7 Tips for Selling Expensive Collectibles On eBay
Recently, a friend asked me to help her brother sell his collection of Lladro glass figurines on eBay. These are expensive glass collectibles and I knew nothing about them – but I don’t have to. The principles for selling expensive collectibles on eBay are the same, regardless of what is being sold.
Obviously, like any eBay auction, the seller must have a powerful listing with great pictures. This is always true regardless of what the merchandise is. Expensive collectibles offer splendid opportunities, but also need special precautions.
1. Price: decide the lowest amount you will accept for each figurine and set that price as a reserve. Then make your opening bid absurdly low – yes, absurdly.
Example: if you will accept $1,000 – make your opening bid $25. There is no risk in this, because you don’t have to sell unless the bidding reaches $1000, but the low price attracts buyers, (assuming there is demand, of course).
Looking at completed eBay auctions allows us to track prices, Again and again we learn that starting the price where the seller hopes it will end is not a wise tactic.
For instance, a seller wants to get $750 for his figurine. An opening bid of $750 won’t attract nearly as many buyers as an opening bid of $25 and – surprisingly – the lower bid almost always gets higher prices. There is some psychology at work with the cheap price. It may not make logical sense, but it’s the reality of life on eBay.
2. Devote space in your auction listing explaining how you will pack your item to ensure safe transit. This is critically important because in the back of every buyer’s mind is the dread of receiving a package that rattles. A collectibles buyer will inevitably be thinking of the hassle she will have to go through – and the possible loss of purchase price – if her item is broken. She needs to know that the seller has carefully considered this issue and has a solution.
3. For the protection of both of you, insist that the buyer pay for appropriate insurance. Don’t allow this to be an option. You definitely do not want the liability of a broken collectible that costs hundreds of dollars. In fact, if a customer objects to paying for insurance, this might possibly be a red flag. A genuine collector is very eager to add to her collection and wants her figurine to be protected.
4. We can safely assume that every Internet buyer has heard stories of fraud on eBay and elsewhere on the Net. Therefore, anything you can do to prove the authenticity of your collectible is well worth your time. Is there a marking on the bottom? Do you have the original box or other container? Does it have a label? Is there a certificate of authenticity or an appraisal by a respected organization? If the answer to any of these is “yes”, then be certain to emphasize your authenticity in your auction. Taking pictures of your proof is especially effective.
5. I don’t suggest offering a guarantee except in the most general way – that is, you, the seller, are telling the truth about the product. Anyone bidding on a collectible is knowledgeable and therefore they know what they’re buying so there should be no reason for a return. If someone expresses dissatisfaction and mails your merchandise back, there is every likelihood of it being broken. You do not want the hassle of trying to collect on broken merchandise or putting yourself into a litigious situation with someone who refuses to believe that the collectible was broken via return shipping.
Also, you don’t want to take a loss on your eBay fees, which might be substantial if the price is high.
6. With a really expensive item, always offer the option of an escrow service – at the buyer’s expense, of course. They may not take want this service, but make certain they have the option. You, of course, know that your merchandise is legitimate, but the buyer isn’t so certain. eBay recommends an escrow service that is available to all members.
7. If you’re willing to ship worldwide, you need to take special steps to protect yourself. In the US we have AVS (Address Verification System) which offers some protection. A very large portion of the fraud suffered by buyers occurs outside the United States and you are justified in protecting yourself. Losing the purchase price on a $5 item isn’t such a big deal – but a $1,000 collectible absolutely does matter.
Your bank can advise you on the time it will take to verify foreign funds. Be certain to let any prospective buyer know in your auction that there will be a delay if they are outside of your country. Do not let your merchandise out of your hands until you are sure!
If you follow these ‘rules’, the chances of selling your expensive collectibles at the highest possible prices will be greatly increased.
Lastly, if you want to make some serious money on eBay, check out this ebook “eBay Inside Out“. It has changed my life by simply following the system exactly. I’m now a Platinum eBay Powerseller selling fulltime on eBay, making average $50k of sales every month, you too can make it!
Why Would Anyone Want To Learn How To Sell on eBay?
If someone offered you an entire business structure – the tools, the software, the website, the payment processor and most importantly, millions of customers ready and eager to buy your products, how much would you pay for that? Hundreds? Thousands?
