EBay for Dummies (57 page)
Authors: Marsha Collier
Tags: #Electronic Commerce, #Computers, #General, #E-Commerce, #Internet auctions, #Auctions - Computer network resources, #Internet, #Business & Economics, #EBay (Firm)
3. Click the Relist link from the drop-down menu next to the unpaid item.
But is she a natural blonde?
Here’s an example of an item that would have made the seller a bundle if he or she had performed a little more strategizing up front:
Platinum Mackie Barbie:
Beautiful Platinum Bob Mackie Barbie. MIB (removed from box once only to scan). The doll comes with shoes, stand, booklet, and Mackie drawing. The original plastic protects her hair and earrings. Buyer adds $10.00 for shipping and insurance. Payment must be made within 10 days of auction by MO or cashier’s check only.
The starting price was $9.99, and even though the bidding went to $256.00, the seller’s reserve price was not met, and the item didn’t sell. And the Second Chance offer didn’t bite.
When relisting this item, the seller should lower the reserve price and add much more to the description about the importance and rarity of the doll (unless, of course, $256.00 was far below what the seller wanted to make on the doll). Offering to accept credit cards through PayPal would have also helped to make the sale.
Figure 13-7:
Finding your unpaid item for relisting on the Sold items page (note I have already relisted this item).
To be eligible for a refund of your insertion fee, here’s the scoop:
You must relist no more than 90 days after closing the original auction.
You can get credit only if you got no bids in your original auction or if the bids you got did not equal the reserve in your reserve-price auction.
You can change anything about your auction item description, price, duration, and minimum price, but you can’t sell a different item.
If you set a reserve price in your original auction, you must set the same reserve, lower it, or cancel the reserve altogether. If you set a higher price or add a reserve, you’re not eligible for a relisting credit.
eBay’s generosity has exceptions. It doesn’t offer refunds for any listing options you paid for, such as the use of Featured Plus! or bold lettering. Also, fixed-price and store listings aren’t covered by this offer. And if you have a deadbeat on your hands, you can relist, but you don’t get a return of your insertion fee. More bad news: If you don’t sell the item the second time around, you’re stuck paying
two
insertion fees. So work a little harder this time and give it your best shot!
If your item doesn’t sell after two tries, you need to take a different tack. If you want to be eligible for a new insertion fee refund (once your item hasn’t sold twice in a row), you must use the Sell Similar option. This sets up the item in a new cycle for eBay. To get your third shot at selling, do the following (from the Unsold section of your My eBay Selling page):
1. Click the drop-down menu next to auction item that you want to relist and choose Sell Similar.
You’re taken to the original listing form with all the information filled in.
2. Make your changes to the auction (I hope major ones as mentioned further on), launch it, and pray!
The more specific your item title, the more you improve your odds of being profitable. If you’re selling an old Monopoly game, don’t just title it
Old Monopoly
board game
; call it
Rare 1959 Monopoly Game Complete in Box
. For more information about listing items, see Chapter 10.
Here’s a list of ideas that you can use to improve your auction’s odds for success:
Change the item category.
See if the item sold better in another category (see Chapter 3).
Add a picture.
If two identical items are up for auction at the same time, the item with a photo gets more and higher bids. Zoom in on Chapter 14.
Spruce up the title and description.
Make it enticing and grab those search engines. Breeze on over to Chapter 10.
Set a lower minimum bid.
The first bidders will think they’re getting a bargain, and others will want a hot item. Mosey on over to Chapter 10.
Set a lower reserve price or cancel the reserve.
A reserve price often scares away bidders who fear it’s too high. See (yup) Chapter 10 for ways to make your reserve more palatable to prospective bidders.
Change the duration of the auction.
Maybe you need some more time. Go to (you guessed it) Chapter 10.
Long-time eBay veterans say that reducing or canceling your reserve price makes an auction very attractive to buyers.
Chapter 14
Increase Your Profits with Pictures and Other Strategies
In This Chapter
Attaching pictures to your auction
Making picture-perfect images
Using great photographic form
Letting others know all
About Me
Blogging on eBay My World
You may be enjoying most of what eBay has to offer, and you’re probably having some good buying adventures. If you’re selling, you’re experiencing the excitement of making money. But there’s more. Welcome to eBay, the advanced class.
