How to avoid failure with your auctions

How to Avoid Failure with your Auctions

Many first time sellers have one thing in common – they fail.

Many of them fail time and time again, never understanding what is going wrong.

They do hours of research looking for the perfect item to sell, get the auction set up, and wait for the bidding to begin. Hours go by and no bids are placed. Days go by, and there are still no bids – or there are very low bids. Finally the auction ends, and it turns out to be a total failure.

Considering the huge number of sellers who run eBay auctions, there are specific things you must do, and specific things you must not do if you are to be successful.

There are many reasons why auctions fail. The most common reason is that the item is not in high demand. This problem can be avoided by doing the necessary research to determine which items sell well, and which items should be avoided. This research takes a great deal of time – but in the end, you will find that it is time well spent.

Another reason for eBay failure is pricing. No matter what your reserve price is, your opening bid price should never be more than £50 or so. This is how you will attract potential bidders to your auction. If you set that opening bid too high, most people won’t even click the link to read the description for your item. Another pricing problem is lack of research. Before you set your reserve price, you must determine what the item is really worth, and the price similar items have sold for in past eBay auctions.

Poorly written descriptions are another cause of failed auctions. Poor grammar and misspelled words drive people away. Failing to post a picture of the item will also keep people from visiting your auction page. Make sure that your description is well written. This is essentially your ‘sales copy.’

Shipping prices scare people away from auctions if they are too high. Find the lowest shipping prices that you can find, and consider paying for the shipping yourself if it won’t cut into your profits too much. Do not charge handling fees.

Offer great ‘customer service’ for all of your auctions, and ask your buyers to give you feedback. If the items that you sell are everything that you said they would be, and you offer great customer service, you can expect wonderful feedback – and this feedback will help a great deal in your future auctions.

The more you post listings on eBay the better they will become, practice really does make you perfect, well it will make your listings perfect anyway!

There are several ways to enhance your listings and make them more eye catching, for example you can use flash images, these are very eye catching, you are trying to entice the buyer into buying your item, you have to make a listing page that will sell.

Dont have three lines and thats it, its boring, you have to try and paint a picture of what they are buying. Describe your item in great detail, tell them how fabulous it is or how fabulous they will feel or look if they buy your item. Use words to convince them they need this item.

Just imagine this:

Your lying on a tropical beach, you feel totally relaxed and at ease, the sun beats down its warm rays onto body, you hear the sound of the ocean as it hits the rocks....

I gave you a setting to imagine, thats what you want to do with your auction description.

Make your item sell, anyone can write a few lines, most people do, make your auctions different, make the effort and watch them sell.


Sally Neill
http://www.sallys-ebooks.co.uk