Here are some tips and tricks to help with making the most of your eBay account-

*In the 'auction' format you can do 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days auctions. Hard to choose which day? Well it somewhat depends upon what you are selling. A 'commodity item', which would be, for example, jewelry, a 1 day or 3 day would be best. The main reason is you don't want people to know you are selling a large amount of the same type of item. So instead of listing 100 items for 10 days, you could split it up and have 10 items a day for 10 days. Also a time sensitive item would be good for a one day auction, for example, a concert ticket.

*If you do a 10 day auction, start it on a friday day so it ends on a monday, therefore getting the benefit of two weekends. The weekends and evenings has the most traffic for your auction. The one exception is in summer, where most people are out in the weekends enjoying themselves. In summer in the week would be the best days to end the auction. Conversely, in winter is the best time of year to take advantage of the weekends.

*The time is important too. For non-business people, between 7 pm and 9 pm would be the ideal times. For business people you are trying to sell to, any time during business hours would be better. So bear in mind what kind of buyer you are trying to attract.

*The days of the week, Monday Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days for traffic in that order, Thursday and Friday, the worst.

*With your eBay auctions its best to specialize in one or two areas. WHen you specialize, you gain knowledge in those areas and can then have a good idea what to pay for any items you buy that you then resell on eBay. This can also get you well known in a certain field, and people will search your auctions out first.

*Be very descriptive in your auctions, so there's is less likelyhood of the item being returned.

*Search for bargains ending at late times, such as, 2.00am-6.00. Some people don't think about the ending times when they start their auction, because if the auction ends at the very late time, there will be very few, if any, last minute bidders.

*Try to find misspelled words in auctions. In the title and description. Its more likely these auctions will have less bidders.

Your Title-

This is one very important aspect of your auction, and one which most people on ebay will be searching for. They are people, just like you. So have a think what YOU would be searching for, if you was looking for what you are selling. Make sure every word counts, since you only have a limited number of words you can use in your title. Mention the weight, height, brand, whether new or used. Also in the title, make sure that every word has a capital letter at the beginning.

Do not list an item at $1-

Yes, i know you may have heard that using a $1 reserve can attract more bidders. And this is true. However, if by some chance only one or two people happen to find your item, you could find yourself way out of pocket. Lets say you bought an item at 25 bucks, and instead of listing it at $30, and therefore at least insuring yourself a modest profit, you list it at $1. Over the course of the auction, only one guy bids, and gets it for $1. Yes auctions should have bargains, what you don't want is for the crazy bargain to be from your auction! Obviously the reverse is also true; don't list an item too high. Otherwise you are likely to find no bidders and wasted time and money on fees.

Do no use reserves-

Think about how frustrating it is to bid on an item and not kno what the amount you need to bid to secure the item. If there are two identical items and one auction has a bid and the other doesn't, bidders will go with the one without.

Start out with the lowest bid you can with the lowest profit margin you will take-

This is to get as many people interested in bidding as possible, with yout still making a profit even if only one person actually bids.

Don't list all your auctions at once-stagger them-

So if several people are wanting the same item, they won't see multiple items for sale at the same time and each bid on seperate auctions. If there is only one item available at the time, they will hopefully bid the price up some. Depending upon what is the best price they are prepared to go up to.

Using the Bold and other options-

Using bold or the feature options are usually not necessary, except on high priced items. Since they can shoot up your fees quickly, and eat into your profit margins, on anything less than $100, are really not needed. If you write a good title and description, your goods should sell just fine.

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Copyright Gary Martin 2006