Ecommerce has made a turnaround. Auctions are in a rut. And as the brick-and-mortar businesses opened online web stores, shoppers looked for more traditional transactions. Customers wanted to just “buy” products.
In the last three months of 2016, only 13 percent of gross merchandise sales come from auctions. This is not to say that auctions are not popular; many high-dollar profits are made from auctioning unique, rare, and high-demand items. Understanding how eBay sales work is important to anyone who wants to sell on the site.
You can buy the “inside secrets” of eBay from lots of places; ebooks and webinars abound these days. Some of these authors and instructors try to convince you that only they have the surreptitious bits of knowledge — gleaned from years (months?) of experience on the site — that reveal what’s really going on.
Sure, you hear mysterious rumors of the way to sure-fire profits (cue up The X-Files theme in the background). Start an auction at a certain day and time, run a fixed-price listing a certain amount of days, and you’ll automatically make more money? Puh-leez! The only one who rakes in profits with that information is the guy who’s selling it to you! In addition to reflecting market deviations, eBay changes its search metrics continually — so there is no hard-and-fast answer for securing high profits.
Before deciding to hire an eBay mentor or pay for a program, ask for the mentor’s or instructor’s eBay User ID. By taking a look at the type(s) of items the person sells (are they varied?), the frequency of sales, feedback, and where that seller’s items show up in a Best Match search, you’ll get a good idea of how successful the seller really is.
I’ve interviewed many eBay high-volume sellers (PowerSellers) including the most elite, those who have attained Top Seller status. Almost all agree that eBay theories are bunk; you’ve got to watch the site and follow its change announcements. However, the sellers do have some practical preferences for when and how they conduct their eBay business. This chapter gets to the gist of these preferences — and the corresponding best practices.
Auction Selling Strategies
The basic plan for running an auction is the same for everyone, except for decisions regarding the timing of the auction and the starting price. If you speak to 20 eBay sellers, you’ll probably get 20 different answers about effective starting bids and when to end your auction. The big answer is “it depends” — it depends on your category, your seller status, how you describe your item, and even your photos. Until you develop your own philosophy based on a success ratio, I’d like to give you the tools to make a sound decision. What works for one seller may not work as well (or at all) for another.
You can also successfully promote your eBay sales online and offline, and you can legally offer your item to the next highest bidder if an auction winner doesn’t come through with payment — or even if you have more than one of the item in stock. I discuss a few of these practices in this section.
The ideas in this chapter come from my own experience and discussions with current eBay PowerSellers. These ideas are merely suggestions of methods and starting points that work for others. You definitely need to test them out to find out which practices work — for you and for the types of items you sell.
Starting the auction bidding
The most generally accepted theory about starting bids is that setting the bidding too high scares away new bids. But again, the variable is based on how much the item is worth or even how much it costs.
Some sellers begin the bidding at the price they paid for the item, including known eBay and PayPal fees, thereby protecting their investment. This is a good tactic, especially if you bought the item at a price far below the current going rate on eBay.
To determine the current going value for your item, I recommend searching for the item through the sold listings, which I explain in Book 2, Chapter 1. If you know that the item is selling on eBay for a certain price and that there is a demand for it, starting the bidding at a reasonably low level can be a great way to increase bidding and attract prospective bidders to view your auction.
Years of advertising experience can’t be wrong. If your item is in demand and people are actively buying, start the bidding low. Retail stores have done this for years with ads that feature prices starting at $9.99 or $14.98.
When sellers know that they have an item that will sell, they often begin their bidding as low as 99 cents. Because of the eBay proxy bidding system (which maintains your highest bid as a secret, increasing it incrementally when you’re bid against), it takes more bids (due to the smaller bidding increments) to bring the item up to the final selling price.
The downside is that new bidders who aren’t familiar with the system may bid only the minimum required increment each time they bid. This can be frustrating, and they may quit bidding because it might take them several bids to top the current bid placed by someone who is familiar with the proxy bid system. eBay offers up a tip when the bidder places a bid that doesn’t meet the current bid in the system, as shown in Figure 2-1.
FIGURE 2-1: After bidding, eBay suggested placing a bid of $55.01 or more.
Very few of us remember the proxy increments by heart, so as a refresher, I give you the goods in Table 2-1.
