eBay Tricks for Success

Yesterday I got a call from eBay’s Seller Outreach department. They gave me some useful tips on improving my sales. Here they are:

• Optimized Title 
  Put keywords closer to the beginning of your listing titles than at the end. e.g.
  BAD:  8GB RAM Quad Core Processor T420 Thinkpad Laptop by Lenovo
  GOOD: Lenovo T420 Thinkpad Laptop Quad Processor, 8GB RAM, other selling points
• Offer FREE Shipping
  You can price an item $5.00 and charge $2.50 for shipping or you can price the item $7.50 with FREE shipping. By offering FREE shipping, eBay will automatically give you 5 stars for your shipping and handling rating category. Plus, people like “free”. Of course, free could just be for the cheapest shipping. You can charge extra for priority or overnight shipping.
•  Custom Fields
  When creating a listing you can add many custom fields  like Condition: New, Material: Wood. Adding custom fields will help you get found.
• Put Links To Your Website From Your “About Me” Page
  eBay doesn’t allow external links in product listings. But, you can put external links in your “About Me” page.
• Offer Discounts
  Create a Facebook Fan page and link to it from your “About Me” page. In your product listings, tell customers they can get 10% off by going to your “About Me” page and “fanning” you. Then, they can notify you when that’s done so you can apply the discount before they pay.
• Use 30-Day Good Till Canceled and Don’t Let Listings Expire
  Each listing shows the number sold. The larger this number, the higher the listing gets in search results. Don’t let listings expire so that this number continues to grow.
• eBays Apps
  Browse eBay Apps and use some apps like the “Analytics” app to help you manage.
• eBay Advanced Seller Guide