eBay has been a source of hype and buzz in the past years, mainly because of the money that online sellers are able to generate from their eBay businesses. In fact, a lot of people have become successful enough selling on eBay that they are capable of giving up their day jobs in lieu of manning their eBay store. While a lot of people are successful, majority of eBay sellers do not seem to be just as lucky.

As the saying goes, while an idiot keeps repeating his mistakes, a clever man is able to learn from his shortcomings. However, it is the genius who is capable of learning from other people's mistakes. Keeping this saying in mind, I want you to learn from my mistakes. If you want to set up your own eBay business, you can't afford to make some costly mistakes. These mistakes could easily spell the difference between victory and downfall, success and failure.

Mistake #1: The law of supply and demand

If you finished high school, you surely know the basics of the law of supply and demand. But some people fail to research about this basic thing, meaning they do not discover first whether a product has a high demand. Remember, in a situation where a certain item is being sold by a lot of sellers and there are not enough buyers, the price of the item would naturally go down. Therefore, to avoid this mistake, you need to research about the product that you want to sell, and see if there is still a spot for you in the market.

Researching about the demand for an item is easy. Just compare the listed items and the number of items sold to know the demand. Also, take a look at the price of the items. You can also take a peek at the most popular items listings, where you will be able to see how many items were listed, and how many responded. This can be a pretty time-consuming process, but you can find online tools that can speed up this process.

 

Mistake #2: Photograph quality

Remember, first impressions last. When a potential buyer is looking for a pair of silver earrings online, he will be faced with hundreds of pages selling silver earrings. Of course, he would not click on all the items listed just so he can read the descriptions for each item. Therefore, the first thing that would draw a buyer into your site is a photograph of that pair of silver earrings. And not just a plain photograph, but a high quality one at that.

When I was starting my eBay business, I had this misconception that absolutely anything sells on eBay. That is what the media says most of the time. So in order for me to save on money, I opted to place my items on a scanner instead of take pictures of them. Actually, a lot of people suggest this method, but based on personal experience, I wouldn't recommend it, especially if your niche is jewelry. Because of this, I was not able to sell my items as much as I expected.

If you want your eBay business to grow into a full time job, you have to do much better. As for my case, I bought a Nikon Coolpix 4200 together with a tripod so that I could take great quality pictures using the natural daylight. So far, my only problem with this camera is getting a consistently good lighting, for it could get dark early especially during winter. But then, this can be easily solved by making use of lighting setups, and you don't need to be a professional to do that. There are lighting setups that are perfect for taking pictures of jewelry. This is also applicable to other small items.

It's not enough to take a full view picture of a product. You also need to zoom in to show the details of a certain product. Also, avoid taking photographs from a distance so as not to capture other irrelevant products, like the remote control beside your item. Taking pictures is a way of showing your professionalism, since your buyer is unable to see the item personally.

You must also take pictures from different angles to enable your customer to scrutinize the product, albeit through a computer screen. You should also not try to conceal any drawbacks that your product has. Either mention it in your description or take a photo of the flaw. Or you fail to do this, you are seriously inviting dispute and negative feedback, since your buyer will tell you that the item did not appear as ordered.

Whatever type of product you are selling, you would have to devise your own techniques of selling it. I can only share with you my experience on selling jewelry. And I must have been doing things right because I was able to resign from my day job and go full time with my eBay business, with the income just rolling in. Every now and then, I check my competitors for what they are selling and what their prices are. It always amazes me to see that I was able to sell the same products for much higher prices. Just learn from my mistakes, and you will surely be able to achieve what I have achieved.

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