In this chapter, you go to the head of the class by discovering some insider tips on how to enhance your auctions with images and spiffy text. Successful eBay vendors know that pictures (also called
images
) really help sell items. This chapter gives you the basics on how to create great images. I also give you advice on linking pictures to your auctions so that buyers around the world can view them.
Using Images in Your Auctions
Would you buy an item you couldn’t see? Most people won’t, especially if they’re interested in purchasing items that they want to display or clothes they intend to wear. Without a picture, you can’t tell whether a seller’s idea of good quality is anything like yours — or if the item is exactly what you’re looking for.
Welcome to the cyberworld of
imaging,
where pictures are called not pictures but
images,
and your monitor isn’t a monitor but a
display.
With a digital camera or a scanner and software, you can manipulate your images — spin, crop, and color-correct — so that they grab viewers by the lapels. Even cooler: When you’re happy with your creation, you can add it to your eBay auction for others to see.
Sellers, take heed and read these other reasons why you should use your own well-made digital images in your auction pages:
If you don’t have a picture, potential bidders may wonder whether you’re deliberately hiding the item from view because you know something is wrong with it. Paranoid? Maybe. Practical? You bet.
Fickle bidders don’t even bother reading an item description if they can’t see the item. Maybe they were traumatized in English class.
Taking your own pictures shows that you actually have the item in your possession. Many scam artists take images from a manufacturer’s Web site to illustrate their bogus sales on eBay. Why risk being suspect? Snap a quick picture!
Everyone’s doing it. I hate to pressure you, but digital images are the custom for sellers on eBay, so if you’re not using them, you’re not reaching the widest possible number of people who would bid on your item. From that point of view, you’re not doing the most you can to serve your potential customers’ needs. Hey, fads are
driven
by conformity. You may as well use them to your advantage.
So which is better for capturing images: digital cameras or digital scanners? As with all gadgets, here’s the classic answer: It depends. For my money, it’s hard to beat a digital camera. But before you go snag one, decide what kind of investment (and how big) you plan to make in your eBay auctions.
If you buy a digital SLR, be sure to check with a camera store to see if older, traditional lenses can be used on the camera you buy. It’s often the case with the major brands, although digital lenses don’t have to be as “good” as the old lenses were — due to all the electronic manipulation that goes on inside the new cameras. Next, go to eBay and see what kind of deals you can find on compatible lenses.
Whether you buy new or used digital equipment on eBay, make sure it comes with a warranty. If you
don’t
get a warranty, Murphy’s Law practically ensures that your digital equipment will break the second time you use it.
Choosing a digital camera
If price isn’t a factor, you should buy the highest-quality digital camera you can afford, especially if you plan to use images for items that vary in size and shape. By
highest-quality,
I don’t necessarily mean a camera with vast amounts of megapixels; I mean a camera from a quality manufacturer that has a high optical zoom and has a good (nonplastic) lens.
How I’ve been shooting on eBay
I’ve been on eBay since 1996, so I’ve taken lots of pictures to promote my online sales. I’m pretty happy with the quality of most of my own images. When I’ve sold paper ephemera, I usually just lay the item on a scanner — and scan away. It’s the best way to get a good image of that type of item. I started early on with an Olympus camera, but quickly changed to the Sony Mavica FD-73. The FD-73 was one of the first that had a 10X digital zoom, which helps with intricate close-ups.
Then I upgraded to a used FD-92 with an 8X optical zoom (a newer model that added a memory stick). And a few years ago I purchased a Sony DSC-H1 — a fancy 5-megapixel camera with a 12X zoom. To be perfectly honest, it’s way too much camera for my eBay photo shoots. But I like the size — I find my teeny purse-size camera gets lost in my office and I can’t find it when I want to take pictures! One excellent improvement on my new camera is the addition of
image stabilization
— it holds the camera steady when I zoom in for ultra macro close-ups. If you’ve ever taken a picture fully zoomed, you know that the slightest breath can make the resulting image blurry. In the long run, a nice balance between new technological gadgets and familiar, easy-to-use equipment is the way to go.
