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    <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/?sAtom=1" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" />
    <author>
        <name>MarkSight</name>
    </author>
    <title>Blog/Atom feed</title>
    <id>https://marksight.com/blog/?sRss=1</id>
    <updated>2026-05-01T12:37:48+02:00</updated>
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Selling used books online</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/selling-used-books-online</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/selling-used-books-online"/>
            <summary type="html">
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                                            Back when I started my first semester in college, I spent roughly $500 on required textbooks alone. This was a lot of money for me (it still is), and I immediately started to look for a better way.
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 &amp;nbsp; 
  Back when  I started my first semester in college, I spent roughly  $500  on required textbooks alone. This was a lot of money for me (it still is), and I immediately started to look for a better way. The answer for me was buying the same books on Amazon and eBay as cheap as possible, normally second hand/used quality but still in good shape.&amp;nbsp; Then I would turn around and sell the used books online. 
 How to sell used books on Amazon? 
 Sell your used book on Amazon by first finding your book in search results, and going into the book details.&amp;nbsp; On the left side, you will usually see a section called &quot; Have one to sell? &quot;.&amp;nbsp; Click the button &quot; Sell on Amazon &quot;, and follow the short instructions to list your book, and make sure to include your book condition.&amp;nbsp; For reference, have a look at  Amazon&#039;s selling FAQ , where it&#039;s mentioned that small sellers have &quot; no monthly subscription fee. Instead, Individuals pay $0.99 per item sold plus other selling fees, which vary by category &quot;.&amp;nbsp; Having no monthly fees is perfect for us! 
 I would use those books for the semester and  resell them back online afterward . This often even resulted in a small profit. Most importantly, when I look back, this resulted in having the books for free at a minimum. And over 8 semesters, this is a nice saving.&amp;nbsp; I hope that some college student out there will find this and save some money, and perhaps even make money at the same time. 
 The problem with buying books at the university bookstore 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
  Above is a typical textbook that was required  for one of my math courses. 
 The picture shows my actual University online book store.  That&#039;s $105 for just one book!  This was a good introduction for me to the &quot;business&quot; of higher education. My main issue here wasn&#039;t just the money, but I was already used to having pre-owned books in high school, and I kind of knew the books weren&#039;t that useful after the courses will end. The value just wasn&#039;t there. So, I started to research. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Online research, eBay and Amazon 
 I searched all over the place. At the time, eBay was bigger than Amazon but the problem there was the waiting period for an auction to end, and the buy-it-now listings tended to be more expensive than I&#039;d like. Another thing was, I needed the guarantee to get the book. Amazon provided the best combination of all. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Pictured above is the same book on Amazon.&amp;nbsp; The new book is twice as expensive as the University book store price. That&#039;s probably because the University has some special deal with the publishers.&amp;nbsp; The more interesting part for me was the used price. 
 Notice how the used book is $20 cheaper than the new one! This was what I needed. Even if it had some writing or wrinkles, as long as I could do my homework and follow the course, I was fine. For the semester, I&#039;d have to research only 5-6 books like this and find the best deals.  This alone, gave me a roughly 20% discount on all of my books together.  
   Here&#039;s a tip for you, sometimes the University library carries the same books, so you can just take it out for free for the whole semester!   I took out several computer science books like this, and I bet this is still true today. 
 What to do with textbooks when the semester ends? 
 
   
 I took good care of the books. If I saw some pencil writing, I&#039;d erase it. If there was a tear, I&#039;d glue the paper back in place. The next thing I did was register as a seller on Amazon, and use the link pictured below from Amazon&#039;s site to list one book at a time. Again, this wasn&#039;t a lot of work because I only had a handful of books, and this was a lot easier than creating eBay auctions.   Since Amazon charges a 15% fee on book sales, I raised my prices to cover just this fee.  In a matter of weeks, they were all sold: mission accomplished!  I did a little math on this at the time, and I pretty much broke even. This was not a bad thing, because all my friends were down $500... 
 
 Looking for profits 
 Here&#039;s the thing about turning this idea into a business.&amp;nbsp; You as a student, are  required to get the books !&amp;nbsp; Think about it, by analogy you&#039;re&amp;nbsp; forced  to invest in a &quot;startup&quot;.&amp;nbsp; Now, what you do with this investment is up to you.&amp;nbsp; You can squander it, or you can turn it into an opportunity. 
 In the next semesters, I tried many different things. Researching and selling on eBay, or changing prices slightly. The best approach for me was:  raise the price by about 25% , and let the book sit a bit longer on Amazon. Often, when the cheapest used books were sold off, mine would be sold next. And actually, this happened a lot just before a semester would start.&amp;nbsp; This whole system was nice, and  I normally ended up with an extra $20-$30  after selling all the books from the previous semester, a nice $5 - $6 profit per book.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 The math here is easy to follow.&amp;nbsp; If we buy the book pictured above as a used item from Amazon, this costs $85.64 (assuming free shipping).&amp;nbsp; When it&#039;s your time to resell the book, put it up for $85.64 x 1.25 = $107.05.&amp;nbsp; I would round it to a nice $109, and offer free shipping.&amp;nbsp;  Notice how this price of $109 would still be cheaper than all the other used book options on Amazon?&amp;nbsp;  This means when the current $85 book is sold, you will be next in line, and you&#039;ll surely sell.&amp;nbsp; There wasn&#039;t even one book that I put up online like this, that did not eventually sell.&amp;nbsp; Let&#039;s say you sell the book for $109, and ship it out on your own, which will probably cost about $4, what&#039;s your profit?&amp;nbsp; Amazon will take 15%, so you end up with:  $109 - ($16.35 Amazon fee) - $4 (shipping) = $88.65.&amp;nbsp; That&#039;s a $3 profit  - not much but hey, it proves the system works! 
 In case you&#039;re wondering why someone would buy a used book for $109 if it&#039;s available for $105 in my University book store, there are 2 real-life scenarios that can happen.&amp;nbsp; First,  the college book store can run out of the book  - this happened to me a few times, and then the waiting period is like 2 weeks until they get more.&amp;nbsp; The other thing that can happen is, your University doesn&#039;t have the special discounted price, and the Amazon pre-owned option is now your least expensive option.&amp;nbsp; 
  By the way, this reminds me of another tip:  check your local college book store for  discounts on TI-84 calculators !&amp;nbsp; They tend to be cheaper than  the same options on Amazon  or eBay, and so you can play a little arbitrage.&amp;nbsp; But you didn&#039;t hear this from me ;) 
 Flipping used books as a business 
 Being a nerd, I created a  web application for myself which would track the hottest selling items on eBay . What was important for me was, seeing the actual items, and also the keywords in the titles. This was how the MarkSight project was born. I used this information to try and seek out the same books in libraries (they normally have a $1 book section), book store sales and even back on Amazon. Looking back now, this was a great idea and is still valid even today. Even with today&#039;s technologies, I wouldn&#039;t bet on textbooks going away any time soon. 
 For example,   check out the same math book here on eBay. &amp;nbsp; Notice how it can sell for anything between $50 and $125, that&#039;s a super-wide margin worth taking advantage of.&amp;nbsp;  These tips will help you to sell more used books on eBay .&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Use the old proven principle of buy low, sell high and you will do better than your friends.&amp;nbsp; Once you start to make some book sales on Amazon,  tell your friends that you&#039;ll pay them more than the book store , and you&#039;ll get additional inventory to resell. 
 The eBay results page shows there are a lot of sales, and the prices vary a lot! For me, this means that a comfortable 10% - 20% margin is always possible. Check out a couple of screenshots of the MarkSight eBay research application below, which take this principle even further by studying the market. 
 Item/product research 
 The  top-selling list in the research application  has a huge list of over  10,000  items that are currently selling like hotcakes. Every item has at least 75% sell-through, which is crazy. Best of all, the Books category has many items that meet these criteria.&amp;nbsp; This is a gold mine of information that isn&#039;t available anywhere else online. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
  Keywords that help your eBay listings get more exposure.&amp;nbsp;  The trick to follow is easy and goes like this: work backward from most expensive to least expensive price groups.&amp;nbsp; Each group will have its own set of keywords as in the picture below.&amp;nbsp; Pick out the  keywords that describe your product or item , and make sure to  include those words in your title .&amp;nbsp; For example, as in the screenshot below, including the edition will increase your final sales price.&amp;nbsp; You&#039;d be amazed how far this can take your listing! 
   
 Use this knowledge to flip books online for side income 
 College book stores are there to make money from you. It&#039;s important you realize that you have other options, which truly enable you to get the same books at such a price, that you can at least break even. And in today&#039;s world, if you manage this then you&#039;ll not only save money but will also be on your way to financial success.&amp;nbsp; The lessons learned from spending wisely, and also selling like a pro will be life long.&amp;nbsp; Strangely, they don&#039;t teach you these principles in higher education. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-10-19T12:00:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Best day to end your eBay auction - for maximum profit</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/best-day-to-end-your-ebay-auction-for-maximum-profit</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/best-day-to-end-your-ebay-auction-for-maximum-profit"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Did you know that ending your eBay listing on a certain day can give you an 11% boost in the final sales price? Use our research tools to discover the best day to end your eBay auction.
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
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 What&#039;s the best day to end your eBay auction? 
   The best day to end eBay auctions/listings is Sunday.&amp;nbsp; That&#039;s because Sunday normally gets the most amount of sales.&amp;nbsp; The days with the highest sales are ordered as follows:   
 
  Sunday 6:30 pm PST (most sales and fair average sales price)  
  Monday  
  Saturday  
  Tuesday  
  Thursday  
  Friday  
  Wednesday (least sales)  
  
 &amp;nbsp; 
  The best days  to end your eBay listing has been a topic of debate  since the early days of the online portal .&amp;nbsp; The theory is, certain days of week or hours of day tend to perform better for the seller.&amp;nbsp; And there have been all kinds of rumors spread, which we&#039;ll try to address here. 
 We invested time to research this in-depth and came up with some surprising results.&amp;nbsp; The quick answer is just that  Sunday  is best.&amp;nbsp; But really, it depends on what you&#039;re trying to accomplish. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
  Doing  basic best-practices for your eBay business  will also go a long way.  
  Look for new ways to use the platform such as to  resell phones .  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Please check below a chart of actual eBay sales summed up across all categories.&amp;nbsp; We also include the average item sales price.&amp;nbsp; Only sold listings are considered here.&amp;nbsp; We&#039;ll refer to this chart in the rest of the editorial below. 
   
  Actual eBay sales statistics, including average item sales price  
 I have to admit, I&#039;m extremely proud of the results, and I have never seen a chart like this covering every hour of every weekday.&amp;nbsp; The data-source was 2 months worth of eBay auction sales from top sellers.&amp;nbsp; The most prominent feature here is, Sunday has most sales and therefore gives you the highest probability that your item will sell.&amp;nbsp;  But there&#039;s a twist, other days and hours tend to have higher average sales prices, so read on!  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Every item can sell on different days 
 We provide both  free research tools  and  paid ones  for our subscribers, which have daily sales tables.&amp;nbsp; Below are the results for researching the past 7 days worth of &quot;iPhone&quot; sales on our homepage. 
   
  iPhone sales statistics, Sunday has most sales, Wednesday tends to fetch the highest price  
 And this brings us to a simple conclusion that the best day is really up to you.&amp;nbsp; Do you want to  maximize your chance of selling, or maximize your price , or a combination of both?&amp;nbsp; Every day has something about it that&#039;s both good and bad for you as a seller. 
 The lesson here is, you should recheck every item before selling it.&amp;nbsp; From what I&#039;ve seen, some items could perform better on any day, and  Sunday is nothing more than just a rule of thumb . 
 From the example above, I like Wednesday the most, because it provides over 10% more in the final sales price than Sunday.&amp;nbsp;  Sunday here has the lowest price, which is good for buyers, not good for sellers!  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Best hours of the day&amp;nbsp; 
 By far,  6:00 pm PST (Pacific time) or 9:00 PM EST (Eastern time) is the best hour  to end your listing on any given day.&amp;nbsp; This hour seems special somehow.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s like the whole country has finished dinner, and comes online to shop all at once.&amp;nbsp; One thing I see here is, with the exception for Sunday, all days tend to have a slight drop in average sales price at this hour.&amp;nbsp; This tells me that any sales boost normally comes at the expense of the final sales price. 
 Monday 8:00 pm PST, and Tuesday 2:00 am PST are two hours that have a low sales volume, but a crazy jump in the final sales price.&amp;nbsp; The same thing repeats on Wed and Thursday.&amp;nbsp; This doesn&#039;t seem like a coincidence to me.&amp;nbsp; Although I&#039;m not sure for the reason,  I&#039;d be glad to hear any theories from readers in the comments below.  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Strategies to maximize our profits 
 I propose 2 different strategies based on the kind of item we&#039;re selling.&amp;nbsp; Besides item research we should always be doing, let&#039;s consider 2 types:  a common item vs. a one of a kind item .&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re selling a one of a kind item (like a rare painting, or a product you make with your own hands), then please be advised to just sell on Sunday at 6:30 pm PST. 
 But if you&#039;re selling a product like a smartphone, where you have lots of other competing sellers, you actually might do better by selling on another day!&amp;nbsp; For example, from the above charts,  if I were selling an iPhone, I&#039;d go with Wednesday at 8:00 pm PST.  
 It also depends on what kind of seller you are.&amp;nbsp; I&#039;m a small-time seller, so I can generally afford to wait and experiment with my listings to get that extra few percent of income.&amp;nbsp; A seller who&#039;s in this as a business might not have the same time luxury and may be better advised to use the hours with most sales. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Other anomalies to notice 
 After 6:00 pm PST, the number of sales tends to drop, and price tends to rise sharply.&amp;nbsp; Just check the chart again, and you&#039;ll notice that  7-9pm PST usually has an 11% upward spike in average price .&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  11:00 pm PST to 3:00 am PST are normally dead hours. &amp;nbsp; The sales here are so small.&amp;nbsp;  BUT,  these hours tend to have a huge move up in price - as much as 15% on Monday nights.&amp;nbsp; I think one explanation for this might be that whoever is shopping at this time might want to finalize the purchase now instead of waiting.&amp;nbsp; The buyers know they missed the good sales already, and the next ones will come only next evening.&amp;nbsp; Some of them look like they&#039;re willing to close an auction now instead of waiting an extra day. 
  Saturday is worse than Monday. &amp;nbsp; One thing I notice is, Saturday looks like any other day of the week for eBay.&amp;nbsp; Why is that?&amp;nbsp; Isn&#039;t Saturday normally a day off for people, just like Sunday?&amp;nbsp; Maybe I&#039;m a bit too scientific here, but I just don&#039;t have a good logical reason for this anomaly. 
  Lunch hour  seems to make no difference on any day.&amp;nbsp; I&#039;ve read in older posts online that lunch hour was a good time to sell, but according to the data collected here, lunch is not even a blip on any data at all.&amp;nbsp; My feeling is, people don&#039;t use the lunch hour to shop on eBay anymore.&amp;nbsp; And with Smartphones these days, you can shop at any time without impacting work. 
 I think these are extremely useful insights, which could help all kinds of eBay sellers out there.&amp;nbsp; Be on the lookout for these kinds of small inefficiencies, and use them to your advantage. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 eBay listing scheduler tool 
 The good folks at eBay give you the option to list your item for sale on a certain day and time.&amp;nbsp; This option used to cost money, but now it&#039;s a free feature.&amp;nbsp; Please check below a screenshot of it, and the basic options you can choose.&amp;nbsp; You have the option to schedule your listing for both auctions and fixed-price listings.&amp;nbsp; If a few days difference doesn&#039;t matter to you, then you should pick the best day and hour here. 
 One thing to note here is, eBay always uses PST (Pacific Standard Time).&amp;nbsp; This is great for California residents, but if you&#039;re working out of New York, please subtract 3 hours in your selection from your local time.&amp;nbsp; For example, like the selected time below, it&#039;s 6:30 pm PST, and 9:30 pm EST. 
   
