eBay Seller Tips: The Great Experiment
There’s a lot of advice floating around about how to sell effectively on eBay. Some of these eBay seller tips are even good. But which? What are the best headlines? Does paying for bold or colored backgrounds matter? How important is free shipping vs. loss leader pricing vs. high shipping costs? Your pictures vs. those provided by the vendor? What makes the most compelling copy?
Using the scientific method
If you’ve ever thought about it, the only way to determine the best way to sell on eBay is the scientific method. Sell an item using one technique. Sell the exact same item using a different method. Compare the results. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
Certainly there must be a fair number of successful sellers who have done this. But as far as I know, they aren’t telling. Makes sense. The most successful sellers are those with specific niches they exploit efficiently. Publishing their techniques would be a surefire way to inviting unwanted competition into their niches. Therefore from what I can tell no open source experiments of this kind have been done. So how to conduct such an experiment?
The Great eBay Seller Tips Experiment Methodology
You need a bunch of identical items to sell. You must sell one or two of them as baselines to see how the other ones will sell. You need to be able to conduct the experiment in a fairly short period, because many eBay sales patterns are seasonal. You need the guidance of good sellers. You need the kind of items you know will sell. You need to be willing to lose money, because some of your experiments will fail, and by fail I mean you’ll either not fetch the highest possible price or your item may not sell at all. What kind of a sucker wants to take those risks?
Sucker Experimental Subject needed
A sucker like me. And you’re going to help.
I have a couple dozen first-generation iPod Shuffles I had imprinted with the name of a now-defunct startup. The imprints tiny and appear on the back of the iPods. The iPods are unopened. I am willing to sacrifice these little critters to science in order to test various combinations of selling techniques and see which work best. All you have to do is contribute your best ideas. Over the next few weeks we’ll winnow out the ones worth trying, then put them to the test and see how well your eBay seller tips work.
Let the Great eBay Experiment Begin. Use the Comment feature to tell the world how you think we should sell the iPod Shuffles. Make the world safer for eBay sellerdom.
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
Not about the topic, but I think I read on your site that a bidder,using esnipe, could place a bid for less than the beginning price. I’ve tried that, but the system won’t allow my, lower than the opening price, bid.
What gives? or am I just out of my freeking mind and made all this up in a wee hour of the morning.
Thanks,
Iodine9
@iodine9: There is never, and has never, been any way to set a bid for less than the opening price. Either our site is wrong (quite possible, or you really have been pulling too many all-nighters.
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
Pump the ipod full of Non-copyright stuff, like the King James Bible, I dunno….Anachist Cookbook? Fill it with something legal…….
@bill anderson: That’s a very strong idea. A little miffed I didn’t think of that one myself. Thank you.
While there is merit to pumping the iPod full of stuff , I think that may backfire as the new iPod is now opened and may appear to be used.
I’m going to put some thought into ideas and come back to this later.
Donate a percentage of sale to a charity…..or even an ipod to needy children for so many sold. Though they may be 1st gen….I’ve seen the faces of these kids light up like Christmas when given one. It’s a GREAT feeling.
Scott
Leave the ipod clean. Tell the story just as you have told it. Make sure your pics are VG, show everything. Sell them one at a time.
Check the activity and prices on eBay’s “Completed auciton” Search page. and to test various methods: 1) On a regular auction, set to expire Sunday evening, make your price a bargain, relative to what seems to be the going rate 2) A week or so later, set the price higher, at a level you would be happy with and try BuyItNow. 3) A week later set the price a little higher and try Make Offer.
You probably realize already that July and August are the worts times to sell on eB. You will see more action in October.
@John (a.k.a. Franko) Doh! You’re right of course. The fact that they’re sealed in the package is part of the appear. (Slaps self on forehead.)
@Scott Selman: Wonderful ideas. Will ponder. However, while I can (and do) contribute to worthy causes anytime, I seldom get such a good chance to run an interesting experiment.
@Jack R, fantastic tips. I am acutely embarrassed to report that I forgot about the summer doldrums on eBay. Weirdly, eSnipe’s business doesn’t fluctuate much during that time. I’m thinking though that it doesn’t ruin the experiment? I’m guessing that the prices will all be proportionately lower, which still wouldn’t invalidate the results since it’s not a localized effect. Your thoughts?
Always wondered about the effect of pictures and return policy on eBay sales. Seems to be an inverse relationship in my experience. Consider one listing with a single, poor quality photo coupled with simple item description vs another with the same description but utilizing multiple, high quality item shots. Repeat the same but with a verbose, too much information description that also contains a diatribe about dead-beat bidders, shipping policy, George Bush, etc. Finally, I’d repeat the same again, but with an “as-is”, no return” vs a liberal, 5 day “no questions asked” or similar return policy.
I am mad and disappointed. I was the e-snipe top bidder (or so I thought) but when auction was over my bid had not been submitted. The reason, a change of my e-bay password. Doesn’t e-snipe check ahead of time to see if a pass-word is faulty? In my case, they had plenty of days to do that. But what I am most disappointed about is that e-snipe did not send me an e-mail, either before the problem or after the bidding closed with an apology and a reason my bid failed. It may have been on my e-snipe home screen – but I don’t check that til an auction is over. An e-mail alert is all it would have taken. I am sorry to bother you with this, Tom, as it is really a trivial matter compared to the problems with your sweet little daughter.
