7 Things I Learned Reading About eBay on Quora

I’ve recently had some questions about eBay and thought I would seek tips by searching through all the good information that you can find on Quora.com.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Quora, it is a question and answer site like Yahoo! Answers. People from Quora’s community do their best to answer questions posted by other users. But unlike various question and answer websites, Quora is very detailed. Answers are many times provided by experts in their field. The answers are usually very informative. You can learn a lot about any given topic by browsing Quora.

During my search, I have found dozens, if not hundreds, of eBay tips that can be quite useful for anyone running a business on eBay.

Here are some of the most interesting and practical eBay tips I have found during my search on Quora.

1. Investigate Suppliers Before Starting A Business With Them 

Before negotiating business with a supplier, it is necessary to check their legitimacy. Some suppliers may seem legitimate at first glance, but it never hurt anyone to investigate a little further.

The first step in doing this is by visiting their website. Read through their website’s ‘About Us’ page and see if the information that they have mentioned are factual. The major company information to check are its address and contact number. You can check the business’ address through Google Maps.

You may also try calling their company number and see if someone from the company will answer. Through the phone call, you may ask them for references they can recommend.

Search for the business’ current partners and see if anyone has something to say about them. These steps may already give you an idea of how the business functions and how it represents itself.

Useful questions to ask them include inquiries on operation, payment options, shipment, and discounts. Operational questions on stocks, handling time, shipment, and packing are important to ask. An inquiry on payment options can help you establish the mode of payment you will be accepting in the future. Shipment inquiries can help you identify what courier they use and if online tracking is available to them. Finally, queries on discount can help you manage your profits.

2. There Is No Age Limit For Succeeding On eBay

Working at the comfort of your own home is a dream made possible by eBay. It is not a surprise that many young people today aspire to work from home rather than at an office. This thought may occur to people in their teenage years.

A good example of this is a 17-year-old Australian boy who inquired about the possibility of doing business on eBay at his age.  He also asked Quora’s online community for tips on how he should approach this kind of business. Several community members, including experts in the field, responded with several points in mind. One young expert who has become the CEO of his own company, encouraged the young Australian to pursue eBay by telling his backstory. He also explained the basics of trading on eBay as well as the things he did to achieve PowerSeller status. Others did the same by sharing their personal stories and views of the market. Feel free to poke around on Quora.com and you might find some inspiration of your own.

3. Be Specific With Your eBay Listing Descriptions

Picture this. You sell blankets.

Now, picture yourself as a potential buyer looking for your blanket. Let’s say the buyer is looking for a blanket made with 100% cotton and dimensions of 88 in. x 90 in. They search on eBay and come across your listing. You mention the material it’s made of and the patterns it’s available in but you neglect to list the dimensions.

The potential buyer is convinced that this is the perfect blanket for them and it also matches their throw pillows on their bed. They scroll through your listing endlessly and never find what they are looking for. Frustrated, they start to consider if they can message you for the dimensions. They also consider looking elsewhere since they really do not want to wait. They want the blanket today. They eventually just end up going to the mall and finding something similar to what you have.

You just lost a buyer.

As an eBay seller, you can eliminate your potential customers’ doubt by throwing every piece of information, no matter how small, on your listing. Spoil them with the information they may need. Describe your product as accurately as possible to keep them from looking for alternatives or messaging you for more information. A descriptive and honest eBay listing can lead to easy checkouts and positive feedback. Don’t forget the details.

4. First Impressions on eBay Last

Similar to meeting a person for the first time, first impressions on eBay last forever. To make the perfect first impression, one must display a favorable façade. This façade is not just done through showing the number of sales you’ve made with a product, but how you present the product. An eBay listing that looks like it has gathered dust since the 90s will lose the fight even before the war starts. Listings with low quality HTML design obviously have less chances of generating sales. No matter how competitive the listing’s pricing is, if it looks like it was designed by your uncle’s uncle, trust will indeed be difficult to build.

There is a remedy to relieve a situation like this. Redesigning your eBay listings will engage your viewers and escalate the amount of profits you earn. You can seek help for modernizing your listings through templates and eBay template builders. There are eBay template designers out there that charge a fee to build you a custom template. There are free template available as well from various sites. We list some here in our article Free ebay Templates. You can also try RivalRipper.com‘s template builder.

5. Listen To Your Customer’s Comments and Suggestions

There is no long explanation to this tip. Be the customer. Always put yourself in their shoes. If a customer praises you for a smooth transaction, be grateful and treat those words as your trophies. If you receive negative feedback or receive any upset customer, do everything you can to fix the problem. Offer a partial refund or the item is not expensive offer a full refund. A happy customer is worth a small loss. Feedback is very important on eBay. Take your buyers comments and feedback as lessons to improve your process.

A snarky comment from an irate customer may just be the push you need to improve on the things that you’ve been doing wrong the entire time. If a customer sees how well you handle the situation when you make a mistake, you might just earn yourself a return customer… or hundreds more!

6. Dropshipping Items You Won From Auction Is Risky

Let’s say you won a lot of silver watches from a an auction website (like eBay or some Liquidation website). You notice immediately that your bid was a great bargain and that you can easily flip these items for a profit. You post your new listings up for sale before you have even received the item and start getting sales. Unfortunately, the package gets lost in the mail. This creates two problems for you. One. You just sold some watches you do not have in stock. Two. No one else sells these watches and you are pretty much out of luck. You now have to cancel your orders and risk receiving negative feedback.

In summary, play it safe by trusting suppliers that can guarantee you with the stocks of items you’re planning to auction off. If you don’t have it on hand, don’t sell it unless that supplier or source has a proven track record of getting you your items on time. You also don’t have control over UPS or FedEx deliveries and bad things happen to packages all the time.

7. Insure Your Shipments

This brings us to another topic. Insurance. Go to the lengths of providing insurance for high-value products that you ship or at least finding out who is responsible. This way, if the product becomes damaged or gets lost in transit, you can avoid the consequences.

Think about who is responsible for all the worse case scenarios. What happens if package is damaged? What happens if buyer claims they haven’t received it? Have a process for every scenario so when you are rich and famous, you can easily train your employees to handle the same tasks while you enjoy the fruits of your labor. Keeping track of the shipment’s progress and a shipping confirmation number prevent purchases from fraudulent customers. Good luck!