  eBay listing &quot;Schedule to start on&quot; option &amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Automated bidding tools 
 The eBay marketplace is different now from what it was 20 years ago.&amp;nbsp; With the introduction of  automated eBay bidding tools , the game is changing all the time.&amp;nbsp; If certain sellers find a way to sell at a higher price, other sellers come in to fill the empty voids left behind.&amp;nbsp; For example, few sellers would recommend selling your item at midnight on Tuesday,  unless you knew this hour has a major move up in price  because all the other auctions are already closed.&amp;nbsp; 
 And buyers try to gain an edge too, by using auto-bidding robots.&amp;nbsp; To me, it all looks like an ever-changing environment, where if you look closely, you can  always find a market inefficiency to fill .&amp;nbsp; This means that you have to always stay on top of your game, and research will help with that. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Conclusion 
 I hope the charts and insights provided here are helpful for all the eBay sellers (and buyers!) out there.&amp;nbsp; If you notice some other things in the charts that I missed, please be sure to comment below. 
 Please be sure you check out our  eBay research    tools subscription plans  , where you can get lots of  eBay sales data  to help you get an edge ahead of your competition.&amp;nbsp; We also maintain a list of top-selling items, which are already proven to be in high demand by eBay buyers.&amp;nbsp; You can use such a list to find products to sell online.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 Selling on the optimal day and hour will tend to get you one of two things,  either a 10-15% boost in sales price or 10-15% in the chance of selling your item .&amp;nbsp; From what I can see, you can&#039;t get both.&amp;nbsp; If you have some experience to share, please do so and you&#039;re also welcome to correct my errors if you see any. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-10-09T02:15:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Sending offers to watchers on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/sending-offers-to-watchers-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/sending-offers-to-watchers-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Sending an offer to your listing watchers can drive your sales forward. If your listing has watchers, don&#039;t miss this opportunity. Read our complete guide on how to do this properly.
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 Click Play and listen to this article 
      
  eBay introduced a new function  to allow sellers to  send offers to listing watchers .&amp;nbsp; Many of us sellers have been waiting a long time for this because it&#039;s interesting to have new ways to connect with our buyers.&amp;nbsp; Since eBay&#039;s early days, we were  never allowed  to even try contacting buyers (and many have tried).&amp;nbsp; And now, with the new &quot; offer to watchers &quot; feature, we&#039;re finally able to do this, and all within the eBay platform. Check out the comments below for common pitfalls. 
 
 How to send an offer to listing watchers? 
  Follow these steps to send an offer to your listing watchers:   
 
  Open your Selling page and go to your Active listings  
  For each Fixed Price listing that has watchers, you have a button to &quot;Send Offer&quot;  
  On the Send Offer page, enter your offer price, which must be at least 5% less than your Fixed Price  
  You can fill in an optional note to the buyer  
  Click &quot;Send offer to Buyer&quot;, your offer is valid for 48 hours  
 
  After sending your offer, the watcher has the option to accept the offer or just let it expire.  
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 The following are screenshots that clarify  the whole process .&amp;nbsp; Once you understand how it works, it should go quickly for you, and you&#039;ll be sending offers to your listing watchers in no time. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Rules for sending offers to your listing watchers 
 You cannot send offers for auctions, only for  fixed price listings  or buy it now listings.&amp;nbsp; Also, you can&#039;t send more than one offer to the same watcher.&amp;nbsp; This is to avoid sellers hassling potential buyers by resending too many offers.&amp;nbsp; If your listing is not older than 10 days, then you&#039;ll have to wait.&amp;nbsp; Only listings older than 10 days have this option.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 The offer price you choose has to be a discount because it only makes sense this way.&amp;nbsp; And you have to give at least 5% off your listing price. 
 Your offer can only be sent to at most 10 watchers at a time.&amp;nbsp; Just like with Best Offers from buyers, your seller offer is binding and you  cannot withdraw it  - just keep this in mind. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Send offer to watchers link 
 The user interface is still not perfect and eBay continues to improve it.&amp;nbsp; Many people complain that they simply don&#039;t get the button to send an offer, or they do have it but it&#039;s not shown for some listing.&amp;nbsp; To get around this, you can use this  shortcut  offer to watchers URL below: 
  https://ofr.ebay.com/offerapp/sio/createOffer/XYZ  
 Just replace the XYZ with your item ID, and open the URL in your browser.&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re not logged in, eBay will first ask you to enter their system.&amp;nbsp; If you entered a wrong ID, eBay will give you an &quot;invalid item&quot; warning.&amp;nbsp; But if you did everything correctly, you should recognize your listing picture and title.&amp;nbsp; You&#039;re all set! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How much of a discount should I offer? 
 The amount you offer is up to you to decide, but I like to offer a nice round number.&amp;nbsp; For example, if I&#039;m selling an item for $100, I would send an offer for $90, which is 10% less than the listing price.&amp;nbsp; eBay requires that you offer at least a 5% discount, but in my experience, this is usually not very interesting to buyers. 
  Here&#039;s another trick you can use.&amp;nbsp;  You can slightly increase your price when you set up your listing.&amp;nbsp; And when watchers come in, make them an offer where you remove the difference.&amp;nbsp; eBayer sellers do this all the time now. 
  Read about&amp;nbsp; how to make money on eBay  for more tips like this.  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Send offer to watchers message to use 
 This is where things start to get more interesting.&amp;nbsp; Along with your offer, you can send your watchers a  short message .&amp;nbsp; Most eBayers just leave it blank, but I think  that&#039;s a mistake .&amp;nbsp; Remember, you&#039;re messaging the buyer for a reason - to close the sale.&amp;nbsp; And looking at it from the buyer&#039;s perspective, only getting a number from you is kind of dry.&amp;nbsp; So, write a note and you should have a better response.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 When I write this message, I like to put in something that makes the offer stand out.&amp;nbsp; Something like &quot;A little discount for you ;)&quot; can go a long way, and just these few words sold a lot of listings for me.&amp;nbsp; Be creative and polite here because the watcher is getting an unexpected email now. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 What happens if an interested buyer accepts my offer? 
 When the buyer accepts your offer, the next steps  work the same as when your listing is sold .&amp;nbsp; The buyer will make a payment like usual and you will be notified about the proceeds.&amp;nbsp; In the email message, you will receive the shipping address, and you should ship the item quickly.&amp;nbsp; Sometimes the buyer will respond to your offer message too, and they&#039;re always grateful for the discount. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Criticism about downward pressure on prices 
 Unfortunately, eBay has received some criticism about this feature.&amp;nbsp; I think this is a big misunderstanding on the part of the seller community.&amp;nbsp; First of all, you can only send an offer for an item that just  isn&#039;t selling .&amp;nbsp; And making a sale is better than not, that&#039;s how I see it.&amp;nbsp; Making prices more negotiable does also stay with the original spirit of the platform, which rose to fame with online auctions, which are actually just one way to negotiate between buyers and sellers. 
 The downward pressure on prices comes from one thing,  there is an abundance  of just about any item you can think of.&amp;nbsp; It is this abundance that lowers prices in the end, and not the ability for you or your competitors to make offers. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Conclusion 
 This should serve as a good guide for you to start making offers to watchers.&amp;nbsp; You can use the offer pricing and messaging strategies discussed here to  increase your sales on eBay .&amp;nbsp; You won&#039;t be increasing your sales prices (the opposite), but this is a useful tool to have especially when  eBay sales are down .&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 You still have the freedom to not use this functionality, but at least you can if you want to.&amp;nbsp; Again, I think this is a great feature to have, and I&#039;m sure I will use it for as long as it exists. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-10-08T02:00:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Best size for eBay photos</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/best-size-for-ebay-photos</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/best-size-for-ebay-photos"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            What&#039;s the best size for eBay photos? Follow this guide and you&#039;ll have the best looking photos with perfect aspect ratio.
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                <![CDATA[
                  We have done some trials with different file formats , aspect ratios and sizes to come up with a list of criteria for the  best size for eBay photos  for your eBay listings and auctions.&amp;nbsp; This was done on some of our actual eBay listings. The listings were tested on both  desktop and mobile phones  to see which photo parameters use up maximum provided space, while also looking good.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 eBay already recommends to use 1600 pixel photos, but they never seem to mention the full width and height that should be used by sellers.&amp;nbsp; They also don&#039;t go into aspect ratios and file type recommendations.&amp;nbsp; So, let&#039;s do this ourselves and come up with a good guide to follow. 
 Our basic assumption in this study is, the more area your photo takes up, the better.&amp;nbsp; And the reasoning for this is quite simple - bigger photos tend to catch more visitor attention, and this in turn eventually translates into higher sales.&amp;nbsp; Imagine if you could increase your sales by 5% if you only made your pictures 5% larger, wouldn&#039;t you do it?&amp;nbsp; 
  Check our other  eBay selling tips for beginners , and  learn how to  turn eBay into a long-term business .  
 
 What&#039;s the best size for eBay photos? 
  The following are the best parameters for having good eBay photos in your listings:   
   
 
  1600x1600 pixels  
  1:1 aspect ratio (square photo)  
  JPG (or JPEG) file format  
  7MB maximum file size, but you will likely use only a tenth of this  
 
   eBay has very loose  requirements for photos &amp;nbsp;and  photo tips .&amp;nbsp; The minimum size is 500x500 pixels and the maximum is 9000x9000.&amp;nbsp; And almost all file formats are accepted.&amp;nbsp; This leaves a lot of room for possibilities and experimentation.&amp;nbsp;   
  However, from our experience and trials, we found that the absolute best results come from 1600x1600 photos encoded in JPG format.&amp;nbsp; The 1:1 aspect ratio guarantees that you&#039;ll be using all of the space provided in search results where larger photos make a difference in catching buyer attention.&amp;nbsp;   
  Following these simple guidelines, you&#039;ll also certainly obey the file size requirement.&amp;nbsp;  
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Why we choose the JPG/JPEG format 
 This is normally the default format on most cameras today, and for a good reason.&amp;nbsp; eBay allows the following file types to be uploaded:&amp;nbsp;JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF.&amp;nbsp; The problem with all of these except JPEG, is they tend to produce very large files (many megabytes), whenever you need to have any large-sized picture.&amp;nbsp; We will also show, that JPEG has the additional benefit of allowing you to reduce picture quality to dramatically reduce file size, but the apparent quality of details isn&#039;t sacrificed at all. 
 How these photos look on desktop computers 
   
 Through testing, we found that the 1:1 aspect ratio ends up using the most amount of available space for your item photos.&amp;nbsp; The only slight issue is on desktop browsers, there&#039;s still a bit of white space around the left and right edges.&amp;nbsp; But as you can see, this is true for any picture, and eBay just has these spaces no matter what we do.&amp;nbsp; Oh well...&amp;nbsp; At least our test photo is taking up the full height of the listing in search results. 
 I think eventually eBay will probably change this because the way it&#039;s working now it&#039;s wasting precious space.&amp;nbsp; This space isn&#039;t used by sellers and also not used by eBay. 
 It&#039;s really strange how  when you use any aspect ratio other than 1:1, eBay ends up punishing you by giving you a physically smaller photo in search results .&amp;nbsp; This is one of our biggest reasons to choose the perfectly square aspect ratio. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 The image below is showing how our photo appears in our listing details page.&amp;nbsp; Please notice how the  preview picture is taking up the whole space  provided by eBay!&amp;nbsp; 
 The zoom function on this photo is stunning.&amp;nbsp; In our other tests, we tried 1200x1200 (discussed later), the preview wasn&#039;t nearly this good.&amp;nbsp; I think this is the best format to use for small items like coins or stamps, where the tiniest details need that extra boost in visibility. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How the photos look on mobile phones 
 Below are some screenshots of the same eBay listing shown on a mobile device.&amp;nbsp; We&#039;ll go through the whole process again, starting from search results and going to listing details and picture zoom.&amp;nbsp; Notice how in all cases, we&#039;re  using all available space ; and this is great because the photos do a lot to sell the product.&amp;nbsp; Now, granted the zoom isn&#039;t so great, but we can&#039;t expect much from a smartphone anyway. 
 I can&#039;t emphasize enough, the search results page is so critical here, and our photo is using just that little bit extra space here. 
       
 &amp;nbsp; 
 What about 1200x1200 and why we decide against it 
 One of the sizes we tried was 1200x1200, and initially, it looked promising.&amp;nbsp; This picture size looks identical to its larger cousin.&amp;nbsp; But, please have a look at the zoom function here and compare it to the larger format above.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s just looking much worse.&amp;nbsp; Sure, the scratch on my box here is looking smaller, but I&#039;d rather the buyer could see all defects (and features) crystal clear. 
 Sure, the file size was a bit smaller on these (about 35% savings), but I think it&#039;s not worth it (compare 350KB vs 550KB).&amp;nbsp; And again, if you&#039;re selling an item with fine details, just go with 1600x1600. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 4:3 aspect ratio (1200x800) looks the worst 
 And to finish up our experiments, we tried the 4:3 aspect ratio, please check the results below.&amp;nbsp; To me, this is the worst possible size.&amp;nbsp; Not only did our pictures look smaller in search results, but the listing details have huge blank spaces above and below the image.&amp;nbsp; I&#039;d even say that it&#039;s better to fill this space with some photo backdrop - anything is better than nothing at all. 
 Unfortunately, this is also usually the default ratio used by almost all digital cameras.&amp;nbsp; My camera doesn&#039;t support a square ratio, but the newer cameras often do.&amp;nbsp; And for me, this means I have to use software like Photoshop to crop the pictures after taking them.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s not a whole lot of work, but you have to get a hang of it. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Photoshop export settings for eBay photos 
 Check out our other post about  starting by selling on eBay, and items you can sell that you already have .&amp;nbsp; In that post, we cover many more topics relevant to eBay sellers.&amp;nbsp; Now let me show you a nice Photoshop trick.&amp;nbsp; A big concern of mine was what happens to the file size when I try using a photo this large.&amp;nbsp; Normally, I like to stay within a range of 300KB to 800KB for my photos, because I like to use up all 12 allowed photos, which puts me in the 6MB range for photos alone when a buyer visits my listing.&amp;nbsp; Even though eBay allows photos as large as 7MB each, I&#039;d hate to force visitors to wait for that much data to load.&amp;nbsp; I mean, imagine using 7MB 12 times, that&#039;s a total of 78MB for every user to load, and this is no good. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 But I think I found some cool export settings in Photoshop to get around this problem.&amp;nbsp; Please see the image below where I downsize the photo to just 550KB for 1600x1600 pixels, and the quality isn&#039;t noticeably lost at all! 
 The key takeaway here is the &quot;quality&quot; slider.&amp;nbsp; I like to use 80% - 90%, but we can go as low as 60% to dramatically reduce file size, and the photo detail will still be sharp.&amp;nbsp; By the way, that&#039;s the main reason all cameras support JPG formats because it provides a really good quality-to-filesize ratio. 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Other eBay photo restrictions to keep in mind 
 eBay will usually let you slide by breaking some small rules, but not always, and especially not if a buyer reports your listing.&amp;nbsp; The following are the most important ones to keep in mind when you&#039;re editing your photos: 
 
 Don&#039;t add frames or borders to your photos 
 Don&#039;t add watermarks 
 Don&#039;t put text into your photos 
 Don&#039;t use placeholder images (such as &quot;coming soon&quot;) 
 Make sure the whole item is visible in the main photo 
 
 Usually, you would follow these rules by common sense alone, but it&#039;s good to keep these in mind. 
 More tips on taking good eBay product photos 
 Check out our tutorial below on taking good product photos for eBay, because there are lots of tips here and some really simple Photoshop hacks that will put your photos way ahead of your competition.&amp;nbsp; We won&#039;t be doing anything that breaks eBay rules, we&#039;ll only make our photos better. 
 If you found this tutorial useful, please share and comment, would love to hear your thoughts on this or additional helpful tips. 
    
