If you’ve ever lived through the
tedium of yard
sales, garage sales or moving sales and though you would rather die
than hold
another one, there is another solution to just loading up what you no
longer
want or need and hauling to your local charity. It is still possible to
get a
good price for some of your former treasures. EBay provides the perfect
outlet
for selling all kinds of things. Sometimes you’ll get a great price,
sometimes
not quite what you’d hoped and occasionally as a seller, you’ll run
across an
item that just doesn’t sell.
Harvey
Webb from North Carolina has used eBay to sell a variety of items over
the past
couple of years with pretty good result. “We’ve sold everything from
videotapes
to saddles we no longer used,” Webb says. “Some items have sold for
just a
buck, others have gone for hundreds of dollars.”
There
are a variety of ways to offer an item for sale. Time sensitive
material, such
as tickets to an upcoming event, you might choose to sell in a one day
of
three-day auction. The most common eBay auction lasts 7 days. Very
often the
bidding on an item won’t heat up until the last day or even the final
few
minutes. Many buyers choose to “watch” items until the last day. EBay
will even
send you email on items you’re watching to let you know they are
getting close
to the end of the auction time.
Watching
similar items to what you want to sell is also a good way to establish
if you
should be able to get the price you want for an item. The Webbs did
this before
they chose to put a saddle up for sale. By watching several similar
items, they
were able to determine that a lower starting bid and no reserve seemed
to
produce better results and more bids than those saddles that were
offered with
high starting bids and a high reserve. That same approach has paid off
for the
Webbs in selling other items as well, such as successive pairs of
riding boots
their son has outgrown. Because many of those boots were in like-new
condition,
a couple of pairs sold for very close to the original sales price.
Here
are a couple of suggestions the Webbs have for successful selling on
eBay:
- List
items so they end on a Sunday or Monday. Sunday night sees the heaviest
traffic on eBay and more viewers could mean more bidders.
- Take
several photos from different angles of higher ticket items. People are
more comfortable paying more for items they feel like they can really
“see.”
- Answer
all questions from potential buyers quickly and honestly. If they want
more pictures, get them.
It’s
important to be realistic about what you’re selling. Buyers are looking
for
bargains. If they wanted to pay retail, they would be looking for a new
item.
The better the condition of the item you’re selling, better the chances
are
that you’ll see a lot of bids and a good final price.
