Sometimes just a few small tasks make all the difference between making a few dollars profit on eBay and generating a small fortune each month. These ideas will help you make more from your listings. * I find a scanner sometimes produces far better pictures than a digital camera, albeit some items are too big or heavy and might damage our delicate equipment. Use it for smaller, lighter items and place them gently onto the bed to avoid scratching the surface. DO NOT SCAN POINTED ITEMS OR OTHERS WITH SHARP EDGES that is a definite shortcut to disaster. * Dont write or price directly and indelibly onto delicate items. For example, write in ink on a stamp or book, append a price label onto a second hand toy, tie a tag onto a delicate necklace, and value drops drastically. * Do keep items as close to original state as possible. For example, leave toys in boxes, book with dustcovers, sets of postcards in original envelopes, records in original sleeves. * Do repair what you can without spoiling the item or reducing its value. Toys, jewellery and most household goods can be cleaned, clothing can be repaired or refashioned, marks can be removed from some pictures and prints. For rare items like paintings, postcards, stamps, consult an expert or leave it alone. * Do consider if something can be done to an item to increase perceived value and price and interest a wider audience. Prints from early magazines can be removed, cleaned, coloured and framed, for example, and modern dolls and toys can be touched up and combined into multi-item offerings. Stamps are another good example of items often worth little on their own, but sorted into themes, say space travel, Disney, Elvis Presley, bagged and priced low, can attract multiple bids. * Do stay within the law or risk fines, imprisonment or a possible end to your business for passing off modern goods as antique, intentionally mis-describing goods, trading in stolen items. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. In most cases stolen items can be reclaimed by their real owners, while Trading Standards have wide-ranging powers to confiscate or withdraw iffy items from sale. Thats if eBay doesnt cut you off sooner. * Offer a free gift with your products. This helps cut competition where your listed product is available from numerous sources. The gift does not have to be expensive, but it should be unique. Useful examples include: a book you've written or compiled yourself; a gift certificate for a discount on other of your products; a key ring or other small novelty created especially by or for your business. * Sell 'must have' items eBay sellers needed to run their business and attract regular, repeat business. Choose products in constant need of replenishment such as packaging, craftwork materials, jewellery findings. You'll also find people contacting you to buy outside of eBay which helps keep your listing fees low. * From second-hand buying sources like boot sales and flea markets look for multiple same-product items in need of repair or renovation. Few people want to repair items themselves so prices will invariably be low for damaged goods. Take the best parts from each item and create one or several perfect or near-perfect items to resell. We did this recently with a pair of Black American Money Boxes with movable parts. One box was dirty and paint badly damaged, with mechanical parts unaffected. The other was clean and unscratched but the moving bits were missing. With good bits from each matched and remodelled the money box made 40 pure profit. * Make a big thing of proving the authenticity ('provenance') of your products, by including historical details in your listing or as a separate document to go with the product. Or do both and you'll find words used inside your listing will attract greater search engine traffic, while the separate document buyers receive will increase perceived value of your product. |