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-09-20T12:00:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Easiest things to sell on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/easiest-things-to-sell-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/easiest-things-to-sell-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Let&#039;s look at several data sets on all eBay listings and figure out which items are actually the easiest to sell on eBay. 
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  A major topic for all online sellers&amp;nbsp;is : what&#039;s easiest to sell on eBay?&amp;nbsp; We created the MarkSight project to answer this by closely studying eBay sales and gathering as much data as possible.&amp;nbsp; We crunched the numbers and came up with  charts and tables  to prove our case.&amp;nbsp; Depending on your goals, there are different approaches to figuring out the top items for your business.&amp;nbsp; For a quick reference, we summarized all data into the following list for you: 
 
 What are the easiest things to sell on eBay? 
  We answer this by studying millions of auctions on eBay to come up with the following things that are the easiest to sell on eBay:   
 
  Cell Phones &amp;amp; Accessories  
  Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money  
  Tickets &amp;amp; Experiences  
  Cameras &amp;amp; Photo  
  Computers/Tablets &amp;amp; Networking  
  Musical Instruments &amp;amp; Gear  
  Gift Cards &amp;amp; Coupons  
  Business &amp;amp; Industrial  
  Sporting Goods  
  Video Games &amp;amp; Consoles  
 
   These items are getting the best of all statistics where they tend to have high prices, high demand, and high sell-through rates.  
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 The data source we&#039;ll be looking at consists of  millions of completed auctions  from all corners of eBay.&amp;nbsp; We will disregard all listings priced  under $10  because there are too many of them, and they are meaningless in many ways.&amp;nbsp; For example, it&#039;s probably near impossible to make any profit from such products.&amp;nbsp; Also, we want to have a high-resolution look at the profitable items, which will be distorted by cheap items skewing the results. 
 We consider the &quot; easiness &quot; of selling a product to come from three basic principles: how much are buyers fighting (or  bidding ) to get your item, the  final sales price  (higher is better), and the  sell-through rates  of all kinds of different items that are currently selling on eBay. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Top selling items on eBay 
 Let&#039;s start by first creating a chart of how many items are sold in which category, and compare this across all eBay listing categories.&amp;nbsp; The result shows all the top selling items on eBay and all the worst ones too.&amp;nbsp; This is how eBay makes its earnings, and as sellers, we should know about these things.&amp;nbsp; As a general rule of thumb, the bigger the market for your item, the easier it will be for you to sell it. 
   
  eBay Amount of Sold Items per Listing Category (comparative)  
 I don&#039;t know about you, but here I was kind of surprised.&amp;nbsp; I always knew that Collectibles were up there, but Toys and Sports Cards too?&amp;nbsp; Don&#039;t get me wrong, these are great items, but it&#039;s a bit of a shock that they&#039;ve grown bigger than the very first eBay Collectibles business! 
 In order of total listings sold, the following are the top selling items on eBay: 
 
  Toys &amp;amp; Hobbies  
  Sports Memorabilia, Cards &amp;amp; Fan Shop  
  Collectibles  
  Sporting Goods  
  Jewelry &amp;amp; Watches  
  Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money  
  Computers/Tablets &amp;amp; Networking  
  Home &amp;amp; Garden  
  Health &amp;amp; Beauty  
  Video Games  
 
 Notice also that once we go past items that people collect, the curve halves and flatlines.&amp;nbsp; This is not a good sign for eBay, and they should do something to grow the lagging items.&amp;nbsp; If someone from eBay is reading this, pass this on to your top management as an opportunity for growth! 
 The graph also backs up the old synergy between eBay and collectors.&amp;nbsp; It seems to still be true today, and we have the data to show it. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Relevant eBay sales data for all items 
 We built a table that covers several interesting stats and broke it down by eBay category.&amp;nbsp; You can use it for your own purposes as well, and we give it away for free.&amp;nbsp; If you do use this table, please leave a reference back to where you found it. 
 
 
 
  eBay Category  Sell Through  Average Bids Per Sold Auction  Average Sales Price  
 
 Antiques 
 15.32% 
 6.63 
 $115.18 
 
 
 Art 
 7.41% 
 5.85 
 $131.46 
 
 
 Baby 
 18.55% 
 5.76 
 $60.48 
 
 
 Books 
 11.99% 
 4.17 
 $41.96 
 
 
 Business &amp;amp; Industrial 
 16.99% 
 5.75 
 $382.45 
 
 
 Cameras &amp;amp; Photo 
 30.84% 
 9.78 
 $249.32 
 
 
 Cell Phones &amp;amp; Accessories 
 47.02% 
 14.14 
 $177.07 
 
 
 Clothing, Shoes &amp;amp; Accessories 
 11.19% 
 4.26 
 $53.36 
 
 
 Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money 
 40.77% 
 10.84 
 $263.42 
 
 
 Collectibles 
 18.12% 
 6.21 
 $58.87 
 
 
 Computers &amp;amp; Networking 
 33.82% 
 9.46 
 $167.09 
 
 
 Consumer Electronics 
 28.65% 
 8.44 
 $112.75 
 
 
 Crafts 
 22.43% 
 5.71 
 $45.77 
 
 
 Dolls &amp;amp; Bears 
 20.36% 
 6.09 
 $54.56 
 
 
 DVDs &amp;amp; Movies 
 25.96% 
 6.72 
 $32.94 
 
 
 Entertainment Memorabilia 
 14.99% 
 5.36 
 $59.23 
 
 
 Everything Else 
 17.75% 
 5.87 
 $80.37 
 
 
 Gift Cards &amp;amp; Coupons 
 61.96% 
 7.87 
 $85.27 
 
 
 Health &amp;amp; Beauty 
 23.36% 
 5.75 
 $53.12 
 
 
 Home &amp;amp; Garden 
 16.52% 
 6.50 
 $75.92 
 
 
 Jewelry &amp;amp; Watches 
 17.47% 
 9.16 
 $132.69 
 
 
 Music 
 30.17% 
 6.33 
 $43.12 
 
 
 Musical Instruments 
 29.27% 
 7.14 
 $218.06 
 
 
 Pet Supplies 
 23.57% 
 6.67 
 $59.51 
 
 
 Pottery &amp;amp; Glass 
 10.14% 
 4.38 
 $55.80 
 
 
 Specialty Services 
 6.37% 
 6.17 
 $225.11 
 
 
 Sporting Goods 
 28.16% 
 7.99 
 $104.28 
 
 
 Sports Mem, Cards &amp;amp; Fan Shop 
 29.66% 
 9.45 
 $80.98 
 
 
 Stamps 
 32.09% 
 9.52 
 $45.46 
 
 
 Tickets 
 20.98% 
 6.94 
 $568.52 
 
 
 Toys &amp;amp; Hobbies 
 26.83% 
 6.95 
 $59.48 
 
 
 Travel 
 20.22% 
 6.74 
 $142.92 
 
 
 Video Games 
 39.39% 
 9.39 
 $62.81 
 
 
 
 
  eBay Full Sales Analytics Data  
 As you read the above information, please keep in mind that we&#039;re only talking about  averages and we&#039;re seeing the big picture  developing on the eBay platform.&amp;nbsp; It could very well be that for instance, you&#039;re selling books and have a sell-through of 50% and prices above $100.&amp;nbsp; But there are many eBay sellers, and you&#039;re not the only one.&amp;nbsp; On average, I think, the figures are mostly depressing, but let&#039;s not get discouraged yet. 
 Chances are, what separates success from failure is doing your eBay analytics and staying on top of things.&amp;nbsp; Hustling and looking for new ways to source merchandise also helps.&amp;nbsp; Besides this, eBay does create new features every so often to help you make the sale, such as their new function to  send offers to watchers . 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Which eBay categories have the highest sell-through rates? 
 Most eBay coaches will place a heavy emphasis on sell-through rates, and for good reason.&amp;nbsp; Just as a reminder, sell-through is the number of listings that are sold versus not being sold.&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re an eBay seller, you also have  your  sell-through for your account, but let&#039;s not get into that here.&amp;nbsp; What we&#039;re analyzing here is the general trend to find out which items have which sell-through organically.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
   
  eBay sell-through chart for different items  
 Are you surprised to see that  gift cards have a sell-through above 60% ?&amp;nbsp; Initially, we were too, until we noticed that gift cards are the closest things to cash of all the types of items.&amp;nbsp; And on eBay, they tend to sell for less than face value.&amp;nbsp; Think about it, people are selling basically an equivalent of money, for less than it&#039;s worth.&amp;nbsp; Hence, of course, gift cards sell quickly, but probably at a loss to the sellers. 
 The next in line is  smartphones .&amp;nbsp; We have a separate guide on  reselling phones on eBay  if you&#039;re curious, it&#039;s a profitable business to start, and many people are already doing it. 
 The following is a list of the top ten items on eBay with the highest sell-through: 
 
  Gift Cards &amp;amp; Coupons (62%)  
  Cell Phones &amp;amp; Accessories (47%)  
  Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money (41%)  
  Video Games (39%)  
  Computers/Tablets &amp;amp; Networking (34%)  
  Stamps (32%)  
  Cameras &amp;amp; Photo (31%)  
  Music (30%)  
  Sports Memorabilia, Cards &amp;amp; Fan Shop (30%)  
  Musical Instruments (29%)  
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 One thing to note here is  if your listing has a low sell-through rate, it&#039;s not a disaster .&amp;nbsp; A simple trick to make more sales is to  list more items , and you should do just fine.&amp;nbsp; For example, booksellers tend to have hundreds of items listed just to sell a handful each day.&amp;nbsp; So, in a way, this can be used to find out how much stock you should maintain in order to make a certain profit each month. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How much eBay stock to maintain, to earn $1000 per month? 
  Let&#039;s consider  that you want to sell books online, and you want to earn a $1000 profit every month.&amp;nbsp; How many books do you have to list to meet this goal?&amp;nbsp; On average, books have a sell-through of 12%, and the average book sells for $42.&amp;nbsp; Let&#039;s also assume your average cost per book is $20 at garage sales.&amp;nbsp;  The formula to figure out how many books you should keep in stock is:  
 4 weeks * (0.12 * X books) * ($42 * 0.85 - $20) = $1000 
 The 0.85 above is the amount of money you get on hand after paying all your eBay and PayPal fees.&amp;nbsp; Eventually,  X works out to 133 books  that you must have listed, and I would say with knowing the books business that is the minimum you should have because not all your book flipping will be perfect.&amp;nbsp; To account for unprofitable sales and poor purchasing choices on your part, multiply that by 2, and you have a rough estimate of  270  books in stock to earn a realistic $1000 per month reselling books.&amp;nbsp; Is this doable? Yes, it is! 
 Use the formula below for your own items or niches, and you will have a pretty good estimate of how much eBay stock you must maintain to meet your monthly income goal. 
  4 weeks * (Sell-Through * X items) * (Average Sales Price * 0.85 - Average Item Cost) = Your Monthly Income Goal  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 eBay average sales prices for different kinds of items 
 By far, tickets and business/industrial items fetch the highest prices on eBay.&amp;nbsp; The chart below shows all the figures in descending order.&amp;nbsp; Coins/Paper Money comes in at a distant 3rd here.&amp;nbsp; Please keep in mind that only sold listings are considered here!&amp;nbsp; Of course, there are many listings out there that can easily beat the average, but we&#039;re only interested in actual sales, not what sellers wish for. 
   
  Different items on eBay and their&amp;nbsp;  Average Sales Prices  
 From most expensive to less expensive, the following are eBay item average sales prices: 
 
  Tickets ($568)  
  Business &amp;amp; Industrial ($382)  
  Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money ($263)  
  Cameras &amp;amp; Photo ($249)  
  Specialty Services ($225)  
  Musical Instruments ($218)  
  Cell Phones &amp;amp; Accessories ($177)  
  Computers/Tablets &amp;amp; Networking ($167)  
  Travel ($143)  
  Jewelry &amp;amp; Watches ($133)  
 
 It was a bit surprising to see  tickets  at the top of the list, and just to double check this we went ahead and looked at eBay sold tickets directly.&amp;nbsp; There are many sold listings for season tickets, for thousands of dollars, and this alone explains the anomaly.&amp;nbsp; Specialty services are another curious category, and we recommend for  graphic designers and web developers  to check this one more because it seems to be one of the least used listing categories, and yet it&#039;s in the top ten for sold prices. 
 Why research eBay sales prices?&amp;nbsp; Well, the point here is, normally the higher the price of an item, the more  opportunity you have to make a profit .&amp;nbsp; And that&#039;s the whole point of doing business, right?!&amp;nbsp; Imagine the nightmare that every sale you have is just $10... even if your cost is just $1, after fees you&#039;ll just earn $7.50 from such a sale.&amp;nbsp; That&#039;s why we like the business idea of reselling phones.&amp;nbsp; With smartphones, the average price is $177, and this gives you a lot of chances to make a solid earning! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 eBay items with the highest bids 
 eBay bidding activity is often an overlooked piece of information, but we at MarkSight like it a lot!&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s the only indicator that tells us exactly how badly buyers want or need something.&amp;nbsp; And we can use this to gauge real market demand.&amp;nbsp; In the chart below, we&#039;ll again only consider sold listings, and we will not count unsold items toward the results. 
   
  Average amount of bids per sold auction on eBay  
 As expected, phones are now a basic human need, and they are beating everything else.&amp;nbsp; The next in line are stamps, coins and different types of electronics.&amp;nbsp; Collectors are notorious for fighting over rare items, and the chart above proves this is not going away any time soon. 
 In descending order, the following are the top ten items that buyers bid most on the eBay platform: 
 
 
  Cell Phones &amp;amp; Accessories (14.1 bids)  
  Coins &amp;amp; Paper Money (10.8 bids)  
  Cameras &amp;amp; Photo (9.8 bids)  
  Stamps (9.5 bids)  
  Computers &amp;amp; Networking (9.5 bids)  
  Sports Mem, Cards &amp;amp; Fan Shop (9.5 bids)  
  Video Games (9.4 bids)  
  Jewelry &amp;amp; Watches (9.2 bids)  
  Consumer Electronics (8.4 bids)  
  Sporting Goods (8 bids)  
 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Easiest things to sell on eBay and make a profit 
 At last, the following chart shows all our data points combined.&amp;nbsp; We created a short formula to tell us not only what&#039;s easiest to sell, but also what products easiest to make a profit from.&amp;nbsp; Just a quick note about profit, we assume that higher prices will yield a higher nominal profit. 
   
