Are You an Auctiva User?

If you sell on eBay it is likely that you have heard of Auctiva. It is an eBay auction management tool, that until June, let you use their templates, traffic monitor, and listing tool for free. Now they have announced that due to eBay's new policies they are going to have to start charging for their services. Unfortunately, their new fee chart is hard to understand and that sent me on the search for a new service to list my eBay items through. After seeing several listings on eBay I decided to give Seller Source Book a try. I just signed up today and I am already impressed at how many cool looking templates they have. I also set up my seller profiles already and found that it was not hard to do. I am a newbie to their service but find that even listing an item is easy. Seller Sourcebook offers a clear pricing guide for the services. It can also be used to sell on other sites other than eBay.

As an eBay seller, it is important to make your listings stand out from the rest of the pack. A well groomed listing can attract more interested buyers. A template that matches the personality of the product you are selling can make the product seem unique and special.

I thought I would share my two cents on this with all of you. Do you use Auctiva or Seller Source Book? If so leave a comment and share your views.

Online Selling Tip: Writing Your Item Listing on eBay

Let me first say that I am not an expert at online selling but have learned a few tricks along the way. This post is inspired to a conversation with a friend this morning about listing an item on eBay. She is posting her first listing today and asked me what she should say in her description for her item. She said that she had looked around at listings on eBay and saw that there were some good descriptive listings and some listings that had little to no info on the item. So that got me to thinking...what makes a great listing description?


Make use of all of the preset listing descriptions provided by eBay. What I mean by this is, depending on the product you are listing, when you list an item you will see boxes in your item listing screen that has options for you to choose size of product, style of product, condition of product, and more. The options that you choose in these presets will appear at the top of your listing description in a box and it will also help get you listed in a search that a potential customer will do for an item. Here is an example of what I am talking about. I used a book listing since it has a lot of details listed about the item.

A note about listing books is that when you first go under selling and choose books as the catagory it will ask for the ISBN # on the book and that will automatically list the details.

Start your listing description with the name of the product and quanity if you are selling a "LOT" of a specific item.This will make your listing start off clear on what you are offering and there won't be room for confusion from the buyer. In this description you will want to include quanity, accurate name of product, and size. If it is too long of a description, you can use the subtitle area to lost the size of the product.

When entering info in the description box be clear and well understood. Like I said before I am not an expert by no means but I have learned that an unclear listing will get you no buyers. You should start off by listing the same thing that you listed in the one liner description and then give details about the product, tell what the product does and how it will benefit the buyer will have if they bought the item. Don't overdue the description by making unclear statements. If it is a used item be sure to talk about any scratches or damages that the product has. If you don't do this you will be misrepresenting the product and you will most likely will get a return.

Give a clear Shipping Policy. Don't forget to let the buyer know how you will ship the item, what your ETA of shipping the item will be, let them know if insurance is available, and if combined shipping is an option. Again, remember to be very clear about what details you are trying to convey.

Give a clear Return Policy. Let your buyers know what your return terms will be for damaged items, shipping problems, who will pay for shipping a return, and let them know that shipping insurance is nonrefundable.

Potential Hot Seller on eBay

I found this at Dollar Tree and saw the Banana Boat Summer Colors Instant Bronzer & Sunless Tanning Foam Light/Medium and thought that I would try it out on eBay and to my surprise it sold quickly. I sold these 4 bottles of it for $14, that is a $10 profit from the sale. Check out these completed listings to see more that have sold.

Check your local dollar stores for this item. You will make your money back and a profit too.

Selling On Etsy

Etsy is a special place online where people come to find handmade or vintage goods. If you are a crafter, this site is a good resource for an extra income. Becoming a seller at Etsy is a two step process. First you have to register as a buyer and then log in and select to upgrade to a seller. To upgrade to seller status it is free but they do require a debit or credit card to be registered. They use this card once a month to charge your balance for your listing and final sales fees.

The steps to list an item is fairly simple. Just make sure that you have a good picture of your item. I would do a picture of the item in it’s entirety and then zoom in to show the detail for another picture. When you list an item, you are charged 0.20 cents for a 4 month listing. This price includes up to 5 images of the product. When an item sells a 3.5% fee on the final sale price will be charged. After 4 months you will have to renew the listing. When an item is purchased by a customer you can opt to be paid by PayPal. When you are writing the description for the item be very illustrative and you might even want to put in what inspired you to create the piece. The more the buyer feels connected to the seller’s vision the more chance they will purchase the item.

