New Seller Looking for help

[theonlineentrepreneur]

Hi everyone, i'm new to selling on ebay, i've been selling clothes now for 4 days and have about 22 items listed, a few views on most items but no sales 😛 I know it's only been a couple days but i was wondering how long it took other people to make their first sale? do you charge the buyer the shipping fees? Also any tips to get the ball rolling for me?

I keep hearing people say just keep listing but i'm afraid to keep buying clothes to list when there isn't any income coming in.

[tobyshitzu]

auto parts and accessories has been by far the fastest growing part of ebay for years,.  If you can be comeptitive with whats listed that would be a far better area to pursue then clothes   

[momcqueen]

Six years ago, all that I bought on ebay was used clothes for women. Designer labels.

Today, that is not my thing.

When it was my thing, however, I can tell you that if I saw an article of clothing for sale that had visible pilling or wrinkles, or generally looked liked it had been pulled from a second-hand store bag and stretched out on the floor for the purposes of taking photos, I took a hard pass. Regardless of price. Buyers want to feel confident they are purchasing non-smelly, non-buggy clothes in great shape from their original owner. Not something picked off the back of a hitchiker and listed for sale on ebay. 

[momcqueen]

That's what I thought. Auto-parts are like the top niche market. ebay.com Motors is the best resource for that, right?

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@toby**bleep**zu wrote:

auto parts and accessories has been by far the fastest growing part of ebay for years,.  If you can be comeptitive with whats listed that would be a far better area to pursue then clothes   

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[tobyshitzu]

Yes.  Thats the one are  where you really do want to list on .com since they never brought the parts compatibility feature to .ca

[momcqueen]

Yeah, they were totally clear that auto parts are best sold on ebay.com. 

But to do research, can I assume there is a Motors Board for research and/or seller support? 

[hlmacdon]

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@theonlineentrepreneur wrote:

I agree with the whole niche thing and i have access to auto parts and i can niche it all the way down to 1 part in particular, brake calipers! I don't see too much competition compare to clothing but being new to ebay i wasn't sure if auto parts would good to sell on ebay. Getting info on selling clothes was easy but i can't find much info out there on selling auto parts on ebay. Does anyone know of a way that i can do the research on that?

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Auto part sellers that are successful generally can be divided into a few camps. 1) The mechanically adept who have enough knowledge of parts and values that they can scour the wreckers and pick out parts that have been underpriced, or part out whole vehicles bought at auction 2) Retailers aligned with dropshippers. Sales of new parts is a dropship heavy business. 3) Manufacturers or distributors of brands where they have exclusivity. If you are going to wade into auto parts you need to have a relatively high level of product knowledge. Realistically, no matter what category you choose it is important to build up your product knowledge before you even start selling. With auto parts it is important to know what works with what as more often than enough the buyer doesn't.

[theonlineentrepreneur]

I actually was lucky and they lifted my limit right away from 10 to 100! I know 100 isn't much but i'm happy that they at least lifted it. I went with the annual store.

[theonlineentrepreneur]

I'm actually gonna go out this week and buy a Dummy and steamer! I thought of doing this from the start but then i had seen people just putting the clothes on a bed and took pictures but after seeing my pictures now i kind of regret it. So now i will be sure to do that change ASAP.

[theonlineentrepreneur]

that's good to know i may start doing research and seeing if maybe i should start also doing some auto parts as well.

[momcqueen]

You will be well-pleased with the results. Good photos are time-consuming but you have to think of it as an investment. Good photos sell products. I upload 12 high-resolution images per item and it takes me hours to shoot and process those images but they sell my items for more than my competitors get with stock images because it shows I care as a seller. And that I pay attention to detail. Which is important with collectibles. 

And be CERTAIN to watermark your photographic work so no one else can take credit for it. 

[theonlineentrepreneur]

I'm not afraid of a little hard work 🙂 And with all the advise you have been giving me i will 100% put it to use right away! I'm really looking forward to getting that first sale and working to getting this to be a full time business! 

Do you use a camera or do you use your iphone, ipad or tablet to take your pictures?

[momcqueen]

I just use an iPhone but I have special lenses to attach to it. 

[theonlineentrepreneur]

Your pictures come out great! Wouldn't have guessed you used an iphone!

Just for my own curiosity and i know this is hard to answer, i'm the type of guy that likes to set goals but at the same time have realistic expectations. For clothes how many views per item you think is a good number to know that the keywords i used were good?

[theonlineentrepreneur]

I'm also curious what you guys think of this....For me to ship within canada it would cost $12 but to ship to US it would be $3. Should i just skip start listing on .com instead to get more US sales? or does it not make a difference?