eBay Selling– Fight the urge to Shill Bidding and Padding Shipping

The problem with eBay auctions is that you have to pay a listing fee, the more expensive the item, the higher the listing fee. The natural tendency would be to try to work around the listing fees and get your items sold for the highest amount.

Shill bidding is a tactic that has been used, but you can get in legal troubles for doing this. A company that was selling jewelry on eBay was fined a total of $400,000 for shill bidding. They would have their employees at the company bid up their auction prices to try to get the maximum dollar amount out of the sale and surely avoid the listing fee expenses.

Another tactic that eBay will catch on to is the low item cost of the auction and the extra high shipping costs. While you need to make sure that you charge for shipping, packaging materials, and a little bit of time to box the item going overboard to make your profit in shipping will get you in hot water with eBay as well. Plus the customers that are up on this will complain and give feedback that will reflect their frustration. Many times these unscrupulous individuals have terms of shipping and handling not refundable. While this is fine if the shipping is fair, if you are being over charged to the cost of the item and the item is junk, you have way of returning for any decent refund.

If you are looking to build a reputable company, be fair. That means just that, play by the rules and set your rules for doing business. While you can’t make every customer happy, you will gain many that are happy, and increase your chances for repeat customers. In addition the bargain shoppers often are more difficult to work with in completing a transaction, and will nickel and dime the seller. So you may not get every single sale, but you will hopefully gain the best customers on eBay.

What it boils down to is that you have to factor in the cost of the eBay listing fee both when the item sells and after it hasn’t sold the second time around. The first time it doesn’t sell you can re-list one more time, but you have to tell it to do so. What you will discover is that no sold auctions can add up to a lot of money for listing fees.

That is why many companies resort to the unscrupulous methods of trying to cut down the expenses. You might even reconsider that eBay is not the best place to sell your goods. Make sure to access your profits and losses on at least a monthly basis to insure that you are not going into a massive money losing venture!

If you can’t be profitable selling on eBay you might want to consider selling your goods at different places, such as GoogleBase or Craigslist. You might even consider Google Adwords to market a traditional storefront website. If you have trouble setting up a commercial website, you can either look for a website hosting company that has turnkey easy wizards to help set it up or check into Yahoo! Stores.

By Lisa Schalinski - Best Syndication Writer

eBay Selling

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eBay Selling– Fight the urge to Shill Bidding and Padding Shipping