That’s just the way the whole world works, isn’t it? - some people know how to produce things cheaply, some people know how to find markets for them and sell smaller quantities for more money.
Digicams are on what…5-6th “generation” or so? You can pick up a 1-2 generation old digicam pretty cheap, and it will take better pictures than 99% of ebay listing photos. IF you use good lighting, a steady hold (tripod?) and for OG’s sake, focus! A bad cell phone camera is about as good as the first gen. digicams, and a hi-res phone camera will compete with most ebay listings.
Seriously, good pictures are probably the best investment you can make as an ebay seller. They reduce the anxiety of the buyer not being able to physically examine the merchandise, and that anxiety is the biggest obstical to profit. BTW, on anything used you MUST have pictures of the actual item. “representative” pictures are only acceptable if the item is sealed NIB, and unpacking it for pictures would lower the value.
I’ve been puzzled about how the bid pricing is announced on EBAY. Suppose you bid $100 on an item-it might display $12.00-then someone else bids $50-it might display $60.
Only when another bidder passes your bid, does the auction supply an actual bid price.
Anyone know how scam artists exploit this?
I don’t know how, but I’ve long suspected there is a way. There have been multiple times that I have put a maximum bid on an item that is above the starting price, and then I will check it later and it has gone up to my exact maximum bid, after literally one bid from someone else. It’s happened more than once. Maybe just coincidence, I dunno.
you bid $50. The next bidder bids $100. The current bid is $51. If he had bid $50.95, the current bid would be $50 and you would be the high bidder.
I am strictly a buyer on eBay.
Do not imbed music in your auctions. I like to buy hard to find (for me at least) fabric, and this seems to be a favorite of that groupset. I usually do my searching after the house is asleep, so you can imagine the heart attack that induces.
I’m not a fan of the caps or the alternating caps either I’ll just skip over the auction. As others have said, paypal, pictures, reasonable shipping & handling, good descriptions - especially of flaws, leave out all that crazy crap about how shitty eBay is, or how you’ll hunt folks down who don’t pay. I don’t mind the feedback dance of ‘give feedback when you are satisfied and I shall return the same’.
That’s just because the automatic bid increment system doesn’t bother filling in all the possible bids between what it was and what it is now.
The amount you enter is really a “maximum bid”. As other people bid on the item, eBay automatically raises your bid to match their bids up to that maximum amount.
A dishonest seller can exploit the system using a separate account. Let’s say the item’s starting price is $30; you enter a $100 maximum bid, but there are no other bidders, so the current price remains at $30. The seller suspects your max bid is much more than $30, so he uses a second account and bids a large amount. eBay raises your bid to $100, so now the seller knows your maximum bid. He then cancels his bid (he’s also the seller, so he can do that), then again using the second account, bids $99 on the item. You end up paying $100 for it.
Actually I don’t know if it works exactly like that - I think (hope) you have to be a bit less obvious than this to get away with it. Needless to say, it’s against eBay’s rules.
One way the buyer can avoid it is by using a “sniping” software or service. I use Bidnapper, but there are many others. What it does is enter your bid into eBay at the last second. So the nobody knows you’re planning to bid on it - including the seller. You also avoid calling attention to the item and starting a bidding war.
Linen seller here. What’s with that??!! Agh.
There was a bit of a rash of stuff like that on ebay a couple of years back - embedded music that plays when you view the listing, some atrocious little gnome of a wizard that zips about on the page, supposedly helping you and scripts that make whirly things chase your mouse cursor around.
They’re all at least slightly clever, but they are also all utterly horrible. For every one person who likes them, hundreds will click away.
There’s really nothing you can do in your listing that’s better than being completely honest and explicitly informative about your item. If you try to ‘sell it up’, some people will be put off and others will be disappointed when they buy it and it doesn’t live up to the hype.
Several crisp pictures and clear, well-written text, formatted and laid out to be pleasing to the eye - not yellow on black, not 72 point multicoloured comic sans - sure, use a bit of colour and style, but remember it’s the content that really matters, so you have to do everything you can to make reading it a pleasant experience.