  Easiest items to sell on eBay (comparative)  
 It&#039;s a shame to see that Books rank last.&amp;nbsp; But it makes good sense in the end.&amp;nbsp; Our data is, for the most part, complete.&amp;nbsp; However, there&#039;s one piece missing from the puzzle, and that is human nature and other existing markets.&amp;nbsp; We simply can&#039;t quantify that some libraries may be selling old inventory for $1 per book, and lots of people  resell books online  these days.&amp;nbsp; So the takeaway here is, when studying the chart, please think about only your coming eBay experience of selling your item and potentially profiting.&amp;nbsp; Your real profit will depend on how you got your item (for how much), and how quickly you&#039;ll sell it. 
 Now, books are probably an exception here, and the rest of the chart looks very close to reality.&amp;nbsp; Again, if you choose to start an online business with eBay,  researching in advance  will put you way ahead of your competition and look around for a good buy such as thrift stores or garage sales. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to use these insights to grow your eBay business 
 The most obvious way to use this information is to check the top ten list closely.&amp;nbsp; Do some research on MarkSight or eBay directly, and look for  specific niches  that you have an easy way to get your hands on.&amp;nbsp; Once you have the product on hand and at a low enough price, then you&#039;re on a good way to make a side income.&amp;nbsp; It often helps to think about all the people you know and all the skills you have, and your current location - can these be used somehow to get an edge on the eBay platform?&amp;nbsp; Statistics like the ones discussed in this article only go so far, and in the end, you still have to figure out the most difficult problems for yourself.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s a challenge, but a fun one.&amp;nbsp; Happy selling everyone! 
 If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment below.&amp;nbsp;  If you found this useful, please share it with others!  
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-08-15T12:00:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Best eBay feedback ever - with pics</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/best-ebay-feedback-ever-with-pics</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/best-ebay-feedback-ever-with-pics"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Examples of some of the best and funniest eBay feedback ever. Messages like this don&#039;t come in every day.
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  eBay feedback &amp;nbsp;should get more attention than it does.&amp;nbsp; This is your last opportunity to stand out, either as a seller or buyer, and this chance should not go to waste.&amp;nbsp; Let&#039;s look at some examples of humorous feedback or notes, as well as other examples of great feedback.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 All the pictures shown below are real from user feedback accounts or various postings online.&amp;nbsp; Enjoy them, and I hope this puts you in a positive mood today!&amp;nbsp;  Remember to share  your favorite feedback notes below in the comments. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Heartwarming messages 
   
 How can you  not  appreciate this as a seller?&amp;nbsp; After all, if we set aside all our use of technology and shipping and listings, it can be easy to forget that we&#039;re always dealing with other people.&amp;nbsp; The lesson here: don&#039;t forget there&#039;s a real person on the other side, and they appreciate your work. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Great unboxing experience with a note 
  Who says you&#039;re limited to just electronic messages?&amp;nbsp; This seller took the time to give the buyer probably the most  unusual unboxing experience ever .&amp;nbsp; I should do the same, and write more clever messages than just  &quot;Thanks, hope you enjoy the item.&quot; .&amp;nbsp; 
 Mastering the art of a  Thank You  can be hard but will be rewarding.&amp;nbsp; Notes like this will surely increase your feedback rate. 
  Learn  how to Make Money on eBay  with tricks like this.  
 This is often an overlooked area of basic customer service.&amp;nbsp; Put yourself in the shoes of your customer, and imagine what would make their day just 1% better, and then do that.&amp;nbsp; Maybe it&#039;s a funny handwritten note, or maybe a little gift.&amp;nbsp; Whatever you choose to do, you&#039;ll put yourself ahead of your competition by acting instead of being plain. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Personal messages that are too good 
  Above is an example of some of the nicest eBay messages that you as a seller can get.&amp;nbsp; Often, the buyer is just too happy to have even found whatever you&#039;re selling.&amp;nbsp; Connect with your buyer, and ask them if everything is as expected.&amp;nbsp; Respond to kind messages, and make the experience more memorable.&amp;nbsp; Like in the example above, I bet this person will look to come back for repeat business. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Funniest eBay feedback ever 
                                   
 &amp;nbsp; 
  eBay feedback is limited to just 80 characters,  and yet people can figure out the funniest things to post.&amp;nbsp; Now I know what to do in my spare time: come up with witty comments I&#039;ll be using in my future sales and purchases. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Ridiculous/absurd eBay feedback 
       
 &amp;nbsp; 
 With totally ridiculous feedback messages, just remember, eBay has a  feedback policy  that  specifically prohibits unrelated content .&amp;nbsp; But it can be funny too, and I&#039;m sharing the above messages just for kicks.&amp;nbsp; And it&#039;s pretty entertaining too. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Final thoughts 
 The art of eBay feedback can be a tough one but is definitely worth the effort - if only the result is to humor ourselves.&amp;nbsp; Some of the sellers pictured above got shared on social media and became viral  just for their messages alone !&amp;nbsp; If that&#039;s not a great marketing trick, I don&#039;t know what is. 
 Please remember to always leave feedback that&#039;s at least a little relevant though, and try to give your buyers some positive emotions.&amp;nbsp; Positive experiences lead to a higher feedback rate, which leads to higher sales and the process builds upon itself. 
 In case you recently received some great eBay feedback, please share it with others below in the comments section. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2023-03-17T02:15:00+01:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">How to Block eBay Buyers</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/how-to-block-ebay-buyers</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/how-to-block-ebay-buyers"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            If you ever need to block a specific buyer or a group of buyers, this is how you can do it.
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            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  Blocking &amp;nbsp;certain eBay users can be a very simple way to save your sanity as a seller. There are several ways to do this and we will cover all of the possibilities in the article below.&amp;nbsp; This is most useful if you want to avoid dealing with a particular set of buyers in the future. 
 We will cover how to block users and specific geographies in your account settings, and also in your listing setup. 
 
   
 How to Block eBay Buyers? 
  You can block specific eBay buyers by following these steps:  
 
  Go to  the  bidder block page on eBay .&amp;nbsp;  Log in  if you have to. 
  Enter the member&#039;s user Id  in the text area and click &quot; Submit &quot;. 
 You&#039;re allowed to enter  up to 5,000 buyers  - just separate them by a  comma . 
 If you misspelled a user Id, there will be a warning like &quot; The following user(s) were not valid and therefore not added to your list &quot;.&amp;nbsp; So you have an opportunity to correct your list. 
  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Block Specific eBay Buyers, Step by Step 
 Below is a set of screenshots showing you the process of blocking a specific eBay user from interacting with our listings in any way.&amp;nbsp; If you had a poor interaction with a buyer, consider adding them to your list and avoid future confrontations.&amp;nbsp; This is especially true since buyers realize that eBay will usually side with them regardless of their behavior (as frustrating as that is)! 
     eBay Block Bidders Page  
    
     eBay Confirmation Page After Saving Your Blocked Bidder List  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Restore Your Blocked eBay Buyer List 
 The developers at eBay were kind enough to create a  restore list &amp;nbsp;feature, just in case you accidentally delete your blocked list or somehow corrupted it.&amp;nbsp; Go to the&amp;nbsp; bidder block page on eBay &amp;nbsp;and click on the &quot; Restore List &quot; link located just above the text area.&amp;nbsp; You should then see a list of previously saved blocked bidder lists.&amp;nbsp; Simply check the radio button for the list you want to revert to, and click &quot; Restore &quot;.&amp;nbsp; Unfortunately, the list history only goes back 3 months, so if your last version is older than that, then you will not be able to recover it. 
     eBay Restore Past Blocked Bidder Page  
    
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Block International eBay Buyers by Country or Continent 
 eBay allows you to configure your shipping preferences in such a way that you will never have to send a package to a certain continent or country.&amp;nbsp; 
  Go to the  Manage shipping settings page , and have a look at the &quot;Exclude shipping locations&quot; section.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;  
 Once you go there, you can define which continents you do not want to ship to, or which countries to avoid.&amp;nbsp;  You should consider disabling shipments to some countries because : 
 
 Some are known to have very high shipping costs 
 Some countries have a low chance of actual delivery (packages tend to get lost) 
 Some countries have been demonstrated to have a lot of scammers 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
  We will avoid printing actual country names here , but you can reference&amp;nbsp; the eBay ShipCover page , where eBay lists countries they refuse to cover with shipping insurance.&amp;nbsp; Just go to the section called &quot; Are there countries where ShipCover will not insure shipments? &quot;, and you&#039;ll see a good list to start. 
  Why reference ShipCover? &amp;nbsp; Well, ShipCover is powered by eBay, and if they avoid some places, maybe you should too. 
     eBay Seller Shipping Settings  
    
     eBay Allows to Exclude International Locations  
    
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Block Domestic eBay Buyers 
 While eBay made a lot of effort to allow you to configure international shipping options, domestic options are only limited to three capabilities: 
 
 Exclude Alaska and Hawaii 
 Exclude US APO/FPO 
 Exclude US Protectorates 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 You can&#039;t configure which states you want to avoid, but this is actually a harmful feature to have, and so it&#039;s not available.&amp;nbsp; In general, shipping anywhere within the United States is considered safe on eBay.&amp;nbsp; The above options are there just to avoid expensive shipping costs, especially for bulky items. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 When is it Time to Block Users? 
 You should block specific users  only after resolving the issue with them .&amp;nbsp; This will show eBay that you&#039;re willing to work out all issues first and foremost.&amp;nbsp; Please remember, blocking a user in the middle of a dispute will not stop the dispute.&amp;nbsp; If there&#039;s no issue yet, and the potential buyer is just behaving strangely, then you can block them right away. 
 The international locations covered above should always be blocked in your shipping settings, regardless of your seller level.&amp;nbsp; And you should consider selling internationally only after you&#039;ve had some success domestically.&amp;nbsp; In other words, trying to sell overseas should not be used as a way to drive your sales, only to grow them. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Listing Shipping Details 
 Sometimes, you may want to disable international shipping  only on a special listing  you have.&amp;nbsp; There&#039;s no need to change your account settings for that, and you can use set your preferences once for your listing.&amp;nbsp; Below is a screenshot showing an example setup where the listing will be available domestically, and not available internationally. 
 This is also your opportunity to  configure free shipping or shipping costs .&amp;nbsp; Personally, I like to have free shipping whenever possible, because buyers tend to appreciate this option even if comparing to another listing with the same price.&amp;nbsp; Yep,  free shipping still sells ! 
    eBay Listing Shipping Details Section  
    
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Is Blocking eBay Buyers Worth It? 
 Blocking users you do not want to deal with again is  absolutely worth the effort  for two reasons: there&#039;s a certain degree of satisfaction knowing you won&#039;t have to deal with a particular buyer again, and also avoiding bad selling experiences before they happen.    
 It should be noted that new sellers are especially susceptible to predatory buyers, and should stay away from international business in the beginning.&amp;nbsp; With that being said, after you have some positive feedback behind you, adding international sales is definitely a boost to sales.&amp;nbsp;  Stay safe  and good fortunes to you! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2020-02-17T01:30:00+01:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Dropshipping on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/dropshipping-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/dropshipping-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            How to dropship on eBay - common questions answered.
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            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  Dropshipping  is a very lucrative business model. There have been many people making  good incomes  with it, and it&#039;s definitely a growing topic. For those unfamiliar with it, dropshipping is quite simply when you  sell a product without ever touching it  yourself. You act as the middleman between the supplier and buyer ( explained on Wikipedia ). 
 Let&#039;s figure out how we can use it within the eBay marketplace. 
 Some forms on dropshipping are not allowed on eBay at all (covered below).  But even with these limitations, there&#039;s still plenty of room to do things the right way. 
 
   
 Is Drop Shipping Allowed on eBay? 
  Dropshipping is allowed on eBay as long as you source the products from a supplier, manufacturer or wholesaler before you sell those items on the eBay platform. Before 2019, eBay used to allow all kinds of drop shipping. But since the last update to their rules, most of the &quot;quick&quot; turnaround schemes have been disallowed including online retail arbitrage.  
 
 
 
 Type of Dropshipping 
 Example 
 Allowed 
 
 
 Online retailer 
 Amazon, Walmart website 
 No 
 
 
 Manufacturer 
 Local Solar Panel Factory, Toy Factory in China, etc 
 Yes 
 
 
 Wholesaler 
 Sam&#039;s Club, Costco, etc 
 Yes 
 
 
 Brick and mortar retailer 
 Walmart store near you 
 Yes 
 
 
 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 eBay Dropshipping Policy 
 You can find the eBay dropshipping policy  here.   But be warned, the wording is confusing and definitely inconsistent! 
 For example, at the top, it says:  &quot;Drop shipping, where you fulfill orders directly from a wholesale supplier, is allowed on eBay.&quot;  
 Perfect - right?   No. Because then they write:  
  &quot;...listing an item on eBay and then purchasing the item from another retailer or marketplace that ships directly to your customer is not allowed on eBay.&quot;  
 Wait a minute!  Did eBay first say you can dropship and then say you can&#039;t?  Yes and no.   You are allowed to dropship on eBay -  as long as you are not sending the product from another marketplace  (let&#039;s say an eBay competitor like Amazon),  and you also have some kind of partnership with your supplier.  
 I think eBay is doing this in an effort to protect its business and avoid direct competition with marketplaces it cannot beat. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Dropship on eBay from China? 
 The easiest way to dropship on eBay from China is to contact Aliexpress or Alibaba sellers and  ask them for a partnership . These days, you can even do a search on Aliexpress for the keyword &quot; dropship &quot; and you&#039;ll get a list of  Chinese candidates  to work with. Remember, your goal here is  to find a good dropshipping partner, and not to bluntly buy and forward Aliexpress products after making eBay sales.  
 If you choose this route, make sure the product is good, and the supplier won&#039;t be including any sales materials or invoice documents in the shipments. Your customers should only be aware of you and no one else in the transaction. Clearly state where you are shipping from in your eBay listing, and the estimated shipping times.&amp;nbsp; This is super important to do because you don&#039;t want to mislead your buyers, and the last thing you want is customers complaining about your shipping times.   There is a fine line to walk here so watch out!  
     Dropship Search Results on Aliexpress  
    
     an Aliexpress Seller Offering Dropshipping as a Service  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How Does eBay Know Who to Suspend for Breaking the Dropshipping Policy? 
 The biggest clue eBay gets is the tracking number and information. Basically, you&#039;re almost  forced to provide it as proof of shipment  - every eBay seller knows this. What many don&#039;t know is,  eBay will surely check the tracking activity too ! And if they notice the item was shipped from a place that&#039;s not even close to your address, they will watch your activity closer. 
 Whatever you do, in case eBay contacts you with questions -   never mention an online marketplace   (like Aliexpress). Instead, tell them about your great fulfillment partner overseas and how well they handle shipping work and manufacturing on your behalf.   Why?  Remember the eBay dropshipping policy! You are not allowed to do online arbitrage (at least not directly), and too many people completely disrespect this rule. 
     eBay Tracking History for One of Our Shipped Items  
    
