Do you want to sell on eBay and start your eCommerce business? Read on this comprehensive guide to know how you can accomplish this.
Millions of sellers are running their eCommerce businesses on eBay. eBay can help both large-scale and small businesses to start and grow. Thus, eBay gives a great opportunity to make money with either little investment in a small business or by reselling products in bulk.
In this post, we’ll see:
- Why sell on eBay?
- What are the seller types on eBay?
- What to sell on eBay?
- The eBay selling format?
- What are the best eBay practices for a seller?
Let’s start answering the above questions one by one.
1- Why Sell on eBay?
Apart from being one of the largest eCommerce marketplaces, eBay has the following reasons why to sell on eBay.
- As per a survey, there are 182 million active eBay buyers around the world today.
- eBay features approximately 1.3 billion product listings on any given day.
2- What are the seller types on eBay?
Basically, the following are three main types of sellers that can be found on eBay.
- One category is of newbies — in both small and large scale businesses.
- The other one is Amateur Resellers — selling a few items at a fixed price.
- The last one is Power Sellers — They are professionals and spend a lot of time purchasing items till their entire fulfillment processes.
| Seller Types | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Newbies | Some new sellers; starting everything from scratch on eBay. |
| 2 | Amateur Resellers | A fashionista who goes through trendy clothes quickly. To make extra money, some gently-used clothes are picked out of the closet to resell under a fixed-price listing. |
| 3 | Power Sellers | A seller who consistently sells a notable volume of products and provides a high-level service to their buyers. |
These seller types are categorized according to the selling performance.
3- What to sell on eBay
This question can be answered by observing the user-demands and ongoing trends. However, the items from the following three categories are the most sold ones on eBay.
- Home Decor
- Garden Accessories
- Home Tech
- Fitness
- Branded Tech
- Fashion
- Shoes
- Jewelry and Watches
- Collectables
- Books
So, once you’ve decided what you should sell, you’ll need to perform a SWOT analysis to price your items competitively.
Set product prices
Selling on eBay is a balancing act. However, you should reduce your product’s starting price to make it possible for bidding – unless it’s a niche product. But don’t reduce it too low that it loses its worth – cleverly maintain the balance between high and low prices.
Sell in trending season
Focus on the seasonality – to make a good revenue, sell products at the right time of year. For example, sell crackers for Christmas crackers in December and barbecue in July.
4- What is the eBay selling format?
eBay Selling Methods
eBay appeared as a true peer-to-peer marketplace in 1995 that is built on auctions. However, with the evolution, eBay came up with an alternative to the auction i.e. “buy it now” hallmark which is Fixed-price selling.
Each selling method has its pros and cons — your business is the thing that decides which method will work best for you.
➔ Auction selling method
The auction selling method gave fame to eBay initially. Normally, you set up a traditional auction for a specified number of days. So what you do is — begin with listing an item for sale in an auction on eBay. Then you define its starting price. Interested buyers visit and place bids. Thus, when the auction terminates, you sell to the highest bidder.
This model of selling on eBay works surpassing in cases when products are much needed by passionate buyers. You can take an example of a video game, game lovers would excitedly place bids to get it asap.
➔ Fixed-price selling method
Also perceived as the “Buy It Now” selling model. This fixed-price selling model allows the seller to define a fixed price for an item.
As there is no bidding involved, eBay shoppers can buy the product immediately knowing its price.
This method is quicker as there is no need to wait for an auction to terminate.
5- What are the guidelines for eBay product descriptions?
As product descriptions for eBay play a vital role, so don’t forget to place a relevant keyword in each description.
Keywords are the real game here. eBay shoppers use keywords for searching for a product.
Thus optimized description can maximize your product reach.
It is crucial to structure your product title similar to the words and phrases users type into their eBay searches. For example, instead of writing product titles like “Adidas Sports Shoes,” try a more optimized one like “Adidas Sports Shoes, Size 10 Black”.
➔ Product Identifiers
Adding the right product identifiers to your listings can help you reach the maximum audience.
Search engines look for specific words called product identifiers to display the data being searched.
So eBay contributes a mandatory field of product identifiers at the time of listing the products. The following three elements make the product identifiers in eBay.
- Brand Name.
- Manufacturer Part Number (MPN).
- Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). It can include one of the following.
- Universal Product Code (UPC)
- European Article Number (EAN)
- Japanese Article Number (JAN)
- International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
Product identifiers in your listings help your product to be eligible for maximized search visibility — both on eBay and outside search engines.
Thus, it is always a good practice to add product identifiers to maximize your product awareness on eBay. As a result, the search engines would have better SEO data for your products.
➔ Product Attributes
Product attributes are the relevant and important characteristics of a product. For example:
- Brand name
- Style
- Model
- Size
- Color
- Weight
Product attributes are often seen as product “specs” or specifications.
eBay has defined a set of item specifics for each product category. You can create the product attributes by mapping the product specs to the item-specifics defined in the eBay category.
Providing detailed structured data improves the relevance of search results to what users type as their search queries.
➔ Product Dimensions
Product dimension specifies the actual product size and dimensions — not of the packed one. Thus, you can incorporate the dimensions of the item in the attributes, if applicable.
➔ Product Bundles
You can define an attribute list for a manufacture-created product bundle or for a multi-pack. You need to consider the following key points while creating the attribute list.
- The product attribute list must include a product identifier defined by the manufacturer.
- The product attribute list should have the manufacturer’s GTIN number for the bundle. Don’t use the GTIN of any of the products within the bundle.
- The multi-pack attributes must specify the GTIN of the particular multi-pack being described.
➔ Product Variants
eBay has started to classify products by GTIN, so it’s a good practice to include all product variants on one page instead of multiple.
➔ Product Listings
Spreadsheets can be a good option if you have around 10 or fewer items listed. But a spreadsheet is surely a disaster when it comes to managing listings of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of products.
To manage the massive products and their listings, you need software in conjunction with your eCommerce platform. Stock Konnect is the definite solution to this problem. It optimizes the process of product listings for you, saving your time and effort.
6 -What are the best eBay practices for a seller?
The best practices for a seller are listed below. These practices work the same for any other marketplaces as well.
- Avoid delays in shipment – deliver within the given timeframe.
- Establish a quick order processing manner.
- Make sure to follow eBay’s return policy.
- Ensure strong customer service.
eBay Orders Management
It’s important that you deal with your orders cautiously and monitor your stock. No eBay seller wishes to be in a situation where you are displaying out-of-stock items in your store.
How Stock Konnect helps beginners to sell on eBay?
With order management platforms like Stock Konnect, you don’t need to manually refresh items and their status in your inventory whenever a sale is made. Everything is in automatic and accurate sync.
Moreover, with Stock Konnect, you can list products in bulk in fewer clicks – saving your operations time and effort. Plus, there are many shipping carriers available to be integrated with your eCommerce store — Everything is under one roof! What else do you need?
Therefore, with Stock Konnect, you can easily sell on eBay and manage orders with almost zero risks of stockout complaints. This freedom from eCommerce-disasters leads you to make greater sales and revenue in the end.
Summing up
In order to enhance your eCommerce store’s worth on eBay; be patient and consistent, carry out proper research and jump onto the solutions.
However, this blog is not only to educate you regarding how to sell on eBay but also gives you an opportunity to experience the swift boost in your sales by trying Stock Konnect for managing your eCommerce store. So sign up, and join today.
