Teach me to sell crap on E-bay

I buy very little on E-Bay. I usually have a buddy buy something and I pay them back.

Now I have some bike parts that I want to offload. The bike, a 1980 Honda CM200T TwinStar, is too obscure for Craigslist, so to the E-Bays, here I come.

I understand about writing up a clear description, taking pictures, etc... I assume that they walk you through the process, but what I need to know are the tricks to good selling, things people overlook, like shipping, return policy, PayPal or no, etc...

I'm not a business, I just want to get some money for these parts, and maybe help out someone else trying to fix their bike. I know how hard parts can be to find for these.

In reply to Appleseed:

GRM recently did an article on the subject. Also, you can find a lot of info. through google.

I recently got my feet wet by selling 3 items from my late mother's doll collection. Just creating a basic ad. with pictures is more user friendly than I though it would be. I'll be watching this thread too hoping that some of the more experienced members post some good useable information.

I sell around 500 items a month on Ebay. Shameless plug for my ebay store: http://stores.ebay.com/dog-star-collectibles

I prefer fixed price listings to auctions, they may take a little longer to sell but you have a lot more control over the price.

Get tracking and delivery confirmation when you ship!

If it's used take pictures of EVERY minor defect and write a good, informative description.

If it's not too heavy offer free shipping, people love free shipping. Just make sure you factor in shipping costs to the farthest destination. I'm in Ohio so I factor in what it would cost to send to CA, OR, WA.

Be Price Competitive, nobody's gonna see your listing if you aren't in line with other seller's prices.

Might as well offer returns. You can mark it as-is but if the buyer complains they'll probably get their money back.

Ship ASAP after selling, I ship items the day after payment and people seem to love it.

Paypal is the way to go for payment. Paying the fees sucks but it's fast and easy.

Some personal tips from the past:
I never list an item up for sale until I have a box or the shipping method figured out.
Nothing worse than a buyer who wants their item and you still need a few days to figure out how you are going to get the item to them. Have the method figured out.
Buying a shipping box can eat your entire profit or not realizing that the box you intend to use will result in "oversized" charges can also kill the whole price.
I sometimes sourced boxes for free at the local cardboard recycle bin. I am not talking dumpster diving but just stopping by and pulling something off the top that is the right size/shape, free.
I always included a fixed shipping cost. I would research what it would cost to ship to Beverly Hill 90210 (the other side of the country.) From there I would slightly round up. If it is $8 in real cost I might go $10 but I would "sell the service" with the phrase of, "wrapped, packed, insured and shipped with tracking numbers to any Continental US address for $10."

Losing a little in shipping often makes the final bid quite a bit higher. With collectibles, I find Auctions that end on Sunday are best. Starting with a low bid price will drive up interest early, and reserves tend to drive bidders away.

I was going to say, yeah, we just did an article on that very subject.

bastomatic wrote: Losing a little in shipping often makes the final bid quite a bit higher. With collectibles, I find Auctions that end on Sunday are best. Starting with a low bid price will drive up interest early, and reserves tend to drive bidders away.

Was going to say this about the auction end date. The majority of the bidding is done in the last few minutes. Make sure it's Sunday evening to ensure the most competition for your stuff.

Also, if you go auction, have it up for a reasonable amount of time. A week is pushing it, but you want exposure without losing interest.

I pretty much always do 5 day auctions.

I used to do a fair amount of ebaying back in the UK, over here not so much. I usually ran auctions from Sunday to Sunday unless I forget which day I'm listing on and then end up with a Harley auction that ends on Saturday night (:/).

I'm in two minds about reserves - it seems that low starting prices seem to attract more interest, but then you need to put a reserve on an expensive item. If you don't, you'll end up risking selling it for noticeably under market value (happened to me with my 325ix). OTOH reserves seem to be considered off-putting by people so a common advice I've seen is to just list for the lowest price you'll accept.

I'm currently trying the reserve gig with the Harley, will report back how that is going to work out. Also, I did pay for the 10 day auction this time, not sure if that was worth the money.

Which issue was that? I remember seeing it, but I neglected to remember the date because I never though I'd sell things on E-Bay.

Good Idea on having the item ready to go, so you can figure out the shipping before to goes to auction.

The eBay article in Grassroots was in the April 2014 issue, the one with the Jeep on the front.