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Drop Ship on eBay from Amazon? 
 eBay does not allow to dropship directly from Amazon because the end customer does not like to realize they&#039;ve just lost money. Imagine if you bought something on eBay, and later receive an Amazon package instead, which will even  show the actual product price to be $20 cheaper than what the customer paid ! Most people would be upset because they are being made fools of, for not price shopping in advance. 
 But still, what do you do in case you discover an opportunity with Amazon-to-eBay arbitrage?  You have to buy up the product first and have it shipped to yourself or to a fulfilment center.  Either way, it&#039;s not true dropshipping anymore and you&#039;re doing normal business again, which is not breaking any eBay rules. 
  Two points are important here:  please don&#039;t ship items to eBay buyers directly from Amazon because eBay will know you did this and will almost certainly suspend your account (unless you are the same seller on the Amazon platform and the final price is also the same, which is probably not true in most cases).&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  And,  if you think actually finding a product where you can make a profit like this exists, good luck finding one. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Dropship on eBay from Walmart? 
 eBay will not allow you to dropship from Walmart directly. Simple as that. However, Walmart frequently has clearance sales - which are great opportunities for all eBay sellers. Instead of dropshipping, please consider investing a bit of money into good merchandise and resell it later. 
  Hint: Seasonal items are perfect for this.  
 Now, because you will own the products outright, eBay will not have any complaints for you.  Just don&#039;t lose the sales check , because that is your ultimate proof of legal product ownership. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Is Dropshipping on eBay Worth It? 
  Dropshipping on eBay is still worth it  for the simple reason that there are many sellers doing it successfully.  Since dropshipping is really just a method of product delivery, the next question should be:    Can I find a good product and fulfillment partner and still make a profit with Dropshipping?   The competition on the internet is extremely high with the dropshipping business model. If you are looking in all the same places as everyone else, then you will not succeed - unless you already have an edge. For example, if you already have a large following or your copywriting skills are exceptional, then you have a competitive edge. However, if you are like most people, you will have better chances by looking into places where most are not, and that is why we offer our own  eBay research tools . 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 What About Specialized Dropshipping Platforms Like Oberlo? 
 From my research, the products offered are actually not very interesting and require considerable marketing efforts.&amp;nbsp; There&#039;s a reason suppliers place products on such platforms! Because while they can manufacture and ship them, they don&#039;t have the resources to push these products to consumers. 
 You can still try it, but I&#039;d be surprised if you are able to make a profit.&amp;nbsp; If you have experience with this, please share your thoughts in the comments below. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Don&#039;t Forget that Dropshipping has Risks 
 A lot of people get into a business thinking it has no risks.&amp;nbsp; And  Dropshipping is far from safe practice (which is why eBay watches it closely) , especially if you&#039;re just starting out.&amp;nbsp; Your weakest link is the supplier - they can fail you in so many ways... 
 Think late deliveries, wrong products going to wrong addresses.&amp;nbsp; Personally, I am meticulous when it comes to my eBay shipments and am proud to say I never made a mistake.&amp;nbsp; And putting this small task into someone else&#039;s hands does feel awkward. 
 The other major way a supplier can fail you is with poor product quality.&amp;nbsp; That&#039;s why you absolutely must get a product sample in advance, to see what your customers will get. 
 If you manage to overcome the above two challenges, then  congratulations  - you&#039;re probably in the top 5% of dropshippers in terms of quality! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to Find Good Dropshipping Products for eBay 
 We offer research tools to help eBay sellers discover all kinds of product ideas. Have a look at our list of  niche product ideas , and you will get a feel for what you can do. The rest is really up to you, which is the more difficult part of the journey.  Plenty of people have made a fortune with the worst products, and plenty more earned nothing with good product ideas - success is all in the execution!  
 To this day, one of my favorite dropshipping product ideas for eBay is binoculars.&amp;nbsp; There are so many cool options on Aliexpress for them, and with the right marketing and branding, I can imagine the product doing very well.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 I hope you found this article useful and feel free to share it with others! 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2020-02-15T01:45:00+01:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">How to make money on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/how-to-make-money-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/how-to-make-money-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Making money on eBay is easier than ever. Follow this guide and you will have an eBay business very quickly, and many have already done it!
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  If you think you have what it takes  to make money on eBay, you&#039;re probably right.&amp;nbsp; There is no mystery behind it, and it&#039;s not something only talented people can do.&amp;nbsp; I firmly believe&amp;nbsp; anyone  can make this business work if only they have the will to work hard and smart.&amp;nbsp; This complete guide will show you how to make money on eBay and the included tips will set you on the right path.&amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Sign up with eBay and buy a few things first 
 When you sign up with eBay you&#039;ll notice it&#039;s free and simple to do.&amp;nbsp; You&#039;ll go through a series of questions and forms to fill in, and the whole process won&#039;t take you longer than 15 minutes. 
   
 The whole point of buying some things from the eBay marketplace is this:  you&#039;ll learn so much along the way .&amp;nbsp; When you make a purchase or win an auction, you&#039;ll see how all the notifications work, how payments flow from the buyer to eBay and the seller.&amp;nbsp; A package will arrive at your doorstep, and this will give you a first-hand look at how a real eBay seller is making shipments. 
 There are so many little details you&#039;ll pick up on, that it&#039;s impossible to go through them all in this article. 
 The experience that you gain will be invaluable for you when you start listing items for sale.&amp;nbsp; As you make those listings, and eventually when you make sales, you&#039;ll also know what the  buyers expect from you .&amp;nbsp; Therefore, you&#039;ll be much less likely to make mistakes. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Use PayPal for making and accepting payments 
 After you set up your eBay account, we recommend that you also  register with PayPal , and relate your two accounts together.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
   
 Like with using eBay, when you use PayPal to make a purchase, you will be gaining valuable experience as a buyer.&amp;nbsp; More importantly, you will have your account set up and  ready to accept payments too !&amp;nbsp; Not many people write about this, but PayPal is still the most trusted payment provider on the eBay platform.&amp;nbsp; In fact, if you don&#039;t use PayPal, you&#039;ll be in a weird position where no one will want to buy from you. 
 So, just set it up.&amp;nbsp; It will be a longer process than with eBay, but it&#039;s a one-time task for you to configure PayPal with your bank accounts and credit cards.&amp;nbsp; Once you have this done, you can begin to sell on eBay!&amp;nbsp; Congratulations! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to price your items on eBay 
 There are two ways to price your items on eBay, and both of them involve research: 
 
 Use eBay completed &amp;amp; sold listings filters, and look for average prices 
 Use our  keyword research tools to see average item prices  
 
 Another critical factor in listing pricing is your feedback history.&amp;nbsp;  If you&#039;re a newbie, I&#039;m sorry, but your sales prices will tend to be lower than average! &amp;nbsp; This is just a part of life, and the main reason for this is you haven&#039;t earned trust from buyers yet.&amp;nbsp; Once you have a solid feedback profile, you&#039;ll do much better. 
 Depending on your listing format choice, you have two choices.&amp;nbsp; If you have a fixed price listing, then just use the average sales price as your &quot;buy it now&quot; price.&amp;nbsp; If you use the auction format, it&#039;s a good idea to reduce your starting price, and if you&#039;re really worried then set up a reserve price. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Know your PayPal and eBay selling fees 
 We created an  eBay fees calculator  for you, which you can use to see what your fees will be before you make a listing.&amp;nbsp; For a full eBay fees overview, please visit the  seller fees  page. 
 In general, when I have to calculate my fees in my head, I use a  total of 15% , because: 
 
 eBay will take  10%  as their final value fee.&amp;nbsp; 
 PayPal will normally take  3.5%  in processing fees. 
 I might use somewhere around  1.5%  in  listing promotions  for my buy-it-now items. 
 
 So, 15% covers all of these things.&amp;nbsp; But it doesn&#039;t cover potential extra shipping costs that I have to cover, and packaging costs aren&#039;t considered at all.&amp;nbsp; 
 As a beginner, you&#039;re probably better off if you round up your selling fees up to  20% .&amp;nbsp; And as you sell, you&#039;ll learn more about your actual fees and real costs.&amp;nbsp; 
 It also depends on where you live.&amp;nbsp; For instance, people living in the UK have to pay an extra VAT fee on their eBay fees, and this something US sellers don&#039;t have to deal with. 
 While I use a 15% estimate for myself, I recommend you use a  20% estimate  for your eBay business fees when you start. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Writing your eBay listing description 
 Writing a good eBay listing description is actually very  simple  to do, and here are some quick points that you should follow: 
 
 Don&#039;t make it too long and not too short (100-300 words) 
 Don&#039;t center everything, use left-align 
 Highlight the most important parts in bold, like in this article 
 Use lists (for example to list item attributes) 
 
 As you write more and more descriptions, you&#039;ll realize that you end up rewriting some parts over and over, and that&#039;s why we recommend that you  maintain a template  for yourself.&amp;nbsp; 
 Specifically, you&#039;ll usually be writing the same shipping and returns policy over and over.&amp;nbsp; Having this as a copy/paste option will help you  write listing descriptions faster i n the future. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Take good photos of your items 
 The best size for eBay photos is  1600x1600  pixels, which is a  1:1  square aspect ratio.&amp;nbsp; We have done a study on the topic of  best eBay photos , and you are welcome to check the results.&amp;nbsp; Make sure your photos are clear and show the item in full.&amp;nbsp; The most basic eBay photo guidelines to follow are: 
 
 Don&#039;t add borders or frames 
 No text in your photos 
 No watermarks 
 The main photo should show the whole item 
 Don&#039;t add yourself in the photos, just the product.&amp;nbsp; For example, no selfies allowed! 
 
 If you follow these simple rules, you should be just fine. 
 However, I will add that  &quot;beautiful&quot; photos  do sell better!&amp;nbsp; 
 For example, if you&#039;re selling picture frames, then a picture of the frame on a  sandy beach with a blurred ocean background  will work way better than the same item on  sitting your desk .&amp;nbsp; Do spend some time browsing the sold items lists on eBay, and you&#039;ll start to get a feeling for how pictures alone can make or break a sale. 
 These days, a good smartphone will have the function to give you a blurred background in your pictures, so this technology is available to everyone. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Auction or Buy It Now (Fixed Price) eBay listing format? 
 When you make your very first listings on eBay, we recommend that you start with Buy It Now (Fixed Price) listings, because auctions will not really work for you at first.&amp;nbsp; With a non-existing feedback profile, buyers will not trust you enough to place bids on your items, and you will usually end up with an  unsold item, or just one bid.  
 So, make some fixed price listings, and use the  eBay listing promotions feature  to get some visitors.&amp;nbsp; As the days go on, lower your price by just a tiny bit, and eventually you&#039;ll make your first sale.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 On the other hand, if you&#039;re an  established seller , with a lot of positive feedback, then  auctions can easily be your best bet ! 
 Every day, I see a lot of seasoned sellers put up expensive phones with a  starting bid of just $1 , and they get a frenzy of bidders one-upping each other.&amp;nbsp; This is a great strategy and 7 days later a sale is definitely made.&amp;nbsp; Often at a  premium price  too, because buyers will often outbid each other just to win!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Using eBay listing promotions to get more viewers 
 When you make a Fixed Price (or buy it now) listings, you will get the option to promote your listings.&amp;nbsp; This option is all the way at the end of your listing setup page: 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Most of the time, eBay will recommend that you use 7% here.&amp;nbsp; And this is a lot... 
 I like to change this number to  1.5%  because I find the results tend to be the same.&amp;nbsp; eBay will run recommendations of your listing across the whole platform, and it&#039;s only a matter of how much additional exposure you want.&amp;nbsp; For my listings, giving eBay a small amount does the job really well, and those listings get an obvious boost. 
 You&#039;re free to not use this feature too, and you&#039;re welcome to experiment both ways here.&amp;nbsp; I am just sharing my experience that 1.5% is the best option for my listings. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Timing of your listing does make a difference 
 We have done a  research study on the best days and hours to end your eBay listing .&amp;nbsp; When timing your listing, the best days to end your eBay sale are in the following order: 
 
 Sunday 6:30 pm PST 
 Monday 
 Saturday 
 Tuesday 
 Thursday 
 Friday 
 Wednesday 
 
 However, I highly recommend checking our full study on this, because there are many nuances.&amp;nbsp; For example, on Monday and Wednesday nights, sales prices tend to spike up while sales volumes drop.&amp;nbsp; You can use this knowledge to auction off high demand items at a premium.&amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How to ship on eBay 
 Shipping your very first eBay item is exciting!&amp;nbsp; You&#039;ll get an email notification telling you the destination address.&amp;nbsp; Print this and take it with you to the  post office .&amp;nbsp; We recommend using the USPS instead of FedEx or UPS because it&#039;s so much  cheaper  and the delivery speeds are not too bad. 
 Once at the post office, get yourself a shipping package or box depending on your item, and fill in both your and the buyer&#039;s addresses.&amp;nbsp; Hand it to the clerk and tell them what&#039;s inside the package, because sometimes it makes a difference.&amp;nbsp; For example, if it&#039;s a book or DVD movie, then you should get a cheaper  media rate . 
 Make sure you get a  tracking number or proof of postage!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;  
 Go on your eBay sold items list, and enter the tracking number into the system, and you&#039;re done.&amp;nbsp; The buyer will get a notification that you sent out the package.&amp;nbsp; Also, eBay will do tracking for you. 
 As you do this more and more, you&#039;ll start to find ways to do things faster.&amp;nbsp; For instance, you can print shipping labels at home.&amp;nbsp; You can also get your packaging supplies in advance, and pack products in advance.&amp;nbsp; All these tricks will save time, and make you more productive. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Your eBay feedback is king 
 When you start to make some sales on eBay take very good care of your first customers.&amp;nbsp; They will reward you with your initial positive reviews, which will help you make more sales later.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s no wonder your  eBay feedback profile  is so important for your business. 
 Be polite in your messages, and follow all the  eBay communication rules .&amp;nbsp; Ship your items fast, include thank-you cards, and you&#039;ll be on your way to success. 
 The flip side of this is, make sure you  never get negative feedback !&amp;nbsp; If a buyer has a complaint, listen to them.&amp;nbsp; Do everything in your power to make sure an argument doesn&#039;t escalate to moderators at eBay.&amp;nbsp; In 99% of the cases, they will side with the buyer anyway, so you may as well do this yourself. 
 Here&#039;s what I tend to do when there&#039;s a conflict (which is rare too!).&amp;nbsp; If a buyer wants a refund, I just give it to them as long as they return the item.&amp;nbsp; I&#039;ll even pay for the return postage.&amp;nbsp; Sure, I&#039;ll be losing money, but I&#039;ll make it up soon enough from other sales. 
  If the buyer wants a partial refund  - I never give it to them!&amp;nbsp; Instead, I politely offer a full refund if they mail the item back to me.&amp;nbsp; This does several critical things: 
 
 If the buyer was trying to scam me, they now have to decide to drop the scam or escalate to eBay -  but I offered a full refund, so they don&#039;t have much of a case against me!  
 If eBay is watching me, they will appreciate that I&#039;m trying to resolve the issue without involving them, it just helps their business 
 
