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Buy to Sell on eBay
- By Auction Advice
- Published 04/4/2008
- General Ebay Articles
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Auction Advice
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When you register as a seller on eBay, your ultimate goal is to make a profit from selling your merchandise. If you want to achieve this, you will want to consider the “buy to sell on eBay” strategy. A successful buy to sell on eBay strategy involves the concept of arbitrage. The classic definition of arbitrage is when you purchase an item in one market and resell it in another market to profit from the price difference between the two markets. eBay arbitrage, however, refers to the process of buying something at a lower price on eBay and profiting from it by reselling it again on eBay for a higher price.
Everyday, good products are listed on eBay but sell poorly. This is a great opportunity for you to buy items that are undervalued and resell them at their fair value. But, in order for you to know how to properly use the buy to sell on eBay strategy, you need to understand why some good products fail to sell as well as they should on eBay.
Bad pictures or descriptions. There are many newbies on eBay that have good products to sell but simply don’t know how to market them. They don’t describe their products in enough detail and provide poor photos or none at all. Most buyers are not tempted by such poor product listings. Leveraging the buy to sell on eBay strategy means that you have to be on the lookout for these types of low-quality listings because they usually yield lower prices for their sellers (a good strategy is to specialize in certain product categories). And when you find one, in order to find out if the product is a gem or not, you should write the seller an email to get more details about the product. If the seller is new to eBay, he or she will be more eager for positive feedback and will respond to your email. If the product turns out to be good, you know you will get a bargain when you win the bid.
Incomplete or misspelled titles. This is probably the most popular method of arbitrage using the buy to sell on eBay strategy. Most sellers fail to realize how important the auction listing title is to the success of their sale. Most buyers will search for an item by typing keywords into the search box on the eBay homepage. By default, the search function will only scan through auction titles and not the descriptions of the listings. It will only do so if the buyer clicks on the advanced search option and checks the box for “search title and description”. There are not a lot of buyers who know about this particular feature, and there are even less buyers who actually use it. For example, if you try the word “Playstation 2” with just the title search function and then try it again with the search title and description function, you will find that there are many more listings displayed for the latter.
Logically, if an auction listing’s title is incomplete or misspelled, then it will not be displayed as often as it should be. That means there will be less bids for the listing. This is a great opportunity for a “buy to sell on eBay” strategist. So, how does one go about finding misspelled titles? For starters, there is a free website called http://www.searchspell.com/typo/ that will generate misspellings for you once you enter in a keyword. You can easily take some of these misspellings and enter them into the eBay title search function.
Once you find an incomplete or misspelled title, the next step is to do some research on what the typical selling price is for the product. All you have to do is to click on “advanced search” on any eBay page, enter the correct product description, and check the box for “completed listings only”; doing this will allow you to see all the closed auction listings for that particular product and observe the average selling price. After including the cost of shipping into the average selling price, if you decide that the price is high enough for you to turn a profit from the buy to sell on eBay opportunity, then place your bid accordingly.
For your buy to sell on eBay strategy to be successful, the timing of your bid is extremely important as well. In general, if some bids have already been placed for the product, you should wait until the auction is about to end to place your bid. Alternatively, you could use sniper software (to be discussed at a later time) to place your bid in the very last seconds of the auction. If no bids have been placed for the product, then you immediately have to place your bid. Sellers on eBay are only allowed to change their titles and product descriptions if no bids have been placed. Once you place your bid, the seller can no longer make any changes to the auction listing. Placing your bid immediately locks in the arbitrage and the buy to sell on eBay opportunity.
Inconvenient auction times. Another reason why some good products fail to sell well is because their auctions end at inconvenient times. A good example of this is an auction that ends at 4 P.M. in a particular time zone. A clever buy to sell on eBay strategist will watch out for these auction listings to catch any potential arbitrage opportunity when the bidding is about to end. You can search auction listings in a particular product category according to the auctions’ ending times.
Across countries. eBay has a website for many different countries. There are many products that will sell for lower prices in one country and higher prices in another because there are simply more hungry bidders in the latter. Profiting from the buy to sell on eBay strategy with this technique means that you have to do some research and find out what these product categories are. You also need to consider whether the price discrepancy is big enough to cover the costs of customs and international shipping.
