Decide How to Take and Store Auction Photo

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Everything that appears on the Web is stored on a computer called a Web server. A Web server is connected to the Internet twenty-four hours a day, and is equipped with special software that makes files available to anyone with aWeb browser. When you create an auction listing, it is stored on one of eBay’s servers. When you capture images of your items, you have some options. You can move your files from your computer to one of eBay’s Picture Services sites and store them there. eBay lets you store one image per sale for free; the rest are subject to charges. Because of the cost (and image quality considerations, which I explain in more detail in Article 8), you might want to find another home for your image. You may, for instance, choose one of the auction management services mentioned in Article 7. These services come with their own storage space for auction images.

Or you can use the storage space that comes with your Internet access account. Before you can find a home at all, you have to have some images to put there. Are you going to have a friend or relative take photos for you? Or are you going to buy a digital camera and do it yourself? In any case, you need to decide how you’re going to take good-quality digitized (in other words, computerized) images, because good photos are critical to sales. See Article 8 for a run-down of the options. You might hear the techy sounding term upload in connection with storing images and creating Web pages. When you download a file, you copy it from a Web server to your computer. When you upload, you move a file in the opposite direction, from your computer to a server online.

Figure Out Your Payment Options Transferring payment for something that’s purchased online, whether it’s through an auction or through an e-commerceWeb site like Amazon.com or Landsend.com, is one of the most nerve-racking things you can do with your computer. The big danger, from a seller’s standpoint, is that you’ll run into a high bidder who changes his or her mind or backs out of the deal for some other reason

- you’ll never get paid, and you’ll be forced to re-list what you sell. Buyers, for their part, have the great fear that they’ll hand over payment to a seller who will take the money and run without ever bothering to ship what’s been purchased. These things do happen, unfortunately, but my experience indicates that they occur less often than you might think. A number of options for getting payment from buyer to seller have been used with success by thousands of eBay users, and while they’re described in some detail in Article 9, here is a brief summary of the kinds of choices you need to make now, before you start putting up items for sale.

Should You Use an Payment Service? Brief answer: Yes. An payment service is a company that serves as an intermediary between someone who provides goods or services and someone who pays money in exchange for those goods and services. Instead of sending a check or money order to a seller directly, the buyer pays the service, which transfers it to the seller. Depending on the service, both the seller and buyer have to have accounts with the same payment service. One payment service, PayPal, is widely used on eBay, and in fact was purchased by eBay not long ago. But PayPal charges fees that make some sellers unhappy, and other services such as BidPay (http://www.bidpay.com ) are also popular. The point is that payment services make buyers feel more secure about bidding, and you need to use at least one service in order to sell on eBay. Keep in mind that PayPal and BidPay only offer minimal protection for buyers or sellers. Although PayPal does verify the IDs of charge card users in the United States, credit card fraud still occurs. And BidPay offers no protection at all. The Escrow service Escrow.com offers a more secure environment for buyers and sellers than BidPay or PayPal. Escrow.com withholds payment to sellers until after the buyer has received the merchandise and approved it. The service also verifies payments by credit card so sellers are protected against fraud.

Pick Your Shipping Options Getting your merchandise where it’s supposed to go, quickly and safely, is one of the things that buyers note when they leave feedback for sellers. And at this early stage, accumulating positive feedback should be one of your big goals (along with generating income, of course). Therefore, you need to determine

- now, before you start making sales

- how you’re going to pack and ship your merchandise. First, you need to pick a shipper. Most eBay sellers choose between the United States Postal Service (USPS), United Parcel Service (UPS), or Federal Express. The USPS’s Priority Mail is especially popular because of delivery times as low as two days and the free, high-quality boxes, labels, and other shipping materials sellers get to use. But FedEx’s Ground and Home Delivery options are competitively priced, especially for heavy items. In any case, you’ll need to start accumulating large quantities of boxes, bubble wrap and other packing material, packing tape, labels, and other goodies. See Article 10 for more details.

Conduct Your First Auction Let’s say you’ve made the decisions you need to get started. You’ve got your ducks in a row and you’re ready to start selling. To make sure, go through the following checklist:

- You’ve signed up for a seller’s account with eBay and submitted your credit card information.

- You have accumulated some positive feedback through bidding and buying at auction.

- You’ve determined the general type of eBay business you’re going to run.

- You’ve accumulated the merchandise you’re going to sell.

- You’ve purchased a digital camera or figured out another way you’re going to capture digital photos of your merchandise.

- You’ve picked some categories in which you’re going to sell your merchandise.

- You’ve signed up with a payment service and decided on other methods of accepting payment.

- You’ve gotten together your shipping materials and picked a shipping method. At last, you’re ready to get some sales online and start getting bids. The following sections describe how to get started.