 And sure, sometimes you do end up making a small loss with this communication strategy, but at least you should be safe from negative feedback. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Use eBay&#039;s function to send offers to listing watchers 
 When you make Fixed Price listings, you&#039;ll normally get people signing up as watchers.&amp;nbsp; There&#039;s now a feature available that lets you  send an offer to eBay watchers .&amp;nbsp; We&#039;ve used this strategy quite a lot to make some quick sales. 
 When you send an offer, you&#039;ll have to provide at least a  5% discount .&amp;nbsp; So, please do this only for those listings which you can afford to lose a bit of income.&amp;nbsp; With that being said, it is a new way to connect with buyers, and there&#039;s no reason to skip this function entirely.&amp;nbsp; Every tool has its place, and this is one of them. 
 Just keep in mind that when you send an offer to a buyer, your offer is binding and the buyer will have a whole 48 hours to accept.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Research eBay sales data 
 Researching eBay sales is the one thing sellers don&#039;t like to do, and ironically it&#039;s also  the one action that can put you ahead  of your competition.&amp;nbsp; We offer research tools on our home page, and free research tools if you register.&amp;nbsp; So there&#039;s no excuse and  no reason  you should not do this. 
 The data we provide will include things like price trends, keywords to use in your titles to help you get more sales, and even entire lists of products that are selling very well on eBay right now! 
  Sell-through and average prices  are also part of our tools. 
 Another way to do your research is to look for eBay sold items, and study those listings directly.&amp;nbsp; However, you&#039;ll have a hard time grasping all of that information, and that is why we created our own tools. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Finding products to sell 
 The absolute best place to start is to  look in your own home  for products or items you don&#039;t need anymore.&amp;nbsp; We recommend this for everyone who is just  starting on eBay .&amp;nbsp; Our short guide on  items you probably already have  will help you. 
 Only after you&#039;ve gained experience  selling stuff you already have , should you even try looking for more items out of your comfort zone.&amp;nbsp; We recommend visiting garage sales, store closing sales and Goodwill for some new ideas.&amp;nbsp; Do this  early in the morning , because you have competitors you don&#039;t know about.&amp;nbsp; That&#039;s right, eBay is so big, that even your local town probably  has a hundred other eBayers . 
 Remember, you don&#039;t have to buy things right away, you&#039;re just checking things out, and looking for opportunities.&amp;nbsp; Take your smartphone with you, so that you can check prices on eBay as you go.&amp;nbsp; (Watch others doing the same!) 
 When you think you&#039;ve got something interesting, go ahead and buy it, but don&#039;t go crazy here.&amp;nbsp; You should take this slowly and you&#039;ll make mistakes along the way.&amp;nbsp; Just make sure you learn from them, and you&#039;ll do just fine. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Seller tips for how to make money on eBay 
 It&#039;s never too late to start your business and make money on eBay.&amp;nbsp; In fact, right now is the best time ever, because this market has never been bigger!&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re seriously going to give eBay a good try, then these tips and tricks will help you get started to making a side income: 
   
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Sell inexpensive items in the beginning 
 You&#039;ll be tempted to list your  expensive things  in the hopes of making some big bucks.&amp;nbsp; But this is a mistake to  avoid !&amp;nbsp; Here&#039;s the simple reason that&#039;s just part of reality, and you won&#039;t hear this anywhere else:  new eBay sellers often get scammed and always get low-ball prices .&amp;nbsp; Don&#039;t believe me?&amp;nbsp;  [LINK]  Here&#039;s a link to recently sold iPhones on eBay - check it out.&amp;nbsp; As you go through the list, notice how everyone with a low feedback number (under 50) sold their smartphone at a much lower price than more established sellers.&amp;nbsp; Don&#039;t be one of these sellers! 
 When you start, sell items that are  less than $100  each.&amp;nbsp; You&#039;ll be doing yourself so many favors this way.&amp;nbsp; 
  First , scammers won&#039;t be too interested in you, because even if they win, they&#039;ll only earn a little money, and they have more interesting sellers to attack.&amp;nbsp; 
  Second , honest buyers will be more willing to work with you even though you have no positive feedback yet.&amp;nbsp; After all, they&#039;re not risking a lot. 
  Third , you will be able to do many more nominal sales with cheap items, and you&#039;ll grow your feedback profile fast. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Have a listing strategy 
 This is the one tip that I don&#039;t see any information about online, so bear with me here.&amp;nbsp; Very often I have more than one of the same or similar item.&amp;nbsp; To be specific, one of the  niche items that I sell on eBay  is sea glass.&amp;nbsp; And after spending time on the beach with my family, I have a lot of it collected.&amp;nbsp; And this is the perfect example to describe my listing strategy, because I came to it only through trial and error, and I made lots of mistakes. 
 At first, I was spending a lot of time making all kinds of listings, thinking the more I list the more I&#039;ll sell.&amp;nbsp;  But this turned out to be wrong. &amp;nbsp; I forgot to listen to the market!&amp;nbsp; Sure, some sales were going through, but nothing major.&amp;nbsp; I then changed my strategy, and I made only about 15 listings and deleted all the dead listings that were going nowhere.&amp;nbsp; When an item sold, I would go back to my collected batch and relist the same listing with new pictures.&amp;nbsp; This approach changed everything for me, and it was a big lesson too.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 Don&#039;t make tons of listings, instead  focus on your listing quality , and listen to what buyers are telling you when they make a purchase or send an offer.&amp;nbsp; As your eBay business grows, you will run into the same thing, and that&#039;s why having a listing strategy is important. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Watch your income and expenses closely 
 Every so often, calculate your income and expenses.&amp;nbsp;  Add up  all your eBay sales, and  subtract  your shipping costs, eBay fees, and inventory costs.&amp;nbsp; The result is your  total earnings  for the period.&amp;nbsp; I like to do this at the end of every month.&amp;nbsp; You might be thinking, that this is obvious and you were going to do this anyway.&amp;nbsp; But let me explain one thing here. 
 While you do these calculations, you will certainly begin to notice some critical things: 
 
 Which listings are selling more than others? 
 Which listings are bringing more profit than others? 
 
 As you monitor your sales, expenses, and profits, you will also know the answer to the above questions.&amp;nbsp; And you will know which products are  worth investing in , and which you should  quit selling .&amp;nbsp; If there&#039;s one thing you have to know to do on eBay (and generally in life), is this:  double down on things that work, and stop doing what doesn&#039;t work.  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Always send thank you notes to buyers 
 When buyers get a  &quot;Thank You&quot;  note from you, you will already be head and shoulders above most of your competition.&amp;nbsp; This is especially true for big eBay businesses, which often have  no time  to do this!&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s a small token of appreciation and your customers will be more likely to remember to leave you  positive feedback . 
 Yes,  guilting  your customers into leaving you feedback is allowed on eBay, as long as you don&#039;t ask for it directly! 
 Beyond this, you can send a message such as &quot; Did the item arrive in good shape?&amp;nbsp; Is it like you expected? &quot;.&amp;nbsp; Again, you&#039;re showing good intentions and as long as you&#039;re sincere, then your customers will not only like you, but they&#039;ll return for more business in the future! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Ship your items quickly 
 When your listings sell, make sure you ship as soon as possible.&amp;nbsp; Preferably even on the same day.&amp;nbsp; Put yourself in the buyer&#039;s shoes - they came to your store, trusted you enough to make a purchase or win your auction, and already paid you.&amp;nbsp; So don&#039;t delay with shipping. 
 When you ship, just make sure you pack your item securely and get a tracking number (or proof of postage).&amp;nbsp; In your eBay seller account, you will be able to enter this tracking number into your sold listing details, and eBay will even track the shipment for you.&amp;nbsp; The buyer will be notified about this, and they&#039;ll be very happy and relieved that you sent out the package.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s all just basic courtesy and good customer service. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Make sure your seller feedback is all positive 
 The eBay feedback profile is the key metric separating new sellers and big sellers.&amp;nbsp; Please take all reasonable steps to get positive feedback from your first sales.&amp;nbsp; Here are some basic things you should do: 
 
 Pack your item well. 
 Ship your product fast, and with tracking. 
 Include a thank you note to the buyer. 
 Leave positive feedback to the buyer. 
 
 This doesn&#039;t take a lot of effort.&amp;nbsp; From my experience, you&#039;ll still only get maybe 1 out of 5 buyers to leave positive feedback, and that&#039;s normal.&amp;nbsp; Still, it doesn&#039;t mean you should give up, quite the opposite.&amp;nbsp; The more you interact with your buyers, the better, and through good interactions, you&#039;ll be earning your feedback and good relations too. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Manage your time 
 Maintain some sort of a timesheet of how much time you spent on which tasks.&amp;nbsp; As you do this, you&#039;ll have the possibility to do some interesting calculations and decisions: 
  How much do you earn per hour from your eBay business? &amp;nbsp; This is only possible if you know how much time you spent. 
  Which tasks do you have to improve on? &amp;nbsp; Very often, writing descriptions is something eBay sellers struggle with and spend too much time on perfecting.&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re one of them, make yourself a template or use our  free eBay listing template .&amp;nbsp; Make sure your time is spent as productively as possible because your competitors are doing the same! 
 Like in my example above with my niche products, I was definitely spending too much time on making those listings.&amp;nbsp; Looking back, it was probably over 50 hours 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Go to closeout sales and yard sales 
 Once you&#039;ve made some initial sales and got to know the platform, it&#039;s time to look for items that you can sell on eBay on a more  consistent basis .&amp;nbsp; And the best places to source your  starter products  are these three: 
 
 Yard sales. 
 Store closeout sales. 
 Thrift stores. 
 
 You don&#039;t have to spend a fortune here (in fact don&#039;t!).&amp;nbsp; But do go out there, and spend a Saturday to collect new inventory and list it on eBay.&amp;nbsp; Markets are never perfect, and you can make money with  price&amp;nbsp;arbitrage .&amp;nbsp; It will be a new learning experience, and you&#039;re likely to run into other eBayers along the way.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s a small world!&amp;nbsp; The most important skills you&#039;ll be practicing here are  negotiation and potential profit calculations .&amp;nbsp; Take your smartphone with you so that you can do item research on the fly.&amp;nbsp; These might seem like mundane skills, but they are very  relevant in the real world . 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Always be looking out for trends 
 When you start to make some sales on eBay, and you start to have some growth, it&#039;s important to keep an eye out for new trends in the category you&#039;re listing in.&amp;nbsp; 
 For example, if you&#039;re into selling  clothing , you have to watch for  fashion directions .&amp;nbsp; 
 If you&#039;re into  electronics , look out for  new gadgets . 
 If you&#039;re selling  bound handmade books , stay sharp with the latest  techniques and color balances . 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 That&#039;s all because of one very simple principle.&amp;nbsp; In the modern world, things change so quickly in all aspects of our lives, that if you do not stay on top of such market trends, then you will very quickly be listing irrelevant products.&amp;nbsp; Likewise, the market will reward you with good income if you offer the right product!&amp;nbsp; So, maximize your chance for success by studying what your buyers want. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 All big sellers were once small 
 It&#039;s easy to be  intimidated  by the major eBay sellers out there, but don&#039;t be!&amp;nbsp; Remember, everyone had a starting point and everyone was just like you.&amp;nbsp; This means you can become a big seller, and you are limited only by yourself. 
 Over the years, we&#039;ve tracked millions of top rated eBay sellers.&amp;nbsp; And you know what?&amp;nbsp;  They come and go real fast. &amp;nbsp; Most of them will be replaced by newcomers into the field  in just a few years .&amp;nbsp; And all this means that it&#039;s never too late to start building an eBay business, and if you&#039;re persistent enough, you will surely succeed. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Can I sell internationally on eBay? 
 You can absolutely sell internationally on eBay, and this is a very easy way to grow your eBay sales.&amp;nbsp; eBay has what they call the&amp;nbsp; global shipping program  to help you do this.&amp;nbsp; By default, if you&#039;re located in the US and you list on the eBay.com website, your account is already part of this program and you don&#039;t have to do anything else. 
 There are no additional fees to pay for you as a seller, and eBay will take care of shipping your item internationally as well as customs processing.&amp;nbsp; You&#039;ll only be required to send your packages to an eBay processing center when an international buyer makes a purchase. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Look for niche products to sell on eBay 
 Once you&#039;ve got the experience of first selling your own things, and then by reselling other items you found at a garage sale or Goodwill store, you are ready to start studying the broader market.&amp;nbsp; As you do this research, the idea is to look for what I call &quot; holes &quot; in the demand and supply of a particular product.&amp;nbsp; Using our&amp;nbsp; niche research tools  is especially helpful for this task.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 The most important thing to research at first is,  make sure the demand exists .&amp;nbsp; If the demand simply isn&#039;t there for your niche product idea, then you&#039;re risking so much and you don&#039;t realize it.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 After verifying the demand, look at the individual eBay listings that are fulfilling that demand.&amp;nbsp; Always think -  how can you do better ?&amp;nbsp; I have some tips here, to get your brainstorming going: 
 
  Can you combine 2 products to sell them in a new and meaningful way? &amp;nbsp; For example, in the DIY electronics retail business, you&#039;ll often see listings that include an electronics board, a book about that board, power cords all combined.&amp;nbsp; In the telescope sales business, you can find people selling a telescope, combined with different lenses. 
  What are the buyers really trying to solve  with the item you&#039;re checking?&amp;nbsp; And can you help to solve that better?&amp;nbsp; Here&#039;s a cool example: you&#039;ll find many  pasta drying racks on eBay .&amp;nbsp; And while all of them will dry pasta, none of them will teach the buyer on how to do it.&amp;nbsp; Including a book on the topic will go a long way. 
 
 This should give you a good start to figuring out your niche products, and this will be where your truly serious earnings come from.&amp;nbsp; Have fun making money on eBay! 
 &amp;nbsp; 
                ]]>
            </content>

                            <updated>2019-05-05T00:45:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Digital products on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/digital-products-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/digital-products-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            There&#039;s a way to sell digital products on eBay, however there are very specific rules to follow.
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  Digital products &amp;nbsp;are a growing part of the economy,&amp;nbsp;and eBay will allow you to sell many of them on the platform.&amp;nbsp; You only have to meet the main requirement that you own it, and the intellectual property belongs to you.&amp;nbsp; eBay has a  Digital product policy   that outlines the guidelines, however, it doesn&#039;t answer all questions and we will try to cover the gaps here.&amp;nbsp; A bit of a spoiler - selling digital products on eBay is allowed, but with some twists and turns to follow.&amp;nbsp; 
 
 How do I list a digital product on eBay? 
 