Using the buy to sell on eBay can be very lucrative for people who spend the time and effort to take notice of the arbitrage opportunities created. However, the buy to sell on eBay strategy is also a sort of numbers game. Remember that there are a lot of other serious sellers on eBay who are aware of what to lookout for, so you aren’t always guaranteed to win just because you know the techniques.
Everyday, good products are listed on eBay but sell poorly. This is a great opportunity for you to buy items that are undervalued and resell them at their fair value. But, in order for you to know how to properly use the buy to sell on eBay strategy, you need to understand why some good products fail to sell as well as they should on eBay.
Bad pictures or descriptions. There are many newbies on eBay that have good products to sell but simply don’t know how to market them. They don’t describe their products in enough detail and provide poor photos or none at all. Most buyers are not tempted by such poor product listings. Leveraging the buy to sell on eBay strategy means that you have to be on the lookout for these types of low-quality listings because they usually yield lower prices for their sellers (a good strategy is to specialize in certain product categories). And when you find one, in order to find out if the product is a gem or not, you should write the seller an email to get more details about the product. If the seller is new to eBay, he or she will be more eager for positive feedback and will respond to your email. If the product turns out to be good, you know you will get a bargain when you win the bid.
Incomplete or misspelled titles. This is probably the most popular method of arbitrage using the buy to sell on eBay strategy. Most sellers fail to realize how important the auction listing title is to the success of their sale. Most buyers will search for an item by typing keywords into the search box on the eBay homepage. By default, the search function will only scan through auction titles and not the descriptions of the listings. It will only do so if the buyer clicks on the advanced search option and checks the box for “search title and description”. There are not a lot of buyers who know about this particular feature, and there are even less buyers who actually use it. For example, if you try the word “Playstation 2” with just the title search function and then try it again with the search title and description function, you will find that there are many more listings displayed for the latter.
Logically, if an auction listing’s title is incomplete or misspelled, then it will not be displayed as often as it should be. That means there will be less bids for the listing. This is a great opportunity for a “buy to sell on eBay” strategist. So, how does one go about finding misspelled titles? For starters, there is a free website called http://www.searchspell.com/typo/ that will generate misspellings for you once you enter in a keyword. You can easily take some of these misspellings and enter them into the eBay title search function.
Once you find an incomplete or misspelled title, the next step is to do some research on what the typical selling price is for the product. All you have to do is to click on “advanced search” on any eBay page, enter the correct product description, and check the box for “completed listings only”; doing this will allow you to see all the closed auction listings for that particular product and observe the average selling price. After including the cost of shipping into the average selling price, if you decide that the price is high enough for you to turn a profit from the buy to sell on eBay opportunity, then place your bid accordingly.
For your buy to sell on eBay strategy to be successful, the timing of your bid is extremely important as well. In general, if some bids have already been placed for the product, you should wait until the auction is about to end to place your bid. Alternatively, you could use sniper software (to be discussed at a later time) to place your bid in the very last seconds of the auction. If no bids have been placed for the product, then you immediately have to place your bid. Sellers on eBay are only allowed to change their titles and product descriptions if no bids have been placed. Once you place your bid, the seller can no longer make any changes to the auction listing. Placing your bid immediately locks in the arbitrage and the buy to sell on eBay opportunity.
Inconvenient auction times. Another reason why some good products fail to sell well is because their auctions end at inconvenient times. A good example of this is an auction that ends at 4 P.M. in a particular time zone. A clever buy to sell on eBay strategist will watch out for these auction listings to catch any potential arbitrage opportunity when the bidding is about to end. You can search auction listings in a particular product category according to the auctions’ ending times.
Across countries. eBay has a website for many different countries. There are many products that will sell for lower prices in one country and higher prices in another because there are simply more hungry bidders in the latter. Profiting from the buy to sell on eBay strategy with this technique means that you have to do some research and find out what these product categories are. You also need to consider whether the price discrepancy is big enough to cover the costs of customs and international shipping.
Using the buy to sell on eBay can be very lucrative for people who spend the time and effort to take notice of the arbitrage opportunities created. However, the buy to sell on eBay strategy is also a sort of numbers game. Remember that there are a lot of other serious sellers on eBay who are aware of what to lookout for, so you aren’t always guaranteed to win just because you know the techniques.