What are the best ways to ensure success when selling on eBay?

Right product, right time.

If she’s selling an iPhone for instance right now, or a Wii, she’ll do well, if she’s selling other stuff it’s a crap shoot. Not just electronics though, but general items, she needs to know the market.

Who is she selling to? Who’s on that other end? Are her customers male or female? What’s their income? Why are they buying on ebay and not in the real world? How old are they?

Then she needs to fill the needs of her target market. She can also gear her pitch for her target market. For example if her target market is rich women, and she’s selling jewelry, she may want to use words that make her jewelry sound even more upscale, like “luxurious” or “fabulous” or “couture”. Conversely if she were selling jewelry for men to give as gifts to their significant others she may want to use something like “she’ll love it” or “remind her how much you love her with this beautiful ring” or “the perfect engagement ring” or something like that.

So first she needs to know her market. Then she needs to have the right products for that market. High end shoppers don’t want low end goods, and people with low income don’t want expensive goods for example.

Then she needs to know the time. Some products will sell better at different times of year. Jewelry may sell better in summer because of wedding season, socks may sell better in winter because it’s cold, shorts in summer, pants in winter. By knowing when something is popular, and when it’s not, she can avoid posting something at a time when it won’t sell, and thus minimize her risk. Also she can put more of the popular items on at peak times.

She should also know the peak time of day, she can just check bid history, if she puts something out for a week, sporadically through that week she’ll get bidders. If they share a common time range, say 9-midnight or something, after work hours, then she can also figure out when to list things so that the closing time will coincide with the larger amount of customers bidding, and avoid posting something when there’ll be fewer people bidding. Compare it to a regular business, they have set hours because that’s when customers come in, businesses aren’t open when there’s not going to be any customers, that’s just wasting money.

So yeah, know your market, know your customer, have the right product for your market, and the right timing. That’s the best you can do.