eBay Tips by Jody Brothers

We focused our Essential Conference Call last night on eBay and was really excited to see the positive response to our Q & A. Thanks so much for all of your who sent in questions. As I continued to respond to emails through the evening and again this morning I thought I would address a few issues and offer a few tips.

Use of Dropshippers

I would be extremely careful using dropshippers to fulfill your eBay auctions. Nothing will get you negative feedback from a buyer quicker than not being able to fill a successful completed auction. As much as I'd like to think this is not the case, occasionally dropship companies go out of stock on certain items and have to place the item on backorder. If you want to use an item from a dropshipper and feel strongly that the item will be successful on eBay, I would recommend that you order 4 to 6 pieces of this item and have them shipped to your home for inventory. This will allow you the opportunity to take a few additional photographs if necessary and also will allow you to save any dropshipping fees by ordering in bulk versus individually. You might even get a quantity discount, this increasing your profitability.Another great result of selling the same item multiple times is that the work you do to post the item is saved within your My eBay section and the item can easily be re-listed. In fact, using this approach allows you to run auctions at a variety of times so that you can determine by page views and final selling price the best time to list auctions.

Pricing Strategy

If you have done your research and viewed completed listing for similar auctions of your item, you should have a decent idea of what your item will sell for. I never purchase a product for resell on eBay without first thoroughly researching completed listings. For example, if I know approximately what my item will sell for I can then determine my listing/pricing strategy. If you visit my eBay Store at http://stores.ebay.com/JustGolfBags you will see a number of listings, some of which start at .99c, others much higher.

A golf bag for .99c? Are you nuts? Actually, we aren't... We know that most of these bags that we list will end of selling for $50 to $100, some even higher... Our research has proven this true time and time again. We list this item at .99c because the listing fees (the fee eBay charges us to list the item for auction) is much lower than if we listed the item for a higher opening bid. Also, there is a psychological strategy at work as well. When someone initially views the low opening price, it gets a lot more page views than if the opening bid was higher. More page views and more exposure to prospective bidders all results in a bidding war at the end of an auction. By the time the auction ends people are emotionally attached to the idea of winning the item and will often times bid more than they would have originally planned because they really want to win it! They've invested too much emotional energy to quit now! The result is an auction that I paid very little to list, but often times has great results.

The only time we don't utilize this strategy is when we research a product to sell and there's not much interest in the product. We'll list the product with a Buy it now price at what we would like to sell the item for, and the opening bid amount about 15% less than the Buy it now price. This is also a good strategy to incorporate if you are really unsure what an item will gather in a .99c auction strategy.

As you can see, selling on eBay can be extremely simple, but at the same time very complex strategies are applied to enhance your opportunity for success. The key is to just get out there and do it! When I began my eBay journey I sold everything that wasn't attached at my home. Old golf equipment, hats, vintage clothing, tools, old computer equipment, books, were all target items. As I look back I definitely made a little money, but what I found was the more I used eBay to sell things around the house, the more clear my future as an ecommerce entrepreneur became. Selling on eBay truly prepared me for the challenge of building JustGolfBags.com!


Jody Brothers is an entrepreneur who consults with small business people just like you. His blog can be found here.