Confessions of a Top-Selling eBay Trading Assistant

Making The Most of Your Titles - All 80 Characters

2011-09-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

eBay recently increased the length of item titles from 55 to 80 characters. This is an excellent change, giving sellers 25 more characters to describe their item. But those title keywords need to be chosen with great care - the words you put in your title are to critically to whether buyers will find your item. What's the key to a good title? Think like a buyer!

Under that broad umbrella, there are two main strategies we use for titles:

Be sure to include the words the buying community uses. If you're not sure what those are, search for your item on eBay. See which words get you the most results. Once you've used the most popular terms, if you still have room you can add less common terminology.
If you have room left over, highlight particular features that make your item special. These may not be words a buyer is specifically searching for (e.g. "clean"), but may be things that differentiate your item from all the others on the market, perhaps by color or size.

Be sure to double check your spelling! Finally, avoid terms like "wow" and "look" (or it's very annoying cousin, L@@K). They don't help your buyers find your item, and only serve to make your listing look amateur.

Does Your Business Have Money Sitting In Storage?

2011-08-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

In this economy, many businesses are looking for any way to earn or save more money. One often overlooked resource is equipment that is no longer being used. Perhaps it's been stored in a closet (sometimes for so long the staff have even forgotten it's there). But that equipment your company is no longer using may have significant value left in it yet!

We all know how fast technical equipment (IT/networking, lab & life science, engineering, etc.) depreciates. Current models are obsolete almost as soon as you install them. Last week, we picked up 2 car loads of 17" LCD Monitors, later model desktops and networking equipment that were just sitting in storage at a local school. Research on recent sales shows these items still have potential resale value of several thousand dollars - money the school can put toward more equipment upgrades.

This client could have made even more money if they had sold them as soon as they pulled them from service, when they still had maximum resale value. So don't wait: if you know you will be retiring equipment from service, plan for resale and get that money out of storage and working for your business again!

eBay Fall Seller Updates

2011-08-25T05:44:00.000-07:00

Twice a year, eBay makes changes that affect sellers. These changes are announced well ahead of time so sellers have time to adjust their listings to comply with any new requirements. The latest changes, first announced in July, are now in effect. Sellers can read all the details on eBay's Announcements page, but here is a brief summary:

As of Sept. 6, listing titles can be up to 80 characters long. This is an increase of 25 characters, giving sellers greater ability to add keywords and describe features and condition.
If you ship internationally to Australia, Canada, or the UK, you must specify shipping carriers and costs (e.g. using eBay's shipping calculator).
There are new requirements for item specifics in many categories, especially in Electronics. eBay provides some bulk editing tools to help update multiple listings if needed.

See the link above and related pages for all the details. eBay actively monitors listings and will contact you if you have listings in violation of the new rules. They are relatively accommodating at first, but there is usually a hard deadline after which, if your listings don't comply, eBay will simply end them. Be proactive now, so you are ready to sail through the upcoming busy holiday season smoothly.

Happy Selling!!

Welcome To Our Blog!

2011-08-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome - We're glad you found us!

We’ve been selling on eBay, consigning items for individuals and businesses, for more than 6 years, and boy have we learned a lot! Whether you are a new eBay seller looking for tips or an experienced seller hoping to get to the next level, we think you'll find good helpful info here. Our posts will share best practices on everything from item pricing and research to international shipping. We’ll show you some of the more fun and interesting things we’ve sold. And we'll warn you about some "gotchas" to avoid.

If there is something in particular you’d like to ask us, you can reach us here:

Email: service@encoreonlineresale.com
Phone: 734-761-6187
Web: www.encoreonlineresale.com

Thanks for visiting – we hope you come back soon!