Selling Stuff on eBay & Craigs List

1) Take a lot of pictures of your item. Make sure the surrounding is well lit and there isn’t any clutter. Take at least 5 pictures of your product and list them all. Auctions with more pictures have been proven to get higher bids.

2) Include the original packaging in the picture (if you held onto it). Customers LOVE to see the original packing because it gives them the feeling that you’re a thoughtful and careful person more likely to take care of your building.

3) If you have access to a video camera and this is an electronic device you’re listing then make a quick video of the product turning on and off and post it to youtube. Link to your video in your listing.

4) Pay attention to when the listing begins and time it appropriately. I generally avoid selling internationally or outside of the 48 US states because the postage is too expensive so I only worry about US timezones. You want your listing to end at night when people are at home and more likely on the computer surfing the web for pleasure. I’ve found the best luck with ending my auctions at 10-11pm EST – this gives individuals on the west coast (7-8pm for them) also a chance to bid when they’re home.

5) Pay attention to what day you’re listing your item on. I’ve found that ending my auction on Sunday is more effective. People are more likely to have free time and web surfing on the weekends.

6) If you have access to a video camera then quickly video tape your iPhone turning on and making a phone call. You can publish this video to youtube for free and link to it within your posting.

7) Write your listing description & title carefully! Also – pay attention to SEO (search engine optimization). Google/Bing & Yahoo rank eBay highly and it’s possible that your auction will be crawled, indexed and show up in search results if you use commonly used search terms in your listing description & title. Use Google Adwords to get a sense for what some good keywords might be around your particular item.

8) If your item is relatively new then start the bidding at $0 (ex. iPod touch, iPhone 2g and above).  If you have an older product (earlier iPods, G1 iPhone) then it may not warrant enough traffic to start at zero.