Another debatable philosophy is auction timing. People are always asking me how long to run auctions and what’s the best day to end an auction. You have to evaluate your item and decide which of the following is the best plan:
One-day auction: Did you just get in a load of an item that sells as fast as you post it on the site? A Buy It Now feature on any auction can bring great results, but that will work only if the item is super-hot!
If people are aggressively bidding up an item — and they really gotta have it — you may do best by starting the bidding low and listing the item with a one-day format.
The best way to use a one-day listing is if your item is time-sensitive, for example, event tickets, airline tickets, vacation packages, or tee times. A one-day listing gives you the immediacy — and the time to ship a physical ticket — if necessary.
Short-term auctions (1-to-3-day) incur an additional “Special Duration” $1 fee.
When you list in a one-day format, your listing goes right to the top of the Time: Ending Soonest sort. Many savvy shoppers view their searches by Listings Ending First (rather than the eBay default of Best Match). With a one-day format, you can pretty much choose the time of day your item will be at the top.
This format can also be successful if you have an item that’s the current hot ticket in pop culture. I used this format when I sold some Friends TV-show memorabilia a while back. The 24-hour auction opened at midday before the final episode of the show — and ended the next day — at a healthy profit!
Buy It Now pricing must be at least 30 percent over your listing’s starting price.
Three-day auction: If the item’s price will shoot up right after you post it, a three-day auction works just fine. And it’s great for those last-minute holiday shoppers looking for hard-to-find items.
A three-day auction is good, for the same reasons that a one-day auction is good — only it’s better for the faint of heart and nervous Nellies (like me) because it gives your item more time on the site — more of a chance to sell.
With the Buy It Now feature, you can pretty much accomplish the same thing as you would with a short-term auction. When you list your item for sale, set a price at which you’re willing to sell the item immediately; this is your Buy It Now price.
Five-day auction: A five-day auction gives you two days more than a three-day auction and two days less than a seven-day auction. That’s about the size of it. If you just want an extended weekend auction or your item is a hot one, use it. Five-day auctions are useful during holiday rushes, when gift-buying is the main reason for bidding.
Seven-day auction: Tried-and-true advertising theory says that the longer you advertise your item, the more people will see it. On eBay, this means that you have more opportunities for people to bid on it. The seven-day auction is a staple for the bulk of eBay vendors. Seven days is long enough to cover weekend browsers and short enough to keep the auction interesting.
Ten-day auction: Many veteran eBay sellers swear by the ten-day auction. The extra three days of exposure (it can encompass two weekends) can easily net you extra profits.
A ten-day auction is good for special collectibles or an expensive item that isn’t normally on the site. Putting up a ten-day auction (start Friday night so you get exposure over two weekends) is a near-perfect way to attract bidders.
Your auction closes exactly one, three, five, seven, or ten days — to the minute — after you start the auction. Try not to begin your auctions when you’re up late at night and can’t sleep: You don’t want your auction to end at two in the morning when no one else is awake to bid on it.
The specific day you close your auction can also be important. eBay is full of weekend browsers, so including a weekend of browsing in your auction time is a definite plus. Often auctions that end late Sunday evening through Monday close with high bids.
You’ll need to do some research to determine the best times to run your auctions and for how long. The best person to figure out the closing information for your auctions is you. Use the tools and, over time, you’ll work out a pattern that works best for you.
Figuring out What Day to End an Auction
Back when eBay counted its listings by the hundreds (and then low thousands), it clearly made a difference what day of the week you chose to end an auction. That is, when the number of buyers and sellers on eBay was relatively small, matching your auction time with the bidders’ online habits was important. Now that eBay spawns millions of listings a day — with countless buyers and lookie-loos visiting the site — you find the eBay shoppers looking for bargains at virtually all hours of the day and night. So for a traditional auction, you can choose almost any ending time and know that you’ll still have some healthy bidding action.
The wildcards in the mix are the Buy It Now and fixed-price transactions, which are popular — and successful. Although they don’t always follow a daily pattern of sales, they can still follow the preferred auction-ending days you find in this section.
To figure out when to end an auction, you need to know when to start it. Figures 2-2, 2-3, and 2-4 are the top preferred timelines for running a sale on eBay.
FIGURE 2-4: A full ten days of bidding frenzy (if you’re lucky).
You may notice that all these preferred datelines end on a Sunday. Sunday is the top-ranked ending day for auctions by eBay sellers.