Sony, Canon, Kodak, and Nikon all make good basic digital cameras. You can find them for about $150.00 (easily found on eBay for even less). Middle-of-the-road new (and quality used) digital cameras sell for between $100.00 and $75.00. Compare prices at computer stores and on the Web.
A great place to buy digital cameras is (surprise!) eBay. Just do a search of some popular manufacturers, such as Canon, Kodak, Sony, and Nikon, and you will find pages of listings of both new and used digital cameras.
When shopping for a digital camera, look at the following features:
Resolution:
Look for a camera that has a resolution of at least 800
×
600 pixels. This isn’t hard to find because new cameras tout their strength in megapixels (millions of pixels). You don’t need that high a resolution for eBay because your pictures will ultimately be shown on a 72 dpi monitor, not printed on paper. A
pixel
is a tiny dot of information that, when grouped with other pixels, forms an image. The more pixels an image has, the clearer and sharper the image is; the more memory the image scarfs up, the slower it shows up on-screen. An 800-by-600-pixel resolution may seem paltry next to the 6-million-pixel punch of a high-end digital camera, but trust me: No one bidding on your auctions will ever know the difference. And the picture will load a
lot
faster.
Optical zoom:
Here’s where the camera manufacturers try to pull the wool over the consumer’s eyes. They sell cameras with an optical and a digital zoom. The
optical zoom
is a true zoom done by the camera, the lens, and its built in CCD (computer chip in cameras that converts light into electronic data) — but a
digital zoom
is virtual; it’s
interpolated
through software in the camera. That means it makes up data to fill in any holes it doesn’t capture. You’ve seen this effect if you’ve ever tried to enlarge a picture from the Web in a software program — it gets all blurry.
If you ever plan on shooting close-ups, look for a high quality optical zoom.
Storage type:
Smart card? Secure Digital Card? Mini SD card? CompactFlash card? Memory stick? (Whew.) The instructions that come with your camera explain how to transfer images from your media type to your computer. (No instructions? Check the manufacturer’s Web site.) Most newer computers have ports into which you can insert your camera’s memory card; the computer reads the card like it’s a teeny, tiny disk drive.
A versatile way to get the best images of items that require extreme close-ups (such as jewelry, stamps, currency, coins) is to use a super invention called a Cloud Dome. When photographing complex items, no matter how good your camera is, you may find it difficult to capture the item cleanly and exactly (especially the colors and brightness of gems and metals). Your camera mounts to the top of this Cloud Dome, and pictures are taken inside the translucent plastic dome. The dome diffuses the light over the entire surface of the object to reveal all its intricate details. You can purchase Cloud Domes on eBay or from the manufacturer’s Web site at
www.clouddome.com
. Even in black and white, you can see the difference that a cloud dome can make when taking pictures of jewelry, as shown Figure 14-1.
Figure 14-1:
Before and after pictures of items shot through a Cloud Dome.
Choosing a scanner
If you plan to sell flat items such as autographs, stamps, books, or documents — or if you need a good piece of business equipment that can double as a photocopier — consider getting a digital scanner. You can pick up a brand new one for a under $100.00 (you can find scanners on eBay).
Here’s what you need to look for when you buy a scanner:
Resolution:
As with printers and photocopiers, the resolution of digital scanning equipment is measured in
dots per inch
(dpi). The more dpi, the greater the resolution.
Some scanners can provide resolutions as high as 12,800 dpi, which looks awesome when you print the image, but to dress up your eBay auctions, all you need is (are you ready?) 72 dpi (dots or pixels per inch)! That’s it. Your images will look great and won’t take up much storage space on your computer’s hard drive. Basic scanners can scan images at resolutions of up to 1,200 dpi, so even they are far more powerful than you need for your eBay images.
Flatbed:
If you’re planning to use your scanner to scan pictures of documents (or even items in boxes), a flatbed scanner is your best bet. Flatbeds work just like photocopiers. You simply lay your item or box on the glass and scan away.
Making Your Picture a Thing of Beauty
The idea behind using images in your auctions is to attract tons of potential buyers. With that goal in mind, you should try to create the best-looking images possible, no matter what kind of technology you’re using to capture them.