Gather Your Materials Pull together the items you plan to sell first. Don’t start with too many items at once; for starters, just try a handful so you can get used to the process gradually. Get a good quality digital camera, or consider assembling a “photo studio” including auxiliary lights and solid-colored backdrops you can use for photos. Come up with a boilerplate text that you can use with all of your auction listings

- standard text that you include with each of your descriptions and that applies to all of your items. Buddhachick, the seller profiled earlier in this article, has a particularly friendly boilerplate: I take personal check, PayPal, and money orders. SORRY MICHIGAN BUYERS, PLEASE ADD 6% SALES TAX! Please do not be alarmed if it takes me a day or two to send you your total. I have several jobs and with the new USPS policies, calculating totals is a bit time consuming! It is my goal that all buyers will have a pleasant experience doing business with me. I am reasonable, honest, and I make every effort to describe each item accurately. If shipping is not quoted in description, I will charge actual shipping only.

Clothing and textiles are sold as is, directly out of estates unless otherwise noted. I do not take responsibility for uninsured items. I will contact you sending you an “eBay Checkout Invoice.” Thanks for looking and HAVE FUN!! You might say something about your payment options and about your policies as a seller. Save this document as a text file that you can paste into the Sell Your Item form whenever you create an auction listing.

Pick the Right Auction Category Once you prepare to sell items on eBay, you take a different perspective to categories than you do as a buyer. Your goal is to find the category (or categories) in which you’re most likely to find people who are interested in bidding or buying what you’ve put online. You want to find those ideal buyers who not only like what you’re offering but who’ve simply got to have it to complete their collection. These are people who probably know more than you do about your item, who collect similar items as well.

Do a search for items that seem similar to yours and see in what categories they appear. You aren’t limited to listing your item in one category. In fact, if you think your item could fit well in two different categories, you’ll find it cost-effective to list in two places. You pay two listing fees as well as any upgrade fees such as Bold or Gallery. (You can’t list real estate in two categories, however.) If you are at all apprehensive about putting something up for sale, do a test. you’ll notice that one of the categories in the list is simply called Test. This enables you to put your sale online without having other users bid on it. It’s a place where you can make sure your images appear the way you want and that you have used the Sell Your Item form correctly. You’ll find a complete list of categories, plus the number of items currently up for sale in each one, at http://listings.ebay.com/pool1/listings/list/ overview.html.

Create Your Descriptions Once you’ve gathered details about what you’re selling and taken some photos (see Article 8), you can begin filling out the Sell Your Item form and actually creating auction listings. You only need to click the Sell button in the toolbar that appears on nearly all eBay pages to access the form. (You may be prompted to sign in with your User ID or password first, unless you’re already logged in.) The form itself contains tips on how to provide good information. But just for good measure, here are a few more tips.

Your Auction Title The title of your auction listing is critical. When shoppers conduct searches on eBay and come up with lists of auction items, they’ll come up with your title as well as others. Make your title no longer than five or six words. Be sure to pack as much relevant information in those five or six words as possible. The more information you can put in, the better your chances of selling. Don’t waste valuable space using tired terms such as L@@K or !!Wow!! which are overused and have no effect on buyers. Try to put in dates and brand names if you can: rather than saying “Beautiful Pottery Vase,” say “Pink Roseville Pottery Vase 1934.” Also, remember to be honest: if something is a reproduction rather than an antique, don’t bury that fact at the bottom of a description. Lack of forthrightness will turn buyers off; they may never look at your auctions again.

Category As I mentioned, eBay presents you with hundreds of different categories. Look for items that are similar to yours. Also, try to imagine the kind of person who might want what you have to sell, and try to envision how it might be used. This might suggest the category where such an individual might look for it.

Picture URL URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, a standard address that enables anyone with a Web browser to locate an object or Web site that’s on the Internet. You get the URL for your image from the site where you have stored your image. This can be eBay’s own Picture Services or another photo hosting service. See Article 9 for more details about adding images.

Minimum Bid A minimum bid is a starting point. It’s like the auctioneer in an auction saying, “Bidding will start at one dollar. Do I hear two dollars?” It’s generally a good idea to pick a small minimum bid, such as $1, for the starting point. Many bidders pick an amount that represents the very least they’re willing to accept for an item as the minimum bid. It’s not at all uncommon to see items that start at $100. But you’ll often notice that such auctions attract no bidders at all. Sellers are likely to turn bidders off by setting a sizeable minimum. Let the bidders feel they’re getting a bargain when they start out; you set a reserve price to ensure that an item won’t sell for less than a certain price.

The Description On the Internet, unlike other media, information sells. The more you can say about a sales item, the more likely you’ll generate interest in it. The most experienced sellers try to create descriptions that engage the viewer’s imagination

- that induce viewers to imagine what that pair of gloves might feel like, or how they might use that automatic juicer, or how that old Ford Thunderbird would look in their driveway. Don’t be reluctant to point out any flaws in what you are selling. You don’t want bidders to discover flaws when they unpack the item. You want them to know exactly what they’re getting

- and to know that you’re an honest seller whom they can trust.

Use Listing Designer A feature that appeared as I was writing this article, Listing Designer, is accessed from page 3 of the Sell Your Item form. It’s an interactive utility that lets you pick a theme and a layout for your item. There is an extra charge of ten cents for each item for which you use Listing Designer. However, many sellers will find this a bargain because Listing Designer has one big plus: it shields sellers from having to know HyperText Markup Language (HTML). HTML is the set of markup instructions that lets you createWeb pages.Without using Listing Designer, the only way to format auction listings is to write the HTML by hand and paste it into the Sell Your Item form.