I can’t list everyone’s opinions on the subject — that would probably confuse you anyway — so here are the item-ending days ranked in order from most to least popular:
Sunday
Monday
Thursday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Saturday
Friday
Test out auction-ending days to coordinate these dates with the specific type of items you sell. Some buyers (say, men who buy golf goods during lunch hour and women who buy collectibles while their husbands are out golfing on weekends) can throw these days a curve.
Knowing What Time to Start Your Auction
The only way to figure out when to end your auction is by planning when to start it. An auction beginning at 12:00 will end at that same time on the ending day.
eBay time is military time in the Pacific time zone. Table 2-2 converts the eBay clock to real time for your time zone. Make a photocopy of this table and keep it by your computer. (Even after all these years, it still takes too much time to decipher eBay time without a printed chart.)
Here’s the consensus of some experts in order of ending-time preference (in eBay time; check the table for a translation):
18:00 to 22:00
21:00 to 0:00
15:00 to 18:00
13:00 to 16:00
Here are the worst eBay times to end an auction:
2:00 to 6:00
0:00 to 3:00
This information should give you some good ideas for your own auction sales.
Selling Items through Fixed-Price Sales
Because ecommerce has morphed and consumer preferences have changed, you need to consider a more balanced approach to your sales. Only after trial and error will you know how your specific products sell best — and what combination of listings will help you hit that sweet spot. In the recent era of ecommerce, folks like to come to a site to buy items outright at a given price as well as participate in auctions.
eBay Stores are a great way to offer fixed-price items, but even without a store, you can list fixed-price items on the regular eBay site. (Find out more about the costs of running an eBay Store in Book 8.)
Fixed-price listings have a slightly different pricing structure on the site. You are given a certain amount of insertion-fee-free listings on the site each month.
No eBay Store: Sellers without an eBay Store get up to 50 free auction or fixed-price listings.
Basic Store sellers: Up to 250 free listings a month.
Premium Store sellers: Up to 1,000 free listings a month.
Anchor Store sellers: Up to 10,000 free listings a month.
After you’ve used your initial free listings, any fixed-price listing — regardless of starting price or number of items for sale — costs up to 30 cents. This is for a 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, 10-, or 30-day listing, or a Good Till Cancelled listing. Great news, eh?
Sounds great, huh? Well, there’s a catch. (You knew there’d be a catch, didn’t you?) You’ve got Final Value Fees to consider. Chapter 1 (in this minibook) charts them all; Book 8, Chapter 4 provides further insights.
Making Money in Other eBay Zones
There’s more to eBay than just the auction site. Don’t lose a selling opportunity by not checking into the other viable areas described in this section.
Automotive? Go eBay Motors
Anything and everything automotive can go in the eBay Motors category (see Figure 2-6), and it will sell like giant tires at a monster truck rally. Following are just a few of the car-related items that fit in this category.
Got used car parts? eBay has an enormous market in used car parts. One seller I know goes to police impound sales and buys wrecks — just to get some valuable parts that he can resell on eBay.
New car parts are in demand, too. If your local auto-parts store is blasting out door handles for a 1967 Corvette (a vehicle for which it’s hard to find parts), it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few to resell on Motors. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to search eBay looking for them. If you’re lucky enough to catch the trend, you’ll make a healthy profit.
Cars
Yes, you can sell cars on eBay. In fact, used-car sales have skyrocketed online thanks to all the people who find eBay to be a trusted place to buy and sell used vehicles. The most expensive vehicle ever sold on eBay was a 1959 Ferrari 250 GT California; it sold for $3,260,100. Sold via the mobile app was a Mercedes SLR McLaren for $240,001. (I told you those odd amount bids can make a difference.)
Selling vehicles on eBay is a natural business for you if you have access to good used cars, work as a mechanic, or have a contact at a dealership that lets you sell cars on eBay for a commission or on a consignment basis. (For the ins and outs of consignment selling, check out Book 4, Chapter 3.)
To complete your sale, eBay Motors features Vehicle Purchase Protection that covers up to $50,000, vehicle history reports, vehicle inspection and escrow services, and one-click access to vehicle shipping quotes from uShip. Access eBay Motors and its services from the eBay home page or by going directly to www.ebay.com/motors.
Different fees apply when you sell a vehicle on eBay Motors nationally. To encourage sellers to list and sell vehicles on the site, eBay has set up a tiered system of fees. The first six vehicles you list in a 12-month period are charged no insertion fees, but have a higher transaction fee when the sale is successful. The fees are based on the final selling price. Take a look at Tables 2-3 and 2-4 for significant differences.