All the best,
Shirley Sue Swaab
Disclose the logo, but sell it with a skin or cover that will cover the shuffle. That way the logo is not visible. I imagine you have one out of the package that you could cover to take pictures of. Tell the buyer they will get a brand new sealed shuffle along with a skin. Basically you could:
1. Sell it with a skin
2. Suggest they cover with a skin
3. Offer a rebate to cover the cost of a skin once they leave positive feedback (don’t know if ebay allows this)
Make sure you show a picture! Do you have a picture that we could see?
I love esnipe & and assignments like these!
You may be able to pick up a wholesale lot of skins on ebay. I have seen a bunch on clearance occasionally. Especially if your ipod is an older model shape, the price of skins will be lower.
Don’t use eBay photo uploading. The photos are small and they cost 15 cents a pop. Instead upload to a third party site like photobucket and post the HTML links to the files in your item description. Your photos will be free, large, and attractively inserted in the item description.
Points that I’d like to test – does using attractive font and colored text make a difference? What about the eBay 10 cent borders and free shipping? My hypothesis, at least for women’s clothes, is that free shipping does nothing, but improved graphics are effective. I don’t sell on a large enough scale to thoroughly test, I mainly just clean my closets and then restock from eBay and elsewhere.
@JoJo: Liking all your thought experiments here. The picture one must absolutely be tested. The return policy options also sound like fun to test.
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
@Shirley Sue: I hope you’ll forgive us when you learn why we can’t do what you ask. There are a couple of problems with satisfying your request. One is security. eBay’s automated fraud bots get suspicious when you probe like that and such an action may get your IP address banned for a few hours. Second, eSnipe has hundreds of thousands of registered users and places many thousands of bids per day. We do our best not to overload eBay’s servers. Preceding each bid with a password check would cause a serious drain on their servers and they would almost certainly block us altogether if we tried it. Frustrating, I know, and I’m sorry we can’t help.
For the same reason we can’t monitor the price of an item and alert you if you’ve been outbid.
@Michael: It’s not actually a logo, just a tiny FIZMO in like 6 point type on the back of the unit. I am just getting back from vacation and will look for an open one. You’re right, I need to post pix. The bonus idea is an interesting one. Have a favorite source of those skins?
@Michael: Funny, I didn’t see your wholesale skins post until I replied to the previous one. Anyway if you have a favorite vendor let me know.
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
@Jen: Excellent photo upload point. That alone could save busy sellers a fortune.
I too want to test the fonts, borders and so on.
Interesting that you think free shipping doesn’t help. My instincts tell me the same thing, counterintuitive though it might be. Well, we’ll find out!
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
You need to test only ONE thing across all 6 iPods, and you need to make sure everything else is equal.
So I would just change the TITLE of the auction in each one – and list all 6 at exactly the same time, with exactly the same starting price and description.
If you change more than one thing you’ll never be able to tell what it was that worked.
Do NOT put anything on it. Repeat ad naseum that it’s an APPLE IPOD SHUFFLE. There have been a lot of fakes for sale and you have to drum it into a buyer’s head.
Have lots of + fb. This may seem obvious, but it really makes a difference in the final bids. Perception of trustworthyness is essential.
Don’t center your text, don’t use more than 2 colors and use a small, legible font.
Do not scare people away with 9,000 lines of terms. The ONLY terms that should be in your description are what I call ’selling terms’: those terms that will persuade someone to buy.
If possible, pic, description, terms: all on the same eye level. People don’t like to scroll, the eye gets tired quickly having to scan a wide table. (I no longer follow this advice, but I’m now just a casual seller of something no one else has, so I don’t care).
At one time I was the top seller (by a very comfy margin) in 8 Health and Beauty categories.
Oh yeah. I agree…good pics. Nothing spells death to an item like an IPOD as stock pics. The only thing stock pics work well for is books.
@Media-Mover. Interesting! I wonder why it works with books but not other things?
@Media-Mover: Excellent feedback on not putting anything on it. And centered text…gag me! But what’s + fb? and why did you stop being a bigtime seller?
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
Using a very well put together template employing your html and graphic design skills, to make your auction appear to be the best thing in the world is very important. Ebay sells borders but they are nothing different and all they show buyers is that you were willing to spend a few cents to put some ugly thing on your listing. Headings are very important, keeping everything organized. You really are looking to be different from everyone else who is offering the same thing. Buying online is such a visual experience that I think visual appeal and a good command of the language is of the utmost import. That and having great feedback. It would be interesting to see if paying the extra for featuring an ipod listing would get you a higher sale than having a regular listing.
+fb positive feedback?
@littleearthquakes (love that handle) I’ve seen lots of big sellers with AWFUL listings. I bet you’re wrong (though I personally am swayed by good esign). We’ll test it!
@Rita: Doh! Thank you!
Good design does nothing for sales. Bad design can sometimes be better than good design. eBay buyers will teach you that lesson quickly if you sell a lot of stuff.