are selling and how much for and pick items that you can earn a good margin from. But beware other people can use this method to see what you are selling also.

Feedback is how you tell weather or not to trust a seller on ebay but you can also use it to see what somebody has sold. If you type in any keyword you will get a list of items for sale. Click on any of the items and it will show you the detais of the listing. On the listings page the sellers information will be included. Next to the sellers name is thier feedback number. If you click on this number it will take you through to the feedback profile page for the seller. As you scroll down on this page it will show you what they have sold and on each item there is a link to view the item. This link will take you to the original listing and will allow you to see exactly what sold how much for and how much bidding took place on the item. The more bidding the better as it is an indication of a higher demand for an item, which is what you are looking for.

One of the biggest problems with ebay is that you can spend considerable time effortand money finding good products to sell. At which point you think that ebay is great because it works really well. However two things can happen:-

1. You list more of the same product thus increaseing the supply when the demand has remained static and the price has to therefore fall.
2. Other people look at your feedback and see what you have sold and what they can also sell and earn a good margin on so they also start to sell the same product. Thus increaseing the supply with the demand remaining static.

What i mean here is two things

Firstly when you go shopping in the High Street there may be Hundreds or Thousands of shoppers and only a handful of shops that sell what you are looking for ( In my case Jewellery - Most towns only have a few Jewellers.) In this instance there is a large demand (Shoppers) and small supply (Shops) Comparitivley on Ebay you are only on one computer so are an isolated shopper but there are hundreds of shops selling Jewellery - Low Demand and High Supply

Secondly if you want to sell a second hand piece of jewellery you can not just rent a shop or stand in the High Street and sell your item. However you can just open an Ebay account and list you item. The competition from second hand pieces is much greater than it is on the high street.

Most people will buy on ebay for one of two reasons.

1. Because they think the item will be cheaper
2. Because they can not find what they are looking for elsewhere.

Because so many people use ebay to try and grab a bargain and it is so easy for people to list second hand items it pushes the price of second hand items up and lowers the price for new items. In the High Street if a second hand item were slightly cheaper than a new Item then the new item would sell every time. But on ebay its quite often the second hand item that sells.

This is fine if you sell second hand items but most businesses sell new items.

In the Jewellery trade this is particularly true - a lot of the gold jewellery is sold by pawn brokers and is unredeemed pledges that they have. When you consider that they only give scrap value for the gold it is pretty impossible to compete if you are selling new items.

Let me explain - One of the best products that i sell on ebay is a pair of opal earrings they are not good quality but are opals and as they are not branded its difficult to compare with an item like this. I would regularly list these and they would start at about $30 which was a fair price for them. However they would regularly be bid up to $100+ at the end of the auction. Understand that this is not what I as the seller wanted to sell these items for but what the buyer decided to pay for them. At $100+ this is 3 - 4 times the price that we would sell them for in our Retail Shop.

Also branded Jewellery and Watches that are last years models or just not popular sell quite well if you reduce the price enough. Compared to the other alternative for a retailer which is that you keep the stock and try to sell it at full price or that you reduce the stock and try to sell it (ie Have a Sale) The trouble is that this compromises the rest of your stock so is not desirable.

Find your niche which has to be something that there is a demand for and is not easily copied or branded so that other stockists can list thier products and dilute the market.

The other way is to be constantly trying new products and finding new niches that will work for a while. Just because a niche stops working does not mean that it will never work again. For example if your prices drop then so will other sellers and sooner or later people will stop listing those items - If the price drops enough. So you can find that you can start relisting the items again and where the competition has fallen the price goes back up.

• Don't sell branded products. For example we are a D & G Watch stockist and I used to sell the Watches on ebay however as soon as you do well with something other dealers will list thier stock also.
• Include any RRP in the Listing Title
• Experiment with end times and durations
• Use Turo Lister To save you Time
• Use an ebay shop - The listing fees are much cheaper ( you still want to have auctions to enable more people to find your shop)
• Use a proffessional looking template.
• Be creative with your title
• Use a thumbnail pictire for the gallery listings
• Have as much posetive feedback as you can.
• Sell to other coutries if shipping is not too much. Ebay is pretty much global (But beware of posting to some countries - as you will find that your goods disappear and you don't get paid!)

One of the ways that i used to generate more from ebay was to use ebay to promote my online store. I sell Nominations Italian Charm Bracelets asnd they sell quite well on ebay however there are over 1,500 so to list them all on ebay would cost a fortune and would be time consuming. However they were all listen in my online stione. So i put a link on my listings pages to my online store and did really well for a little while until i got an email from Ebay stating that they had deleted my listing because they included a link to an outside store in them. Which is against ebay rules.

I was lucky in that they only deleted my listings and not my account. So be careful you could spend years getting good feedback and then have your account deleted because you have broken a rule.