eBay Selling Tips For Your Home Based Business Opportunity

When small businesses approach eBay and its vast number of categories and subcategories, they are often easily intimidated by the size of that is seemingly staring them down. Many questions arise: “what category do I put my item, where do I get pictures, what is the ideal listing duration, how much should I list it for, is the sell your item form the ONLY way to put an item on – it is SO SLOW, how do I take payment?” and the list could literally go on forever. I hope to address to an extent at least most of these points, and hopefully you’ll feel better taking the next steps to dominating eBay.
Choosing your eBay listing category is the first step you take when listing your item. Your category is important because those who browse categories will find what they are looking for more quickly. Although picking your category is important, using a keyword rich title for your item that utilizes all 55 characters of space is the biggest key to getting your item found. Research shows that 87% of eBay buyers use keyword search by title to find the items they buy.
A picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve all heard this saying, and it definitely holds true when selling online. Since there are quite a few lightly used items that make their way to eBay, it is important to be as truthful as possible when describing or illustrating the condition of an item for sale. I have sold used items for more because I took extra shots to show a close up of a snag, tear, or crazing (in pottery).  Believe it or not, I have sold these items for more than those being sold as new or in retail condition.
There are a lot of variables to determine the best listing duration. I have seen my sales increase by half again by lowering my listing durations from seven days to three days because eBay search will bring up “items ending soonest by default” so my items would return at the top of the results sooner each listing cycle, so it made sense to boost them to the top more often. This doesn’t make sense every time. You may end up with an item that will be best listed on the site for a total of two weekends. If you want to accomplish this, you can choose a listing duration of 10 days and list it on a Thursday evening. That way, it will run the first weekend, and expire the following Sunday night. If your margins and price points for the product allow, you can feature the item so it stays at the very top of the search for the entire 10 days.
This post could literally go on for pages and pages. I will be concluding this with additional tips on pricing, eBay listing and management software, and taking payments for your auctions /web sales. All of these factors will help greatly when you develop legitimate home based business ideas.