Most people can sell one or two items on eBay, but what do you need to do to take your sales volume to the next level?  The following are five easy tips for boosting your sales:

1. Improve your Profile

If you haven’t already filled out all the information on your About Me page, including a photograph that makes you look like Aunt Jemima rather than the Unibomber, this should be your first step.  Your About Me page can be a very effective promotional tool, and can include much more than a biography.  Take Ken Potter’s About Me page: http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=koinpro. Ken’s page includes a detailed curriculum vitae and offers a list of his educational articles.  It includes a bar of his favorite links, and an offer to sign up for his free newsletter, (which I’m sure he uses to gather email addresses to promote his business via direct marketing).  Ken has used his page to build a solid impression of reliability and knowledgability.

2. Offer a Money-Back Guarantee

You may be afraid to offer a money-back guarantee because you think every second item will be sent back for some arbitrary reason, but in fact most people don’t want to go to the time and hassle to return products, even if there is an issue.  The fact that you offer a guarantee will make people much more likely to buy from you, and you will probably take very few losses, especially if you’re honest and accurate in your listings.  If you prefer, you can offer a modified guarantee, such as “Returns within 30 days”, or “Full refund if item is not as described”.  Honoring your guarantee will help keep your all-important customer rating high.

3. Boost your Customer Satisfaction Rating

Despite your impeccable fulfillment of 10 or 20 sales, you may find that your customers aren’t actually rating you.  One of the best ways to ensure that customers post a positive rating is to give them a positive buyer rating yourself.  It’s also not out of line to send a polite message asking for a review.  If you are having a difficult time getting any ratings or any sales at all, try selling a few small, cheap items at cost purely for the experience and the rating boost.

4. Lessen your Auction Durations

This tip may seem counter-intuitive: after all, won’t your listings garner more views the longer they’re up for?  The answer is no.  Your listing will get the most attention in the Best Match and Time Ending Soonest results if your auction duration is shorter.  The majority of bids come in the last 24 hours, in part because a lot of people are like me: they treat eBay more like a garage sale than a silent auction.  Since I want to make immediate purchases, auctions that are closing in the next few hours and Buy It Now listings are the ones that I’m most likely to pay attention to.

5. Don’t Overcharge For Shipping

EBay buyers aren’t stupid – they know what shipping on a particular item should cost.  Your profit margin should not be padded by a mark-up on shipping costs.  At most, you should add an extra dollar to shipping for the time and materials required to package the item.  Don’t think you can get away with averaging out the item and shipping cost either – eBay will ban you if they catch you boosting your shipping prices to avoid paying fees on your final sale value.  And remember, even if you do fool somebody into paying ludicrous shipping fees, they’ll just torch your customer satisfaction rating later.

Once your eBay sales have increased, there are many more tools and applications you can use to take your sales from profitable to earth-shaking.  However, these tips should help you boost yourself from part-time dabbler to eBay professional.

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