TABLE 2-3 National Insertion Fees for Low-Volume Sellers
Category
Insertion Fee
Sale of up to $2,000
Sale over $2,000
Cars & Trucks, RVs & Campers, and Commercial Trucks
Free
$60
$125
Motorcycles, Powersports, Trailers, and Boats
Free
$60
$125
Powersports under 50cc
Free
$10
$10
All other vehicles
Free
$60
$125
TABLE 2-4 National Insertion Fees for High-Volume Sellers
Category
Insertion Fee
Sale of up to $5,000
Sale over $5,000
Cars & Trucks, RVs & Campers, and Commercial Trucks
$50
Free
Free
Motorcycles, Powersports, Trailers, and Boats
$20
$30
$60
Powersports under 50cc
$10
$10
$10
All other vehicles
$20
$30
$60
Although many people who have found the vehicle of their dreams on eBay are more than happy to take a one-way flight to the vehicle location and drive it home, shipping a vehicle is a reasonably priced alternative. On your listing, eBay can supply a link to give you a quick estimate of shipping fees to the buyer’s Zip code. Figure 2-7 shows the estimates I got to ship a car from Indianapolis, Indiana to Northridge, California.
FIGURE 2-7: Quick shipping estimates in eBay Motors.
Here are just a few things to keep in mind if you plan to sell cars on eBay:
To sell a vehicle on eBay Motors, you must enter the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the Sell an Item page. This way, prospective buyers can access a vehicle history report to get an idea of the condition of the car.
An item that you’ve listed on eBay Motors will appear in any search, whether a potential buyer conducts a regular eBay search or a search in eBay Motors.
If your reserve isn’t met in an eBay Motors auction, you may still offer the vehicle to the high bidder through the Best Offer option. You may also reduce your reserve during the auction if you feel you’ve set your target price too high.
Real estate: Not always an auction
eBay Real Estate at www.ebay.com/realestate isn’t always an auction. Because of the wide variety of laws governing the sale of real estate, eBay auctions of real property are not legally binding offers to buy and sell. However, putting your real estate on eBay (see Figure 2-8) is an excellent way to advertise and attract potential buyers. When the auction ends, neither party is obligated (as they are in other eBay auctions) to complete the real estate transaction. The buyer and seller must get together to consummate the deal.
FIGURE 2-8: Search and you can even buy gold mines!
Nonetheless, eBay real estate sales are popular and the sales are growing by leaps and bounds. You don’t have to be a professional real estate agent to use this category, although it may help when it comes to closing the deal. If you know land and your local real estate laws, eBay gives you the perfect venue for subdividing those 160 acres in Wyoming that Uncle Regis left you in his will.
For less than the cost of a newspaper ad, you can sell your home, condo, land, or even timeshare on eBay Real Estate in the auction format. You can also choose to list your property in an ad format, accepting not bids but inquiries from prospective buyers from around the world. On the Sell an Item form, you must specify special information about your piece of real estate.
In Tables 2-5 and 2-6, I provide a listing of fees that you can expect to encounter on eBay Real Estate. Note: When your listing sells in the Land, Manufactured Home, and Timeshares for Sale categories, you’re charged a Notice Fee of $35.00.
Auction/Fixed Price listing for 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, or 10-day listing
$35.00
Auction/Fixed Price 30-day
$50.00
Classified Ad 30 days
$150.00
Classified Ad 90 days
$300.00
Final value (Notice) fee
$35.00
Reserve fee (refunded when property sells)
$0.01 to $74.99: $3.00; $75.00 and up: 4% of reserve price (up to $100.00)
TABLE 2-6 Residential, Commercial, and Other Real Estate
Type of Fee
Fee Amount ($)
Auction/Fixed Price listing for 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, or 10-day auction.
$100.00
Auction/Fixed Price 30-day
$150.00
Classified Ad 30 days
$150.00
Classified Ad 90 days
$300.00
Final Value (Notice) Fee
0
Selling by the Rules
There are a lot of shoulds in this world. You should do this and you should do that. I don’t know who is in charge of the shoulds, but certain things just make life work better. If you follow the advice on these pages, your eBay business will thrive with a minimum of anguish. If you’ve ever had a listing pulled by eBay, you know that anguish firsthand and don’t want to have it again.