Every seller on Etsy gets a free shop. The shop can be customized and it will list all of the items that you currently have for sale. The items will also be listed in it's individual category that you chose when listing the item. The benefit to having a shop is you can give out a single link to promote all of the items that you have on sale.

Promoting your shop is aided by their resources that include banners and buttons that you can place on your blogs and websites. Etsy also has a widget, the Etsy Mini, that you can add to your blog or website, instead of the banner or button, that will showcase your items that you have in your Etsy shop. Another promotional tool that Etsy participates in is the staff will scour their product database and find items to feature on the front page of Etsy. They usually keep the products rotated several times a day. This is great way to get free publicity for your items.

Another tip is to fully fill out your profile. A limited profile will not impress sellers and you might loose business. Make sure that you list all of your shops policies for returns, damaged goods in shipping, and items that were not received. This will help you keep order to all of your orders and create less chaos. Also, try and list items as frequent as possible so that you can appear at the top of a category that buyers will choose. This will keep your listings from being buried amongst the older items.

Lastly, you can have the most perfect listing and still not receive sales if you don’t promote the item yourself outside of Etsy. You can do this by getting the word out on social networks, blogging about it, and listing your link in a forum.

If you are a crafty person try Etsy out and see where it can take you in your journey to making extra income.

Are Your Pictures Clear on Your Listing?

One thing that can kill a listing fast is bad pictures of the item. A picture of a listing needs to show the item in detail. What I mean by that is the buyer should be able to look at the picture and see exactly what they are buying without extra distractions or blurriness getting in the way. Think about it, If you are looking at an item that has 2 listings where one listing has a crystal clear picture and the other has a picture that you can't tell what it is, which one are you going to be interested in. I know when I started out selling my camera was not good at all and I never could get a great picture of what I was trying to sell and quickly caught on that if I wanted to get more views I needed to improve my pictures. Now I'm not saying that you need to have a professional picture, I am saying that the picture needs to be in focus, color needs to appear correct in the picture, and well cropped. Here are some examples of a bad picture and a good picture.




Example of a bad picture. It is too blurry and you can't tell what it is.

Example of a good picture. You can see the product that I am selling and see the wording on the bottle. With this listing I would also do a close up shot of the lower part of the bottle where the description is.

Places To Sell Online

Selling online is a great way to make extra money for your family. I thought I would start off the day with listing places that you can sell on. It is important to sell in a site that fits your needs best.

eBay: This is the most popular site to sell on. Traffic to your listings comes easier with eBay and it has an easy insertion form for selling. As a seller you can have individual listings (No subscription needed) or you can have an eBay store (Subscription needed). You can either choose to have buyers bid on your items or "Buy It Now" with a fixed price. For a beginning seller online eBay is in my opinion the best to get started on because it is easy to set up a listing, traffic is greater on eBay than other sites, and they have a great help section that will help a beginner get the most out of their listings.

Amazon: This is another high traffic site that offers a selling feature. I found that if you sell books online, this is the best place to do it. Sellers have found that they can get more for books with the audience that Amazon receives. The only downside is that you have to pay a monthly fee to be a seller with them, so that means that in order for you to make a profit you will have to sell more than the monthly fee every month.

Craigslist: This is a site that is great to sell bulky items that are not easily shipped. You can post an ad for free to attract local intrest. The only downside to this site is that you directly communicate through your own email address and you have to meet face to face to complete the sale. You will definately have to think of your security when completing a sale on Craigslist.

Half.com: This site is ran by eBay. This site is limited to items in the following catagories: Books, Movies, Music, Game Systems, and Video Games. There are no listing fees and listing an item is easy because you enter the UPC or ISBN and all of the info is provided from their database on the item. Traffic is pretty good for this site.

Etsy: This is a place where you can sell your handmade goods. The traffic it gets is from destination buyers that are seeking for handmade goods. The form to list an item is moderately easy. It cost 20cents to list an item and when it sells you will pay a small transaction fee of 3.5%.

Cafe Press: This is a site where you can sell your custom t-shirts, hats, mugs, and more. You can open a basic shop for free and list up to 80 items. This site seems to get a lot of traffic.

These are the sites that I know that are trustworthy to sell on. If you know of anymore please leave a comment and I will check them out.