Sunday, June 26, 2005

EBay tips

Here is the text of an email I sent to my pop:

You can be paid to your paypal account. My suggestion is to only accept paypal. All other forms of payment are too slow. Generally, if you accept checks, people expect that you will make them wait 7 days for the check to clear. Plus, you have to wait for them to mail it and for it to be delivered.
If you are selling any big-ticket items, I would put a statement on the listing that you will cancel bids from buyers with low or no feedback. The feedback system tells you how reliable a buyer will be (past actions are the best predictors of future behavior).
It's usually worth the extra few cents to do a 10 day auction. Start the auction really low, and if you absolutely can't part with something for less than a certain amount, put a reserve on the auction. Don't put reserves unless you really care about the sales price, it scares away bidders.
Always put that the buyer is responsible for shipping. I generally put the shipping calculator on the page, and tell it to add a couple dollars of 'handling'. That's a couple more dollars of profit for each item, and most people will pay that handling fee without blinking, even if they wouldn't have raised their bid by that much.
If you decide to eat the shipping costs, you'll get more bids. One thing I have seen is when people put a statement that if the price goes over $x, the seller will pay for shipping. That's kind of an enticement.

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