Selling an item on eBay should be simple but it is surprising how many people make some very silly mistakes.

As a buyer this is fantastic, you can pick up some absolute bargains by finding poorly listed items. However, if you are a seller you need to ensure that every item you put on eBay will be found and therefore have a better chance of commanding a high price.

Your auction title is really the most important part of your auction, after all, it is this feature which attracts buyers to view your description.

You have 55 characters to use to attract the bidders, try and use all of them - it is free and the more relevant keywords you can add, the more search results your auction will end up in.

For example:

A listing with the title:
“Band of Brothers Region 2 - 6 DVDs - UK Version - Mint”

is likely to receive a great deal more interest than one with the following title:

“band of brothers dvd”

Also, try and avoid writing the entire title in capitals or using unrelated words like “L@@K” and “W@W”. This simply annoys other eBay users and is not good netiquette.

Never keyword spam either. You see this all of the time on eBay, sellers add unrelated keywords to the title so their auction lands in more search results.

The problem is that these keywords won’t attract more bids but simply attract users who are searching for something else entirely.

If you list an auction for a Playstation 2 but use the title “Playstation 2 not Xbox not Nintendo” it will attract people who are not looking for a Playstation 2. Quite simply, people who are not looking for a PS2 will not buy one.

Your time would be better served adding more relevant keywords to the title. “Sony Playstation 2 (PS2) - Mint in Box - No Reserve” is a much better title.

Where possible, try and include descriptive keywords to attract bidders. Some good examples are the following:

Rare, Mint, OOP (Out of Print), Low P&P, No Reserve or NR, Low Starting Price, 1p Starting Bid, Brand New etc

Ensure you spell check your title before you list it. This is easy to do if you write the title in Microsoft Word first. If you spell an important keyword incorrectly you will miss out on a lot of potential bidders.

To make the title look more attractive, add a capital to the front of every major keyword.

“Microsoft Xbox - Mint in Box with 4 Games - No Reserve”

looks more attractive and stands out more than

“microsoft xbox - mint in box with 4 games - no reserve”

If you are unsure of the best way to write your title, try searching for the same item under Completed Listings and see how others have done it before.

If their auctions have commanded high winning bids then their titles have worked.

Don’t be afraid to copy them.

Ben Catt is an active eBay buyer and seller and runs an eBay Tips and Tricks website found at http://www.BenCatt.com.
He also runs a business opportunity information site - http://www.BizOppsUK.com

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eBay is an online auction site so it stands to reason that most users will tend to auction off their items aiming to get a high price.

The problem with auctioning items is that eBay can be a very fickle place, one week an item may sell for hundreds of pounds but the next week the same item may sell for pennies.

Your success rate on eBay is affected by the number of people who are willing, and able, to bid large amounts on your items. If the buyers can’t, for some reason, bid high amounts on one particular auction, you run the risk of losing money.

There is no way of telling when an item will sell for a high amount. If there was, there would be many more very successful eBayers out there.

One way you can almost guarantee you will sell an item for a good price is to use a Buy It Now (BIN) listing.

In order to use BINs successfully, you have to get the price right. Too high and it will not sell. Too low and it will be bought almost immediately, probably by a competitor who will relist it to try and profit from your mistake.

So, how can you use a BIN listing to profit?

If you’ve got a good idea how much the item is worth, list it for that price as a BIN. If you don’t know how much it is worth, try searching for it in the Completed Listings searches.

In my case, I was quite successful selling DVDs with BIN listings. I simply searched for the DVD I was selling in the completed listings section, sorted by Highest Price and then listed my item at the highest price I could find which had sold.

At times, I also added a little more to the price. Why? Because the great benefit of BIN listings is that impatient buyers can get them almost immediately without having to wait for an auction to end and without running the risk of losing out to another bidder.

If you cannot find the item in the completed listings section or it is very rare and you are unsure of the value, list the item with a very high (almost ridiculous) price. Any potential buyers will find the item, provided you have listed it correctly.

Let the listing run for the full 10 days; it is a very good idea to always use 10 day BIN listings as you pay the same price as a 1, 3, 5 or 7 day listing and get more coverage.

If the item doesn’t sell, don’t be tempted to drop the price or auction it off. Too many people do this and lose money. Remember, patience is a virtue.

Instead, list it again but this time add more text to the description telling viewers that you are open to offers. You may well find that someone will contact you through the “Ask Seller a Question” link offering you a quick payment if you are prepared to sell for

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