How to Create A Listing on EBay that Sells

Thousands if not millions of people create new listings on eBay every single day with the hopes of making money.

It is a great idea to sell on eBay. Unless you have your own website to sell items on then eBay is your best bet and in some cases even better than your own website because eBay already has millions of people going to the site every day.

When creating your listing on eBay there are a couple simple rules to follow which I will share with you. Whether you have an eBay store or not these rules will help you sell product.

If you are about to post a listing on the website you will have your item you are selling already in your possession, which is a great start. If you don’t then you better go get something to sell.

The first thing you will want to do is search eBay for the same item you are wanting to sell and see what your competition is, include completed listings in your search to see what your item might have sold for in the past.

Unless you are a seasoned veteran in selling your item which I will assume you are not or you wouldn’t be reading this, use the prices you find on eBay to determine what your auction start price will be.

If you find that in the past the item has sold for $10 to $15 and there are currently active listings with a starting auction price of $9.99 and $12.99 then it wouldn’t make sense to start your auction at $20 would it?

If this was the scenario I would recommend starting your auction price somewhere between $9.99 and $11.99. Don’t ever be the highest price or you will miss sales. In fact always try to have the lowest possible.

Chances are the bidders will increase your final sale price to where you want it to be. You will see buy it now and fixed price options,

I would stay away from those until you have some experience on eBay and know what kind of pricing works and what doesn’t.

It is very important to do research when pricing what you are selling on eBay and it is just as important to make sure you do your research on what it will cost to ship your product. You will want to consider packing in your cost and what your stamps will cost.

EBay has a comprehensive shipping & handling screen which helps. I prefer to go to the post office myself to see what everything will cost. I then post a fair price for shipping and handling.

If you think you can inflate your shipping costs and that will be okay, the only thing you will be doing is losing sales. EBay buyers are smart and know what things cost.

They will do the research to see what the true values are and if you are out to lunch they will buy from someone else.

The next thing to put together is the wording for your listing. The best advice I can give you here is to keep it simple and watch your grammar and spelling and make sure you have a picture of the item.

When creating your listing be very descriptive but keep out unnecessary wording. Fluffing up your listing doesn’t help you sell at all. Be descriptive and to the point.

Colors, size and any other important attributes and that is all you should include.

I tried adding wording like “very cool trendy fun” and found my listings without those words were selling more than my fluffed up listings.  

Another good idea is to look at many other people and store listings to see what kind of information they include.

You will want to develop a policy about returns and how long you will wait for someone to pay for an item. My recommendation is to look around and see what is common among sellers with a high number of feedbacks and rating out of 100%.

Whatever is working for them will work for you. I have another Hub about my recent experiences selling on eBay and I recommend you read it because I give some good tips on what I have noticed on what decides whether you make sales or not.

You will find the link below.

Final thoughts on creating a listing on eBay that sells is to be descriptive but keep it simple leaving out unnecessary wording.

Make sure your auction starting price and your shipping costs are not too high or you will lose sales. 

Last but not least be professional and respectful with whomever you deal with. Do what you say you are going to do.  

Good luck selling on eBay.