eBay is a great way to test a new product and a great way to start as an on-line seller. For a growing number of entrepreneurs, eBay is their sole storefront. The beauty of eBay is that it lets you get into e-commerce without having to go through the trouble and expense of setting up an e-commerce site of your own.

If you have an e-commerce site, driving traffic to your site is the most difficult task.  In addition, most people browsing over the web are not prepared themselves to buy any, most just have a look and browsed off your site. With eBay, there are millions of cash ready customers.  Most eBay customers are ready in means of emotionally planned to get something definitely and also having ready payment methods in hand.

These nine eBay selling tips will help you get started selling on eBay successfully and avoiding expensive mistakes.

1. A nice picture. It’s essential, everyone like to see things before they buy them. For successful eBay selling, make sure any products you list on eBay are accompanied by good quality photographs. eBay recommend you to have picture at its longest width or height at 1000 pixels.  Nobody buys if you cannot offer a decent picture of an item that you are trying to sell.  What you need is a good digital camera with macro feature.

Expensive lightings Accessories could be considered later after you sell well on eBay.  Put the item on a garden table on a cloudy day or if you take your pictures indoor, put it underneath cool day light fluorescent is good enough at the start.  You can use a big white paper sheet as a background. A good book on Photoshop CS or any knowledge on photo editing program is essential.  You need to crop off some distracting elements in edges and increase Brightness and Contrast of the pictures you have taken form your camera.

2. Do your research. When selling on eBay, before you list a particular product, spend some time researching other similar products on eBay and following the bidding process. This will help you gauge the interest for your product and knowing the buying habit. By checking the completed listings for the items that you planned to sell, it help you determine how much you could expect either by Auction or setting an inviting Buy It Now price. It is important that you ran your searches with “Price + Shipping Lowest” option, this is the most common feature used by all serious buyers.

3. Offering a price that sells. Most of the new sellers on eBay check the Popular Searches Keywords to find the hot selling items.  Some take paid service from Terapeak.  But the surest way to find out is to carry out a refined search over the item on eBay that you are planning to sell. If you plan for an Auction, the completed listings option gives you an idea of your expected price.  Other wise search with a “Price + Shipping lowest” option and set you Buy It Now price at the lowest of all other listings.  This will keep your listing at the first page of the search result and catch tons of potential buyers.

4. Avoid expensive features. A lot of new sellers think, having their listing on the first page of search result might bring them great sales.  Some take the listing upgrade such as the Feature First. But the fee for Feature First is high, $24.95 for 3 to 10 days listings and $74.95 for 30 days listings. The problem is even those listings are listed at the first position of each search result most buyers did not buy them always.  Why?  Because, most of the buyers search with the “Price + Shipping Lowest” feature and the lowest priced item is just listed first underneath the Feature First items. Buyers buy the cheapest, not the first listed.  If you have offered the most competitive price, you will be on the first page together with the Featured First items.  Be wise and save expensive costs.

5. Learn all about shipping. Shipping is under the control of the eBay seller.  You must pack your products completely and weigh them exactly (do not estimate without really weighing at complete packaging). Put the weight in the shipping calculator and get the rates for each type of shipping that you planned to offer to your customers. Some methods of shipping are better than others at a higher price. You want to find the best method of shipping for your product in terms of expense and reliability and then specify that shipping method in your eBay listing.

6. Pay attention to the writing of your listing Title and Description. For selling on eBay, you need a powerful eBay listing Title and a detailed product description. And the trick to writing a strong eBay listing is to combine search engine friendly phrasing with concrete details about the product in a way that will entice people to bid on your product. Take the time to craft your interesting eBay listing Title. Understand that people select the interesting Title and decide to buy after checking the product description.  You could loss your potential sale if you are weak in any of both.

7. Offer a full range of payment options, including credit cards. The more payment options you, as an eBay seller, offer prospective bidders, the more bidders your product will attract and the more successful your selling on eBay will be. Now as Paypal can accept most major Credit cards, having PayPal is good enough at start of selling on eBay.

8. Focus on getting positive feedback. Feedback really matters when you’re selling on eBay. If you have a consistent record of positive feedback, prospective buyers will both bid more often and be willing to pay higher prices.  Writing a paragraph of a sweet request for leaving you a positive five stars feedback upon receipt of your item can be added to your shipping confirmation e-mail to your customers.

9. Be business-like. Act professionally; provide the kind of honest and superior service when you reply your messages to your customers.  Bear in your mind that they contact you because they need your help. Help is what they expect from you.  Be wise and plan to help them fully.

Your honesty and generosity will build your reputation. In case of shipping lost, be generous and give them back a full refund, it looks painful to you first but it eventually makes your customer to come back to you for more business.

Selling on eBay is just like any other business; to become an eBay success, you need to follow the rules and provide the kind of customer satisfaction that will translate into increased eBay sales.