  Use the category: Everything Else -&amp;gt; Information Products -&amp;gt; Other Information Products  
  In the Format field of the Selling Details, choose the new option &quot;Classified Ad&quot;  
  eBay will charge you $9.95 for this listing  
  The listing will last 30 days  
  You cannot use the Auction-Style or Fixed Price formats for digital products  
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 The biggest pain that you will have is with  delivery .&amp;nbsp; Unfortunately, eBay does not allow for digital delivery (such as email).&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s important to realize the difference between a  digital product and digital delivery .&amp;nbsp; While digital products are allowed, delivering them digitally is not allowed.&amp;nbsp; For example, if you want to sell an eBook, you will even have to include the following statement right in your description: 
  &quot;I will send this eBook by postal mail. Sending it by email or by any other digital delivery method is not allowed and violates eBay policy.&quot;  
 As sellers, we would love to have the capability to automatically deliver the product upon payment.&amp;nbsp; This is a normal step in streamlining your online business, and achieving passive income!&amp;nbsp; So, we will have to wait until eBay changes this policy, but I wouldn&#039;t hold my breath on this one - it&#039;s been like this for many years. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 eBay requirements for digital products 
 Please remember to include a statement in the description, that  you legally own the product, and are authorized to resell it .&amp;nbsp; Also, do not sell anything that can be used maliciously, infringes someone&#039;s privacy or can cause harm.&amp;nbsp; Also, you have to be a verified PayPal user and local pickup is not allowed. 
 Breaking these requirements will result in all kinds of punitive action!&amp;nbsp; You will forfeit your fees, and your listing will be deleted. You could even lose your privilege to sell on eBay altogether, depending on how serious the situation is.&amp;nbsp; Take care that you don&#039;t take this route, and if you have the slightest concern, it&#039;s better not to list your item. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Examples of digital products allowed (and disallowed) on eBay 
 The list of definitely allowed products is surprisingly long. It includes things like  eBay templates, websites, domain names, tickets, software product keys, virtual gaming items, software that you created, eBooks that you wrote .&amp;nbsp; This is encouraging, and I hope it grows over time!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  Disallowed  content includes the following examples: PDF manuals that you did not write, copied music/movies/software.&amp;nbsp; Notice that here the emphasis is on intellectual property.&amp;nbsp; While you may own an original DVD movie, selling a copy of it that you burned on your computer is illegal, even outside eBay. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Why sell digital products 
 The absolute best kind of digital product to sell is one that you can also deliver electronically and automatically, without spending any time or effort.&amp;nbsp; Major companies and services (think Netflix, Amazon Kindle, Apple App Store) rely on this model to make the big bucks.&amp;nbsp; And so, it&#039;s no wonder that we, the little guys, also want to do the same.&amp;nbsp; Just imagine having a product that self-delivers to your customer; yes we live in some beautiful times. 
 This business model is not allowed on eBay unfortunately.&amp;nbsp; Given all the requirements and policies, I would recommend that you go with Amazon in case you&#039;re a writer.&amp;nbsp; And if you create software then you&#039;re a lot better off selling it on your website.&amp;nbsp; By the way, you can even use  PayPal  as your payment provider, which is ironic given that PayPal was until recently owned by eBay. 
 If you&#039;re into selling tangible products, another way to get an edge is to do your research.&amp;nbsp; Look to sell  items that have already proven demand .&amp;nbsp; This is especially useful when you want to look for a new niche market to get into, but don&#039;t exactly know which one yet, and want to get ideas. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Steps to selling your digital product on eBay 
 Now that we know what the requirements and policies are, let&#039;s get down to business!&amp;nbsp; Let&#039;s imagine that you&#039;re a web developer and you have a family friendly website template to sell.&amp;nbsp; Your  first step  is to burn your code and template files onto a CD.&amp;nbsp; Since we&#039;re working with digital products, it&#039;s important to now take your CD and  try to open it on another computer .&amp;nbsp; Make sure it opens fine and all files are readable by the drive.&amp;nbsp; At this stage, it&#039;s a good idea to  run it through an Anti-Virus checker.  Just make sure you won&#039;t be sending a terrible surprise to your customers. 
 After this, you are for the most part back in the usual territory of selling a tangible product, because you&#039;ve cleverly converted your digital product into a physical one.&amp;nbsp; Just like with normal listings, take some nice photos of the CD and screenshots of the software running.&amp;nbsp; Write a good informative description.&amp;nbsp; Include the following words: &quot;I legally own this product and all intellectual property because I wrote it, and am therefore authorized to sell it.&quot;&amp;nbsp; I know it sounds corny, but eBay wants this.&amp;nbsp; And lastly, at the end of your description write that you&#039;ll send it by Post-Mail because eBay does not allow digital delivery.&amp;nbsp; 
 The following would be your step checklist to sell your digital product on eBay: 
 
 Burn your digital product (website template files) to a CD 
 Make sure this CD runs and opens on another computer 
 Check it with Anti-Virus software, make sure it&#039;s clean 
 Take photos of the CD, and screenshots of the website template 
 Write a good description of your product, including all the benefits of using it 
 Include these 2 statements in your description:  &quot;I legally own this product and all intellectual property because I wrote it, and am therefore authorized to sell it.&quot;  and&amp;nbsp; &quot;I will send this website template by postal mail. Sending it by email or by any other digital delivery method is not allowed and violates eBay policy.&quot;  
 Create a new listing on eBay, and pick the category:&amp;nbsp; Everything Else -&amp;gt; Information Products -&amp;gt; Other Information Products  
 In the Format field, pick &quot;Classified Ad&quot; - you&#039;ll only sell 1 at a time, there&#039;s no possibility to sell multiple items here 
 Enter your price and shipping details, pay the $9.95 to eBay upfront 
 Once the sale happens, ship the CD with tracking to the customer 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Curiously, this also means if you sell your product for less than $9.95, then you&#039;re losing money.&amp;nbsp; So, this only makes sense if your price is probably at least $20, and even here, your maximum profit is only $10. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 How come some eBay sellers are breaking the digital delivery rules? 
 Below is a screenshot of an actual eBay seller out there. This seller is not only selling software that he or she does not own, but also provides this by the one method that&#039;s not allowed by eBay. 
   
 I find this to be the most frustrating part of selling on eBay.&amp;nbsp; It seems like everywhere I look, someone else has some special &quot;privilege&quot;...&amp;nbsp; From what I gather, these people have another agreement with eBay. But there&#039;s no way to know why eBay will allow some sellers to do big business like this, and others will be shut down.&amp;nbsp; I just know for a fact that if I try to do the same thing, maybe I&#039;ll get away with it for a while, but not for long.&amp;nbsp; Unless you don&#039;t care about your eBay seller status, please don&#039;t experiment like this. 
 Keep in mind that eBay will normally rule in favor of the buyer if they claim they never received the download link, or your software caused a computer crash.&amp;nbsp; And without any tracking details backing you up, you&#039;re a sitting duck if you&#039;re only starting this business now (think sabotage from a competitor).&amp;nbsp; 
 My main theory for why some are allowed is this: I remember that 15-18 years ago, eBay was much more liberal towards digital products and downloads. Not only the platform but the internet overall was still in the early stages of evolution.&amp;nbsp; And I think that those sellers who started a digital product/delivery business back in those days are now the only ones allowed. 
 There&#039;s also a kind of inconsistency that exists in the eBay guidelines, which I also don&#039;t like.&amp;nbsp; Let&#039;s take the &quot; domain names &quot;, which are an allowed product.&amp;nbsp; But there&#039;s no way to sell someone a domain name by writing it onto a CD!&amp;nbsp; Impossible!&amp;nbsp; It can only be transferred digitally, via a domain registrar.&amp;nbsp; So how in the world can I sell a domain name on eBay and still use post mail?&amp;nbsp; I think this means that if you happen to be selling a domain name, use another service. Otherwise you might transfer your domain and be left with no cash. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Other allowed categories for classified ads 
 The main category where you should place your digital product is&amp;nbsp; Everything Else -&amp;gt; Information Products -&amp;gt; Other Information Products      
 &amp;nbsp; 
 The following is the full list of categories, which eBay allows to be used with Classified Ads: 
 
 Business &amp;amp; Industrial
 
 Construction &amp;gt; Buildings, Modular &amp;amp; Pre-Fab 
 General Office &amp;gt; Trade Show Displays 
 Websites &amp;amp; Businesses for Sale 
 
 
 Specialty Services 
 Travel 
 Everything Else
 
 eBay User Tools 
 Funeral &amp;amp; Cemetery 
 Information Products 
 Reward Points and Incentives Programs &amp;gt; Other 
 
 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 What about including a free CD in your usual listing? 
 The quick answer is &quot;No&quot;, even this is not allowed on eBay.&amp;nbsp; And when you think about it, it makes sense.&amp;nbsp; As a seller, I would love to include some freebie in my listing, to make more sales, but that thing can&#039;t be a digital product, unfortunately.&amp;nbsp; But as an idea for you, in case you&#039;re selling sunglasses, you can include a pouch - so, tangible freebie items are still allowed to boost your listing.&amp;nbsp; Also, I would hate to have to compete with someone who&#039;s including free software packages with everything they sell. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Conclusion 
 This should provide you with a good overview of how to sell digital products on eBay, the policies to follow and what is possible.&amp;nbsp; If you now feel discouraged, don&#039;t be!&amp;nbsp; Instead, be creative, continue looking to find your way.&amp;nbsp; Even if selling on eBay is not an option for you, there are countless other ways to sell digital products online. That is, provided that your intentions are good and you provide value to your customers. 
 Feel free to share this information with others who might be interested in selling online.&amp;nbsp; If you have questions or tips, please use the comments section below.&amp;nbsp; It would be especially interesting if you share actual experiences. If you happen to be one of the exceptional few who has a different agreement with eBay, I am very curious to hear how you did it! 
 Considering everything in this article, I expect eBay will change one day. There will be someone at eBay headquarters strong enough to stand up and make a clear set of rules which allow for digital delivery.&amp;nbsp; The world and technology are moving so fast now. I foresee the digital economy will grow further until it cannot be ignored even by eBay leaders. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2019-04-23T01:30:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">Flip Phones on eBay</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/flip-phones-on-ebay</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/flip-phones-on-ebay"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            Full guide to flipping phones on eBay, with tips. Lots of people already do this part time and make a good income.
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            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  Flipping or reselling phones  on eBay, is one of the  brightest and overlooked business ideas  out there.&amp;nbsp;As a thought experiment, try to think of even one person you know who still doesn&#039;t own some sort of smartphone. That&#039;s right, one or two people is all you can come up with - everyone else you know either has one or is thinking of buying a phone. And that&#039;s a good sign, because it proves there&#039;s absurd demand out there, and we can tap into it if we follow a good plan. 
 
 How do I flip phones on eBay? 
 
  Create a CraigsList (or similar) Ad in your local city, where you&#039;ll offer cash for phones  
  When you get calls, be polite and research the phone fast  
  Offer half the average eBay sales price for the phone, as cash on hand  
  Most times, the caller won&#039;t take the offer but don&#039;t get discouraged and don&#039;t go above 70% of the average eBay sales price  
  About 1 in 10 will accept your offer or will call you back later  
  Arrange to meet and make the transaction  
  List the phone on eBay, if you did your research right, you&#039;ll end up with a solid 20% profit on the flip  
 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 While the above action plan might seem straight forward, there are a lot of ways to go wrong, and that&#039;s why I encourage you to read the whole phone flipping course or bookmark it to refer to later if you decide to go for it. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Listing your ad on CraigsList 
 We use CraigsList because it&#039;s still valid today, but maybe for you, it&#039;s something else.&amp;nbsp; Use whatever resource you have at hand, to advertise yourself as a phone buyer and stay local to your city.&amp;nbsp; The following is an image of an example of an advertisement in a city near me: 
   