In the real world, we have to take responsibility for our own actions. If we buy a flat-screen TV set (in the box) for $25 from some guy selling them out of the back of a truck, who do we have to blame when we take it home and the box is full of cardboard? You get what you pay for, and you have no consumer protection from a seller of possibly “hot” (or nonexistent) TVs. Responsible consumerism is every buyer’s job. Lawsuit upon lawsuit gets filed — and some are won — when buyers feel they’ve been ripped off, but my best advice is that if you stay clean in your online business, you’ll keep clean.
eBay is a community, and the community thrives on the five basic values listed here:
We believe people are basically good.
We believe everyone has something to contribute.
We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.
We recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual.
We encourage you to treat others the way that you want to be treated.
eBay is committed to these values, and it says so right on its website. eBay believes that community members should “honor these values — whether buying, selling, or chatting.” So should we all.
Is what you want to sell legal?
Although eBay is based in California and therefore must abide by California law, sellers do business all over the United States. Therefore, items sold at eBay must be governed by the laws of every other state as well. As a seller, you’re ultimately responsible for both the legality of the items you sell and the way that you transact business on eBay. Yes, you can sell thousands of different items on eBay. But do you know what you aren’t allowed to sell?
The eBay User Agreement outlines the rules and regulations regarding what you can and can’t sell, as well as all aspects of doing business on eBay. If you haven’t read it in a while, do so. You can find it at the following address:
eBay’s policies can change from time to time. As an active seller, you should make sure that you’re notified of any changes. You’ll be notified when eBay makes changes to the User Agreement, through your eBay Message Center.
By now, you should have a firm grasp of the rules and regulations for listing items. But in addition to knowing the rules for listing items, you must consider the items themselves. In this section, I detail the three categories of items to be wary of: prohibited, questionable, and potentially infringing. Some are banned, period. Others fall in a gray area. You’re responsible for what you sell, so you’d better know what’s legal and what’s not.
If you’re found in violation of eBay’s listing restrictions, you may be penalized in a variety of ways, including
Listing cancellation
Limits on account privileges
Account suspension
Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
Loss of PowerSeller status
Prohibited and restricted items
A prohibited item is banned from sale at eBay. You can’t sell a prohibited item under any circumstances. Take a look at the upcoming list. A little common sense tells you there’s good reason for not selling these items, including liability issues for the seller. (For example, what if you sold alcohol to a minor? That’s against the law!)
Restricted items involve more shades of gray. They may involve the sale of dangerous or sensitive items that may not be prohibited by law. eBay sets these limitations as a result of input by members of the eBay Community and others. eBay has a strong Offensive Material Policy which covers items of merchandise that “promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial or religious intolerance, or items that promote organizations with such views.” As you can imagine, this is a slippery slope for some sellers.
Determining whether you can sell a questionable item is tricky. Under certain circumstances, you may be able to list the item for sale at eBay. To fully understand when and if you can list a questionable item, visit the links that I highlight in Table 2-7.
TABLE 2-7 Partial List of Questionable Items and Where to Find the Rules Regulating Them
Potentially infringing items follow a slippery slope. If you list a potentially infringing item, you may infringe on existing copyrights, trademarks, registrations, or the like. Get the idea? These items are prohibited for your own protection.
Items falling under the “potentially infringing” category are generally copyrighted or trademarked items, such as software, promotional items, and games. Even using a brand name in your auction as part of a description (known as keyword spamming) may get you into trouble.
Repeating various un-trademarked keywords can get you in trouble as well. eBay permits the use of as many as five synonyms when listing an item for sale. A permissible example of this might be: purse, handbag, pocketbook, satchel, and bag. Adding many un-trademarked keywords would cause the auction to come up in more searches.
Knowing eBay’s Listing Policies
eBay itself does not sell merchandise. eBay is merely a venue that provides the location where others can put on a giant ecommerce party (in other words, sell stuff). To provide a safe and profitable venue for its sellers, eBay must govern auctions that take place on its site. eBay makes the rules; you and I follow the rules. I like to think of eBay as the place that lets you hold your senior prom in its gym. When I was in school, my classmates and I had to follow the rules or see our prom cancelled. If we don’t agree to follow eBay’s rules, a safe and trusted eBay community can’t exist.
eBay has some hard-and-fast rules about listing your items. One rule is that you must list your item in the appropriate category (that only makes sense). In this section, I highlight a few other rules that you should keep in mind when listing. What I discuss isn’t a definitive list of eBay listing policies and rules. Take time to familiarize yourself with the User Agreement (which details all eBay policies and rules) at the following address:
I recommend that you check the eBay User Agreement regularly for any policy changes.