The fact is that’s what eBay is. It’s the fastest and easiest way to have a web presence today and start making money online before the end of the week. You can literally have a complete eBay business structure set up that is selling products online in 30 minutes.
eBay is huge. Billions of dollars in total merchandise is traded on eBay each year, and there are millions upon millions of active members worldwide on eBay. Do you think one of those people want what you’re selling? With thousands of dollars worth of goods being traded every single second, do you still think eBay a viable marketplace?
The real question is, how can you be a successful seller on eBay? Of the thousands of people that have sold on eBay, only a select few have massive success. While you might hear lots of stories about eBay millionaires, it’s a small percentage of those who have tried.
Why is that? Too many people think that just hopping on eBay will instantly make them millionaires. To build a business you need to have the skills in tools in place to make sure you are providing a great product or experience for your customer. The ones who are making out like bandits online are those who are focused not on the money, but on their customer.
Don’t let that discourage you. The people making money on eBay right now started right where you are now. Most aren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Yes, there are things you’ll need to learn, but everyone is a beginner once. Nobody is born a world-class athlete.
One of the great advantages to selling on eBay is that there is so little risk to get started. You don’t have to hire a dozen employees and rent a warehouse. You don’t have to raise thousands of dollars in capital.
Other than a computer, an internet connection and a digital camera, there isn’t much needed to get started selling on eBay. Of course with time you will need to develop a line of inventory to sell, but if you learn the right way, you can easily cover your inventory costs and keep cash flow moving through your eBay business.
The reason why eBay is such a great opportunity today is because business models are changing. The barriers to start selling online are lower than they’ve ever been. Why wouldn’t you want to start being your own boss? Thousands of people have taken the leap to make money online already, make sure you don’t get left behind.
With everything literally at your fingertips, there’s no excuse. Why don’t you start your own eBay business today? Get away from the skeptics (who never make any money online anyways) and start learning from those who are already successful.
Jesse Holmes is the designer of the free eBay 101 Start Up Kit. In this easy to follow video kit he will show you precisely how to sell on eBay quickly and easily! Get your free copy while supplies last.
Selling On Ebay: Why Is Pricing Your Items Important?
When it comes to selling on ebay, it seems that a lot of new sellers are not aware of how important the price of an item is when they are building a new listing for auction. Some might not even realize that they have to decide on a price for the items they hope to sell on ebay.
Nevertheless, the truth is that an ebay auction is not the same as the kind of auction you may perhaps go to offline. There is actually quite a bit of thought and work when it comes to deciding on what prices to set for your listings.
Basically, you have to choose between the buy it now or the starting bid price you want for your items. You may also choose to have a reserve price and what that means is that if your item doesn’t sell for the lowest amount you are willing to accept, you are not obligated to sell the item.
The only price that is actually required will be the starting bid if you decide to list your item as a regular auction listing. The buy it now and the reserve pricing are a decision that you can choose after you create your listing for the item you want to sell on ebay.
Take into account that your starting bid should be kept reasonably low in order to attract more potential customers. If the item you are listing for sale is a higher priced item, even though your starting bid should still be kept no higher than $50, you will need to set a reserve price on this type of listing.
As stated previously, a reserve price will be the least amount of money you are willing to agree to for an item and while it will be your choice to accept a lower price, you will not be required to do so. An additional way of looking at this is that if you are hoping to get $395 and the highest bid is only $325, you will not be required to make the sale and you can end the auction without receiving any negative feedback.
When deciding on a reserve price, you have to consider what the item is actually worth, in other words what is the value of the item, and also how much you actually paid for the item. As soon as you know about how much you think the item should be sold for, you will need to set your reserve for the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept.
You can also select the buy it now option and that means that you will be attempting to sell your item for a set price and this allows possible customers to buy without actually bidding. This means they will be able to pay for the item and buy it instantly. You can also use the buy it now along with a traditional listing and in this case, you will want your buy it now to be equal to whatever your reserve price is set at or at least close to same amount.
Another pricing detail is in your shipping options. Nearly all potential customers will look at the shipping price before bidding on an item so you have to take that into consideration as well. Offering free shipping will most likely bring in more bids but if you have a heavy item that is going to cut into your profits in a big way, you will want to have a shipping price set.
Just remember that most people will have an idea of what they are willing to pay for shipping and keep your shipping prices at a minimum. Another thing to be aware of is that ebay has a policy that states you cannot overprice for shipping just so you make more of a profit from it so be cautious to keep your shipping costs as close to genuine price as possible.