 Yes, it&#039;s mandatory that you include a picture of phones and cash - just kidding!&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s a bit over the top, but you get the idea.&amp;nbsp; Make your ad simple!&amp;nbsp; Include a picture of your phone if you have to, and use simple statements in the offer.&amp;nbsp;  Write which used phones you&#039;ll buy, and offer cash for them.  
 At this stage, you might be tempted into posting a price list.&amp;nbsp; It might seem like a good idea because you won&#039;t be receiving calls from uninterested leads.&amp;nbsp; Unfortunately, the way psychology works is, people will look at your ad and immediately disregard it, and you won&#039;t get any calls at all.&amp;nbsp; Think of it from the owners&#039; perspective.&amp;nbsp; If someone is offering a specific amount of money for something, without even seeing it first, it just registers in their minds as a low-ball offer, and they move on. 
 As time goes on and you make more and more of these ads, try out different variations on the picture and text you use.&amp;nbsp; Small changes here and there could result in more business, so it&#039;s always good to experiment. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Talking to callers who want to sell you their phone 
  Politeness and good phone skills  go a very long way here.&amp;nbsp;  Be courteous , and you&#039;ll be amazed at what you get in return.&amp;nbsp; Start the call with a &quot;Good Morning, Mark speaking!&quot;.&amp;nbsp;  Introducing yourself is important. &amp;nbsp; Please realize the person on the other side already decided to sell their phone, and the rest is just a matter of price.&amp;nbsp; Also, not everyone has an eBay seller account like you, in case you&#039;re wondering why don&#039;t they sell it themselves.&amp;nbsp; The caller is calling you because you are their only chance to cash in. 
 Ask as many questions as you can about the make and model, how long they had it, what&#039;s the condition, and defects.&amp;nbsp; All of these things matter to you because the last thing you want is a surprise later.&amp;nbsp; Note all the details on paper, because it&#039;s easy to forget critical details. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Researching the phone quickly on eBay 
 If you happen to be in front of a computer, you can even do these checks while on call.&amp;nbsp; If you&#039;re don&#039;t have a way to check prices at the moment of the call, just say you&#039;ll call back later.&amp;nbsp; Filter for &quot; Sold Listings &quot;, and the same make and model as the caller&#039;s phone.&amp;nbsp; There are a lot of listings from new sellers, and these usually get low prices because of the perceived risk from buyers.&amp;nbsp; Look for more established sellers and see how they did.&amp;nbsp; Check more than one, and get a feel for the average price they get.&amp;nbsp; Below is a screenshot of this in practice: 
          Click to see these filters on eBay  
 As you do this research, please force yourself to be  realistic .&amp;nbsp; For example, as of this writing when I check the prices, I see the following: $775, $720, $750, $750, $790, $740, and so on.&amp;nbsp; If the phone is in good condition, you&#039;ll be able to get about $740 for it.&amp;nbsp; Instead of looking at the highest or lowest prices, try to get a feel for the average fair price that eBay buyers are paying. 
 When you do this kind of research enough, very quickly you&#039;ll start to remember prices off the top of your head, and you won&#039;t have to refer back to eBay so often.&amp;nbsp; If you plan on seriously starting a flip/resell business, check out other  ways to do your eBay research , which put you miles ahead of your competition. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Making the offer for the phone 
 Building on the above &quot; iPhone XS Max &quot; research example, and assuming the caller claims the phone is scratchless and is fully functional (ie, not water-damaged or iCloud locked), you now know you can comfortably get $740 for it on eBay.&amp;nbsp; So what should you offer?&amp;nbsp; I recommend offering  50%  of that to start.&amp;nbsp; So your initial offer will be $370.&amp;nbsp; That might seem like a terrible offer until you do a bit of math to see where you&#039;ll stand after all the fees.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 As a rule of thumb, roughly 15% will go to eBay and PayPal.&amp;nbsp; So that $720 x 85% will mean you will only get $612 in the bank.&amp;nbsp; If you offer the caller $612 or more, then you&#039;ll be losing money.&amp;nbsp; We have an  eBay fees calculator  to help you with the calculations here.&amp;nbsp; But keep in mind, that&#039;s only your initial offer and remind the caller that you haven&#039;t seen the actual product yet.&amp;nbsp; Make your case clear, and also  ask them how much were they expecting ?&amp;nbsp; This is a negotiation game, and you&#039;ll get better at it as you make more flips.&amp;nbsp; If the counter-offer is acceptable for you (I would say $520 would be my absolute upper limit), you&#039;re free to move on to the next step.&amp;nbsp; Otherwise, you&#039;re better off telling them that you&#039;re sorry, but can&#039;t offer any more than that, and if the caller changes his or her mind then you can meet.&amp;nbsp; Again, only about 1 out of 10 callers will turn into a resale opportunity, so don&#039;t be afraid of turning people down.&amp;nbsp; And your competitors also be calling you, just to hear your prices! 
 Once you agreed on the phone specs and price, tell the caller you&#039;ll need to get a copy of their ID and you&#039;ll be signing a Sales Agreement.&amp;nbsp; This is super important to do, and a lot of people skip this step because they don&#039;t realize that it&#039;s easy to get in trouble with this business.&amp;nbsp; Consider this - what if the phone is stolen?&amp;nbsp; Normally, a thief will back out of this deal right away, out of fear of detection.&amp;nbsp; If it&#039;s an honest person, they&#039;ll have no problem with this, and you can even offer a copy of your ID in return.&amp;nbsp; If you plan to do serious business, having this paperwork is necessary for your protection.&amp;nbsp; I recommend visiting your local attorney to write up the Sales Agreement, it won&#039;t cost you a fortune and you&#039;ll have peace of mind. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Buying the phone for cash 
 It&#039;s tempting to agree to meet on the same day, but you&#039;re better off devoting the coming  Saturday  for this task.&amp;nbsp; Most people either go to school or work during weekdays anyway.&amp;nbsp; To have a streamlined side-business, you should do the phone buying on Saturday morning, and if you&#039;ve been working hard during the weekdays in advance, you should have a busy day!&amp;nbsp; Try to plan your route and schedule in a way to get the most phones in a short amount of time. 
 For the meetings, choose a public place.&amp;nbsp; Avoid parking lots and empty streets.&amp;nbsp; Remember, the caller knows you have cash on hand, and probably a lot of it!&amp;nbsp; This is really for your safety and also for the caller&#039;s safety. 
 When you meet, be polite and understanding.&amp;nbsp; If the seller is a woman, she&#039;ll very likely bring her boyfriend or husband, and this is OK.&amp;nbsp; Ask for the phone so that you can inspect it.&amp;nbsp; Look for anything abnormal - does it turn on as expected?&amp;nbsp; Is it sluggish or not?&amp;nbsp; Is its appearance as you expected?&amp;nbsp; If something doesn&#039;t feel right, you can always back out, and no harm is done.&amp;nbsp; But if all is good, then you&#039;ve just scored!&amp;nbsp; Sign 2 copies of the Sales Agreement (one for you and one for the seller), exchange copies of IDs, pay for the phone and you&#039;re now officially in business. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Keep a track of all the paperwork 
 The Sales Agreement will include important details including the  date, product that was sold and the price paid .&amp;nbsp; You should store this in a safe place for the coming tax season.&amp;nbsp; Please also consult with your Accountant and make sure you will be paying taxes only your earnings and not on the full sales prices!&amp;nbsp; So yes, the signed agreement serves two purposes -  security and for tax declarations . 
 Keep a spreadsheet of all your expenses and income, figure out what your actual earnings are.&amp;nbsp; Then do the math and calculate how much you earn per hour on this side business.&amp;nbsp; Depending on your sales, negotiation and eBay skills, you should end up with something between $20 and $50 per hour here.&amp;nbsp; But if you earn less than $20, then you should experiment more and look for ways to improve either your negotiation or research skills. 
 Please also note down your gas and trip expenses, because these will add up!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Listing the phone on eBay and finishing the flip 
 Now, on  Saturday evening , it&#039;s time for you to make all the listings.&amp;nbsp; I encourage you to do this on the  same day  so that your inventory is spending one less day just sitting there, and you&#039;ll be glad to not have to do this on Sunday. 
 When listing the phone on eBay, take good pictures of it, and show all the imperfections.&amp;nbsp; If there are any defects, mention them in the description.&amp;nbsp; For example, if there&#039;s a small scratch on the screen, note it down.&amp;nbsp; By the way, these imperfections were also your negotiating cards, so you could use them to bring the price a bit lower if you have to. 
 Fill in all of the product attributes like the carrier, model, condition, storage and so on. 
 When you make the listing, first try listing it in  &quot;Fixed Price&quot;  format, and put a price of just barely above average.&amp;nbsp; Like in our example from above, try $760 at first, but only if you can afford to wait some extra time.&amp;nbsp; If you can&#039;t afford to wait, then list of for $740, and it should sell quickly.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s only a $20 difference, but for you, it might mean an extra  3%  on your investment, and this is always welcome. 
 You can experiment with doing Free Shipping, but from my experience, you&#039;re better off without it.&amp;nbsp; Just charge a flat fee like $7, and this doesn&#039;t seem to have an impact, because the phone prices are usually a couple of hundred dollars. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 What about flipping broken phones? 
 I recommend that you try this only after you&#039;ve become  good at the basics .&amp;nbsp; When you pay someone cash for a broken phone, you never really know what you&#039;re getting, and more often than not you&#039;ll get a piece of garbage.&amp;nbsp; There are exceptions here, however, and I&#039;ll mention them! 
 First of all, please avoid water damage.&amp;nbsp; It&#039;s really rare that such phones can ever be brought back to life, and no one will want the internal parts either.&amp;nbsp; On the other hand, iPhone models 6/7 with broken screens can be great for fixing and reselling.&amp;nbsp; First, if the screen is cracked enough, the phone looks so terrible that you&#039;ll have an easier time with negotiation.&amp;nbsp; Also, with a bit of work, you can even replace the screen yourself.&amp;nbsp; The older iPhone models are also much easier to fix as opposed to the new ones were even taking off the screen is a challenge. 
 But again, please only try this after you&#039;re good with normal phones because it&#039;s too  easy to lose money chasing broken phones . 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Conclusion 
 I hope this was a useful introductory course for you to the  business of  flipping or reselling phones on eBay  .&amp;nbsp; Many people do this business even for a living today, and since demand is only growing, I believe this will be a growing opportunity.&amp;nbsp; One more thing I&#039;ll mention is, the  easiest flips tend to be with older models , phones that are 2-3 years old become more &quot;subjective&quot; in terms of pricing and negotiation.&amp;nbsp; It will be a rare flip where someone brings you a near-new phone, that&#039;s for sure. 
 A lot of times, people think about flipping phones by buying and selling them on eBay.&amp;nbsp; I have to dispel this right away - from my research, this just can&#039;t work at all.&amp;nbsp; The market is just so tight, you&#039;ll seldom find a phone cheap enough to cover your eBay fees and leave you with any profit.&amp;nbsp; If you do find one, then most likely there&#039;s some catch.&amp;nbsp; Perhaps, the only possibility is when you buy broken phones for parts and put them together, but this is so labor and time consuming that it&#039;s not worth it. 
 If you have any questions or more to add,  feel free to use the comments section  below. 
                ]]>
            </content>

                            <updated>2019-04-23T01:30:00+02:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
    
        <entry>
            <title type="text">eBay Buyer Scams</title>
            <id>https://marksight.com/blog/ebay-buyer-scams</id>
            <link href="https://marksight.com/blog/ebay-buyer-scams"/>
            <summary type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                
                                            List of most common buyer scams on eBay. It&#039;s best to know about these before you sell anything of high value.
                                        ]]>
            </summary>
            <content type="html">
                <![CDATA[
                  Let&#039;s talk  about an uncomfortable topic about selling on eBay: when you do enough business, you will eventually  run into a scammer .&amp;nbsp; The unfortunate situation is, most people only bother to do their research  after falling prey  to one of these tricks, and at that point, the  damage has already been done . 
 The thing is, this is all  relevant to all online sales  businesses and not just eBay.&amp;nbsp; As a seller, you will find all of these  same or similar issues on other platforms  like Etsy, Amazon, and all the rest.&amp;nbsp; These are all known  eBay criticisms , and one might say they cannot be completely avoided. 
 
   
 List of Common eBay Buyer Scams 
  The following is a list of the most common eBay buyer scams:  
 
 Claim that an  item was not received . 
 Request shipment to an  unconfirmed address . 
  Missing signature confirmation  on PayPal transactions over  $750 . 
 Return a  different item  back to the seller.&amp;nbsp; This is the worst one for eBay sellers. 
 Make a  credit card chargeback  after receiving the item. 
  Claim shipping insurance  after receiving the item. 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 While eBay is  committed to stopping  all scam artists, the Seller is usually at a  disadvantage .&amp;nbsp; Most cases turn into the seller&#039;s word versus the buyer&#039;s word, and these are normally ruled in the buyer&#039;s favor.&amp;nbsp; It is worth mentioning that no one on eBay is able to run such schemes for a long time. 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Item Not Received Scam 
 These days, only the  new sellers  stumble on this common scam, which is very easy to avoid just by using tracked shipping.&amp;nbsp; The extra cost of having your item tracked is well worth it! 
  The story goes like this:  
 You sell an item, and send it without tracking or delivery confirmation.&amp;nbsp; The buyer will know this when they receive the package because it will not have any tracking details printed on it.&amp;nbsp; While most buyers won&#039;t mind, the scammer will proceed to  open a case  either with eBay or even with PayPal that they  did not receive the item .&amp;nbsp; And since you have  no proof  otherwise, the paid funds will be immediately transferred back to the buyer&#039;s account,  end of story . 
  Another tip here:  always state in your listing description that you will use tracked shipments.&amp;nbsp; This deters the bad buyers right away. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
  
 Request Shipment To Another Address Scam 
 Sometimes a buyer will purchase your listing, pay with PayPal and send a message requesting  to ship to another address instead of the one confirmed with PayPal .&amp;nbsp; The buyer might say they are moving, or this is a gift for a friend overseas.&amp;nbsp; What really may have happened is, an  unfortunate real buyer got hacked , and the hacker is quickly making purchases while they can. 
  First of all , you should state in your listings that you only ship to PayPal confirmed addresses.&amp;nbsp;  Period.  
 If this still happens to you, ask the buyer to change their PayPal address and reconfirm it first.&amp;nbsp; If they do this, then you are safe again and can send the shipment out.&amp;nbsp; But most often there will be no response, and then you can reach out to eBay and PayPal support to reverse the transaction.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  What happens if you listen to the buyer and send out the shipment?&amp;nbsp;  Well, if the PayPal account was actually hacked, then you will experience a chargeback and the funds will be taken out of your account.&amp;nbsp; You will not have any seller protection, because you sent the shipment to an address that wasn&#039;t confirmed. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 PayPal Over $750 Missing Signature Confirmation Scam 
 PayPal has a good  seller protection policy , but it only works if you follow the rules.&amp;nbsp; One of those rules that many sellers miss is, you must request a  signature confirmation  with the shipping company if the item value is  more than $750 .&amp;nbsp; The reason for this is, it&#039;s an extra bit of proof that the item was delivered and handed over to the buyer. 
 Again, an easy way to avoid this entirely is to clearly state in your listing description that you will use signature confirmation if the item sells for more than $750. 
 A &quot;savvy&quot; buyer will watch out for this, and this time will open a dispute with PayPal (not eBay this time).&amp;nbsp; The hard lesson here is, even if you used tracked shipping and delivery confirmation and have all the documents on hand - PayPal will still immediately rule in favor of the buyer.&amp;nbsp; Once again, funds will be deducted from your account and credited back to the buyer. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 
   
 Make Sure To Request a Signature When Shipping Items that Cost More Than $750  
 &amp;nbsp; 
  What&#039;s worse is , it doesn&#039;t even help if the buyer was known for running this scheme!&amp;nbsp; For example, in some cases, the buyer already had a lot of negative eBay feedback about this, and PayPal will still punish the seller here. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Return Different Item Scam 
 This is probably the most disheartening problem for sellers because (in my view) it&#039;s the equivalent of outright theft.&amp;nbsp; Jewelry, high-end fashion items, and even electronics tend to be the targets for this one.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 The &quot;Return Different Item Scam&quot; goes like this: You sell an item and ship it to the buyer.&amp;nbsp; The buyer will make a return right after receiving it and will send a  different item  back to the seller.&amp;nbsp; Of course, the item sent back is either worthless or of a much smaller value.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 The reason for the return can really be anything, but the buyer will most often state the item was not as described or is damaged in some way that is not visible on the listing photos.&amp;nbsp; This is all covered in  the eBay return policy , which basically guarantees that literally any item can be returned, and the seller has 3 days to accept it. 
  It&#039;s important to remember, if a seller states in the listing that the item is not returnable and sold as is, eBay will still force the return case onto the seller!  
 &amp;nbsp; 
     Accurate Representation of Receiving A Different Item as a Return  
 &amp;nbsp; 
 I&#039;ve read about sellers receiving fake rings as returns, and even iPhones with all electronics removed.&amp;nbsp; In one especially memorable instance, the seller received a  bag of sand instead of a phone  (the buyer claimed they received sand and returned it).&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  The easiest way to avoid this one or really any bad situation  is to first of all not sell to  high-risk countries .&amp;nbsp; The next precaution you can take is,  make a video recording of yourself making the shipment : literally put your item into the package, and close it, then hand it to the clerk and show the receipt with the tracking details all in one long video shot.&amp;nbsp; You don&#039;t have to do this for all your items, just the expensive ones because this scam is not really worth the effort on inexpensive things. 
 If you don&#039;t have enough evidence backing you up, the next thing you might try is to escalate the case further with eBay and try to convince their seller support center that your buyer is dishonest.&amp;nbsp; But know in advance, that all but the biggest power sellers, will be ruled against. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Credit Card Company Chargeback Scam 
 This is similar to the &quot; Request Shipment To Another Address &quot; case above, but the difference this time is it&#039;s not the PayPal account that was hacked, but instead a  stolen credit card  was used to fund the account.&amp;nbsp; The buyer will request to ship to an unconfirmed address, and as long as you don&#039;t do that, you&#039;re safe! 
 If you listen to the buyer, then what will happen is - the real owner of the credit card will issue a chargeback, which will go to PayPal.&amp;nbsp; If PayPal notices your shipment went to an unconfirmed address then the money will be taken out of your account.&amp;nbsp; If it turns out that you shipped to the confirmed address after all -  then believe it or not  - PayPal will absorb the cost. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Shipping Insurance Scam 
 This one  usually does not affect the seller , but it&#039;s still good to know about it.&amp;nbsp; It only works if you provide shipping insurance.&amp;nbsp; So, let&#039;s say the buyer has an iPhone which is broken to bits.&amp;nbsp; They buy the same model on eBay, and once the package arrives they will take out the good iPhone and place their broken one into the box - and will try to claim insurance. 
  If the claim is successful  - the buyer will get the insured amount  from the delivery company , normally the full price!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
  If the claim is denied  (for example the buyer forgot to beat up the shipping box to make it look believable) - then they can still escalate the issue with their credit card company.&amp;nbsp; This will eventually come back to PayPal, but here they are normally good with protecting the sellers, and your account will not be deducted from. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Is Scamming on eBay Worth It? 
 First of all, this type of behavior is immoral and illegal.&amp;nbsp; Running scams online in the 90s might have been a lucrative activity, but these days, with everything becoming digital and people&#039;s livelihoods and reputations living on the internet, it is absolutely not worth it.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; 
 Law enforcement is catching onto this, and even small-time scammers get caught all the time.&amp;nbsp; The price to pay is just too much, so everyone is urged to stay away. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Summary For How to Avoid eBay Buyer Scams 
 This is a summary of what actions to take in advance, which will drastically reduce your chances of being targeted by predatory eBay buyers. 
 
 Clearly state in your listing description, that you will only ship to a PayPal confirmed address, without exception. 
 Add to your listing description that you will only use tracked shipping with delivery confirmation. 
 If your item is over $750, state that you will require a signature confirmation for PayPal. 
 Follow the above points, no exceptions! 
 If your item is very expensive make a video recording of yourself making the shipment. 
 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Even if you follow all of these points, you may still get scammed on eBay or online.&amp;nbsp; But that&#039;s life, and sometimes exceptional things may happen.&amp;nbsp; However, your chances for it will be lowered. 
 &amp;nbsp; 
 Final Thoughts 
 Thank you for checking this article and I hope you never run into such a case in your eBay career - or ever really.&amp;nbsp; If you know about other buyer scams not mentioned here or how to protect ourselves better, please feel free to comment below. 
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            </content>

                            <updated>2019-03-13T00:30:00+01:00</updated>
                    </entry>

    
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