Here are the 10 things I learned about running an eBay store that help boost sales. Selling on eBay is super easy once you get up and running. The biggest challenge really becomes sourcing product at a good price.
- Easily create 100s of listings with one click
Use the new bulk create listings eBay feature where you can just drag all your pictures into ebay and it uses AI to automatically create the listings. I use a Fujitsu fi-8170 to scan my card images (it does front and back in 1 scan!) and just drag and drop these into the bulk listing builder. The only problem with this is you need to input Buy It Now prices manually. There also a tool called List Perfectly that claims to make listing items easier.
- Connect your social media accounts to your ebay account.
This allows you to post to multiple social media accounts automatically from your ebay store of your listings. If you upload videos to your ebay listings, you can post these as well as it can auto-create videos from your listing photos.
- Promote your store the RIGHT WAY on eBay
Seller Hub -> Advertising -> New Campaign -> Promote Your Store – This allows you to create pay per click campaign to drive customers to your ebay store. The key to this is DO NOT USE SMART TARGETING when bidding for keywords. Use the Manual Targeting path and set your own keywords that you know will drive sales. If you don’t know the keywords that will help, then plan to dump money into an initial run of the campaign that has a wide net of keywords, then go run reports to see which keywords drove sales, then update the campaign to only target those keywords. - DO NOT USE eBays Offsite Promotion yet.
Google and eBay recently partnered up together. This allows you to create “Offsite Campaigns” right from the eBay dashboard. The problem with this is you get no control over which listings it drives traffic to or what keywords it uses. Worst of all, it is nearly impossible to track conversions with this new feature. You only can monitor how much additional traffic you are getting but there is no way to see if it actually drives sales. I created google ads in the past before this existed and gave up, offsite ads I don’t think work very well for what I’m doing on ebay. The only reason I’d use this is the free $300 match offer they are doing right now to promote this feature. - Data driven eBay Store Optimizations with Reports.
Goto Seller Hub -> Reports -> Download
Here you can pull statistics such as order history, listings, and more importantly – advertising reports. The best way to use this would be to create a Promote Your Store Advertisement/Coupon and look for the keywords that have a high conversion rate. The biggest money pit in eBay is using advertising for keywords that don’t drive conversions. Use this reports monthly to remove dead keywords and boost bid prices on the ones that do. - Use Coupons & Sales Events to boost sales.
Everyone wants a deal. There is nothing that stops you from raising your prices a little and then offering a 10% sale event or coupon to give the illusion of a good deal. I always try to get in at 50% margins on my items but that is becoming more and more difficult to do in today’s booming market. If you set a standard that you can roughly follow which most vendors aim for 70-80% – then you’ll always know you can sell at X and still make money. With coupons and sales events, these drive clicks to your listing as it looks like the user is getting a good deal, even if maybe the price really is just slightly lower then what it normally was. eBay takes roughly 10-15% + promoted listings fix rates can bump is up to 30-40% so be careful with what you set as promoted rates. - Try to list items everyday.
Listing stuff everyday will boost ALL your listings to the top of search. Active eBay sellers are rewarded with priority listing placement which means more sales. I like to update quantity on my “choose your card” listings. Some people end/relist old listings to trick eBay into thinking you’re posting more. Bottomline, if you list 1-3 items a day, you’ll see a major boost in sales on your eBay store. You may want to leave some eBay listings as drafts so the next day you can just click Publish to space out your listing activity. - Create clean listings.
Check that your pictures look clean (no logos, watermarks, clean white background, minimal to no text) , try to take at least 2 images. Adding clean images can drive up to 16X more traffic. Add as many things in the listing details as you can, more details can drive 40% more traffic. Create clean titles for your listing. Do not keyword pack your listing just for the sake of doing it. Have the item name, model #, brand, and use the item description for your keyword packing. Search does look at your item description so there is no reason to make a confusing ALL CAPS title or use emjois/symbols. - Dump old inventory.
Run reports on items that have been sitting.
The best eBay stores know that items sitting for over 30 days on eBay usually means it’s priced too high or something is wrong with the listing. Take mental note of the items that didn’t sell quick, drop the price or set to auction. Get rid of old inventory and take the L. Use it as a learning lesson to never buy that item again or at a certain price. - Send newsletter to your previous buyers.
A feature I never knew that even existed is the newsletter component. You can use this to send a coupon and message to all of your previous buyers. Using this can help drives more sales especially if you have a specific category of listings that your buyers may want.
eBay Buying Tips
Watch this episode below of Cardboard Alchemists where we share our tips for buying cards to restore. If you want some really juicy tricks on how to make huge profits, join our Patreon and checkout the exclusive episode where we dive deep into making money off ebay.