Duplicate listings
Remember the old supply-and-demand theory from your economics class? When people list the same items repeatedly, they drive down the item’s going price while ruining all the other sellers’ opportunities to sell the item during that time frame.
eBay allows you to list as many identical auctions as you want, but only one without bids will show on eBay at a time. And you may not have more than one listing of a fixed-price item. Sellers who want to “game” the system in this way, by listing a huge number of the same item, need to think twice.
eBay policy states that the display of multiple identical items from the same seller will be limited to only one at a time without bids in search results. So what’s the point? If you’re going to list an item that many times, at the very least be sure to list it in different categories. That’s a rule, but it also makes sense. Nothing drives down the price of an item faster than closing identical auctions, one after another, in the same category. eBay also requires that you list your item in a category that’s relevant to it.
State it up front: Drop-shipping and product-sourcing listings
In many situations, being the first seller to put a popular item up for sale can get you some high bids. And if you can guarantee in your auction description that the item will be available to ship within 30 days of the purchase or the auction closing, you can sell items from a product sourcer or drop-shipper. However, if you’re not completely sure that you’ll have the item in time, I don’t recommend that you even attempt such a listing.
Before you set up such listings (for presale or drop-shipping), check out the Federal Trade Commission 30-day rule covering these matters, which you can find at the following address:
Because eBay sells to every state in the United States, it must follow explicit laws governing giveaways and prizes. Each state has its own set of rules and regulations, so eBay doesn’t allow individual sellers to come up with their own promotions.
If your auction violates this rule, eBay might end your listing.
Search and browse manipulation by keyword spamming
Keyword spamming happens when you add words, usually brand names, to your auction description that don’t describe what you’re selling (for example, describing that little black dress as Givenchy-style when Givenchy has nothing to do with it). Keyword spamming manipulates the eBay search engine by including an unrelated item in the listing for a copyrighted or trademarked item, and then diverting bidders to an auction of other merchandise. Sellers use keyword spamming to pull viewers to their auctions after viewers have searched for the brand name. To attract attention to their listings, some sellers use not or like along with the brand name, such as like Givenchy.
Here are the problems with keyword spamming:
It’s a listing violation and causes your auction to fall under potentially infringing items for sale on eBay. The wording you choose when you run this kind of auction manipulates the eBay search engine and prospective bidders.
It’s frustrating to the potential buyers trying to use the search engine to find a particular item, and it’s unfair to other eBay sellers who’ve properly listed their items.
Keyword spamming can take many forms. Some merely mislead the prospective bidder; others are infringements on legal rights. A few of the most common are
Superfluous brand names in the title or item description
Using something like “not brand X” in the title or item description
Improper trademark usage
Lists of keywords
Hidden text
This violation is often white text on a white background or hidden text in HTML code. The white text resides in the auction HTML, so it shows up in the search but is not visible to the naked eye. Sneaky, eh? And prohibited.
Drop-down lists
To get the latest on eBay’s keyword spamming policy, go to
Few issues set sellers to arguing more than eBay’s rules on linking. In your auction item description, you can use the following links:
One link to an additional page that gives further information about the item you’re selling, such as product videos, freight shipping services, and other legally required information.
A link that sends a member to eBay messages so that the buyer can send you an email.
Links to your other listings on eBay.
One link to your Profile page, besides the link next to your User ID that eBay provides.
Here’s where you can get the official (ever changing) word from eBay:
Discovering successful selling strategies
Before deciding to hire an eBay mentor or pay for a program, ask for the mentor’s or instructor’s eBay User ID. By taking a look at the type(s) of items the person sells (are they varied?), the frequency of sales, feedback, and where that seller’s items show up in a Best Match search, you’ll get a good idea of how successful the seller really is.
The ideas in this chapter come from my own experience and discussions with current eBay PowerSellers. These ideas are merely suggestions of methods and starting points that work for others. You definitely need to test them out to find out which practices work — for you and for the types of items you sell.
Repeating various un-trademarked keywords can get you in trouble as well. eBay permits the use of as many as five synonyms when listing an item for sale. A permissible example of this might be: purse, handbag, pocketbook, satchel, and bag. Adding many un-trademarked keywords would cause the auction to come up in more searches.