When deciding on any of your prices, you should check out other similar items that are selling or have already sold and keep your prices competitive if you really hope to make the sale. Selling on ebay can be easy when you know how. I hope you have enjoyed reading this article about the importance of setting prices when you decide to sell on ebay.
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eBay Sellers: Find out How Photo Sharing Sites Will Save You Cash
Are you selling stuff online? Possibly you like to sell on ebay? If you do, then you certainly already understand that having pictures on your ebay listings is a significant piece of selling your items online.
Generally ebay buyers won’t even think about buying something if they can’t see a good photo of the item. More often than not they would prefer to see several pictures of an item but this can be expensive on ebay, especially if you sell a lot of items.
I am going to show you how you can give your customers more pictures, which is what they want, and you won’t have to break the bank to do so.
If having more photos in your ebay listings is something you would like to be able to do, then I advise you to think about websites that are called photo sharing sites, if this isn’t something that you have already done. A photo sharing website will allow you to put digital photos or videos online. A lot of ebay sellers are beginning to see the advantage of using photo sharing sites as a way to help keep the cost of having multiple pictures of their items on ebay to a minimum.
If this is something that you are interested in looking into, you will have to find a good photo sharing website. You can search for these online by just typing the search term into google or whatever search engine you may be using.
You will more than likely see PhotoBucket in your results page and this is a free to use, well established photo sharing site. You may want to consider some of the other photo sharing sites but I would suggest that you take a close look at PhotoBucket, since it is a free service and it is simple to use.
Simply fill out the required information to create your account at whatever site you decide to use. You will most likely be required to create a nickname or login id and password but once you have applied and created your account, you should be able to log in and begin using the site to help you start to save some money on your auction listings.
While these sites may all have special instructions on how to use them, one of the first things you will have to do is to have pictures of your ebay items uploaded to your computer. Then just follow the instructions you have been given to add the pictures to your account on the photo sharing site. This is generally a fairly simple step and when you have done it once or twice it will be even easier each time you have to use the service.
By taking the time to appreciate how to use the photo sharing sites, you can begin to see some savings as far as your fees to ebay go. It is absolutely worth the little bit of time it takes to get it right the first time and in the long run you will save money if you have multiple listings on ebay.
Subsequent to uploading your photos, you ought to be able to see what is called a thumbnail of each picture. These are just smaller versions of your photos. You can choose which pictures you want to use in your ebay listings and then you will be able to generate what is known as an html code. Don’t worry if this sounds complicated, you will be shown how to do this step by step on the site.
You should then be taken to a page that has the html code and if you have a good photo sharing site they will give you clear details on how to use the links for your ebay listings. Most likely you will just have to copy and paste the code into your ebay auction description page and you should then be able to see the pictures in your listing.
If you are an ebay seller, odds are that you are trying to make as much profit as possible and while you don’t have to use a photo sharing site, it can be helpful when it comes down to your bottom line.
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My Thoughts On Auction Inspector
There’s one basic mantra for building a successful online business and that is to find and concentrate on a profitable niche.
This perennial advice isn’t just applicable to those who would like to dabble in affiliate marketing but in other forms of business as well. For instance, people who want to sell things in eBay will have to look for a niche in that vast market.
Finding a niche all on your own is a task that I wouldn’t be to crazy about. The good thing though is that a number of software are readily available to help us with searching for that niche.
What Auction Inspector does is to help you find products with a high demand without getting that much competition. Auction Inspector will help you unravel all of those details with the use of eBay’s Want It Now.
eBay’s Want It Now listings is where users can list all the things that they are looking for and that they would be willing to buy.
It wont do any user any good to come up with a niche from that list because everything is unsorted. It’ll take you hours just to go over all of those posts.
But that is where the Auction Inspector comes in. It analyzes everything that is listed in the Want It Now posts. Auction Inspector goes through all of those posts and then comes up with different products that are in demand. And then it analyzes the responses from the sellers to uncover the niche with the greatest demand but the lowest supply.
The software runs on some series of complicated algorithm in order for it to come up with potential for every product.
The software lists products as high potential if they have high demand but the supply is down. Meanwhile, products that have low potential are those that aren’t really in demand with a steady supply
Auction Inspector may do things automatically for you but you also have to be pretty specific with the keyword if you already have a particular product in mind. You may have to wait some several minutes before you can get the results.
You can read my auction inspector review right now to find more information on auction inspector and make an informed decision before purchasing it.