Impossible to get started as a New eBay Seller?

The Challenges of a New eBay Seller

I constantly see people online frustrated that it's impossible to get started with a new eBay account. I hear people say it's impossible to make any money on eBay, it's impossible to get any sales. It's impossible to compete with the Chinese sellers on price since they are essentially the source and your most likely buying from them or someone like them.

In this post I want to address some of the common complaints about eBay and how to fight through those obstacles. The same can be said for Amazon as well but in this post I'm going to be focusing on eBay.

It's impossible to compete on price

Many eBayers claim it's impossible to compete on price. If your trying to compete with the lowest prices on eBay it is going to be nearly impossible. Many factories and traders out of China sell on eBay themselves. These essentially are the people you are buying from or at the very least closer to the source than you. That is a benefit to them.

The negative to them is they are shipping from China or HongKong. Most US buyers are not willing to wait the additional week or two or three that those items are going to take to arrive. By being a USA seller you have a leg up on them already. Don't try to compete with bottom barrel pricing. Advertise that you are in the USA and ship quickly if you have a lot of chinese competition.

Lastly, by putting together quality listings, using maximum number of item specifics, using maximum amount of photos allowed, and putting very descriptive quality listings your listings will rise higher in eBay search. Buyers will be more confident buying from you than someone else, and you will get more sales.

My items don't show up in eBay searches

As a new eBayer it's true you get absolutely no sales rank. It's tough to sell products when eBay is not showing your products to people searching for them. eBay is most likely showing the items of more established sellers. Yes it's frustrating but there are a few ways to remedy that. First off don't rely on eBay to drive traffic to your listings. Drive your own traffic via social media, blog posts, Youtube videos showing your products. If you bring your own traffic and your own sales eBay search ranking algorithm will take notice and will start showing your products higher.

Another reason your items are not being shown is because your not a trusted member of the eBay community yet. There are scammers who setup eBay accounts, sell items, never ship them and run off with the money. There are eBay sellers who sell counterfeit items. Until you get some successful transactions under your belt eBay is going to limit the number of items you can sell per month, the total dollar value of the items you can sell per month, and is not going to show your items high in searches.

As I mentioned driving your own traffic and sales to your listings is one way to combat this. Another is to do auctions. For buy it now listings typically established sellers are shown. Most auctions however get a bump in search ranking as they near their ending period. By doing auctions as opposed to buy it now, you will get better placement in eBay searches.

Another strategy I have is to find a very high demand item. Sell that item at either a break even price or possibly even a small loss. Many people are very opposed to spending money to make money but it's really a necessity. What I personally did was buy 50 iPod remotes for about $2.50 a piece. I sold them on eBay as 99 cent auctions. Some would sell for $8 or $10. Others would sell for 0.99 cents with free shipping, on those I lost a buck or two per listing. The idea however is that I knew these items would sell at that price. By selling 50 items I built up some good feedback as well as increased my sales rank. eBay then started giving me higher limits and showed my items higher in searches. All in all I probably broke even or made a few bucks, but really I would have been content even losing $50 because in the end that bump in search ranking is going to make me way more than $50 in the long run. You have to think big not think small. Sometimes spending a couple bucks will make you much more in the long run so don't be short sighted.

I don't know what to sell

This isn't a problem with eBay, this is your problem. If you're looking for items to sell there's a variety of ways to find hot selling items. One way would be to signup for Tereapeak. Terapeak is a service which pulls eBay sales data. It contains a wide variety of tools to not only help you find products to sell but also to help you list them in a way that they will rank higher in eBay searches and sell for a higher price. You can get a free 7 day trial of Terapeak by clicking HERE.

Some other tools I use to find hot selling products is Google Trends, Statcount, Amazon Top Sellers List, and just browsing products on eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, DHGate, and Tradekey.

Lastly, myself, I sell a list of hot selling products on Fiverr. It only costs $5, and all in all you get over 400 hot selling product ideas. Though many people sell items directly off this list, which is fine as they are profitable, my goal in providing this list is to get your brain thinking about the right type of items that you want to sell. Small, light, easy to ship, and ideally cheap items which have a much higher perceived value. Did you know that many of the items you see on eBay or Amazon selling for $19.95 actually only cost the seller 0.60 to 0.80 cents? I'm referring to items like silicone baking trays, silicone baby placemats with built in bowls and similiar items.

eBay Hates New Sellers & Favors Bigtime Sellers

This is a very common complaint. Does eBay hate new sellers, no. Does eBay show more established sellers higher in search ranking? Yes... and for good reason. As I mentioned above some new sellers to eBay are great. Others are not. Some sellers sell items and never ship. Some take too long to ship. eBay's top priority is to provide a great buyer experience. To do this they steer buyers to more established trusted sellers as those sellers have a track record of selling quality items, shipping quickly, providing good customer service and support, etc. With new sellers it's a tossup, could be great could be bad. This is why eBay makes you prove yourself before allowing you to sell lots of items and before showing you as a preferred vendor by showing you higher in search rankings as well as by giving you the top rated seller and powerseller status which lets buyers know they can trust you.

eBay does not hate new sellers, I would say it's probably fair to say they favor large sellers. As with any business people who do volume get treated better and are a priority customer. eBay is no different so a seller paying them 50k a year in seller fees is probably going to get a bit more attention than a new seller. That said eBays top priority is providing buyers a good experience. If there's no buyers there's no marketplace. eBay's top priority is not helping you make money or showing you at the top of rankings to help you get started.

I feel like the biggest mistake new sellers to every platform make whether were talking eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Fiverr, is thinking your going to post an item or service and people are going to come flocking to you. It's your responsibility and your burden to drive some of your own traffic and not rely on them to do it for you...because they won't.