Here are 10 short lessons designed to help you buy and sell well and safely on eBay.  These Short lessons will prove valuable in your journey as a seller on eBay.

1.  GEM ONE:

Look before you list, use great timing and most of all -- know your Market!.  Getting the highest price possible is not a crystal ball affair.  Don’t leave it to chance.  Most specifically, two steps you can take to assure that you get the best price possible are:

Use Good Timing and Know Your Market:

Make sure the item (s) you have for auction mature at the best possible time for your target audience.  An example is that if your target audience for baby clothes are young parents, a good auction maturing time would be after the kids are fed, bathed and in bed -- 8 to 10 p.m. (across all time zones).

Know your market.  Before you list, make a quick, title-only search for items similar to your own on eBay. Then, click on “Completed Items” (under the Display heading).  Sort the results by price (highest-priced first). Please note: any item available on eBay is worth only what others are willing to pay for it, so do ignore any listings that never received any bid.  Ads that received no bids (and in which the item did not sell) are obviously not good indicators of what you are likely to get as a price or what you should use as a good starting price or duration.  Instead, focus on the most successful completed sales.  Read a few successful ads and see how the sellers have described and promoted the items that earned top dollar.  How long did the auction run?  Was there a reserve price?  Obviously, take a clues from sure winners.

2 GEM TWO:

List to Sell.  When you are ready to list, set your "Buy-It-Now" price in the neighborhood of what you really expect your item is worth (see above on how to find out what the true value is).  Do NOT set a prohibitively high "Buy-It-Now" price.  Otherwise, the added fee for “Buy It Now” is completely wasted.  Do feel free to raise it a little for particularly in-demand or very scarce objects (if your research supports it).  You can also list the “Buy It Now” as a  dollar or so less than you expect will be the auction return price if you want to move your merchandise fast. 

Set the auction starting price (the opening bid) much lower, -- anywhere from a single dollar to no more than half your item's value; this will encourage healthy bidding, thus raising the perceived value and the final price.  If you've done your research, you won't have to worry about your item selling for too little.  If you are worried about the item selling under market value, use a reserve.  However, be careful with reserves, bidders hate them and many will often not bid on auctions with reserves.

3.  GEM THREE:

As indicated above -- No Reserves!  If you're considering using a reserve price for your listings— DON’T unless absolutely necessary.  A reserve price is a hidden dollar amount below which you are under no obligation to sell.  In many cases, using a reserve translates to everyone concerned wasting their time (and therefore, you are wasting your money).  Reserves are only useful if you don't know the value of your item (see above to find the value before listing).  When reserves drive bidders away, you are usually selling your items at a lower closing price unnecessarily because you have far fewer bidders or you will pay listing fees again and again until the item is sold.  If you think it couldn't get worse -- think again.  Combining a Buy-It-Now price alongside a reserve price -- UGH.  Bidders easily confuse the two and give up any hope of getting a bargain well before bidding -- so they go elsewhere.

4 GEM FOUR:

Spelling counts.  Auction and Store success relies almost entirely on the likelihood of your ads being found via eBay and/or web searches.  To a slightly lesser  extent—using correct categories in your listings really makes a difference on selling your item.  The “crumb trails” that lead the buyer to your items are the words you place in your auction titles (and ads if the customer uses extended search including the ad details).  So, it follows that you should include as many relevant (likely) search terms as possible in your title and ads.  These are also known as "keywords."  Above all, don’t waste the precious title space with unnecessary punctuation, nonsense words "@@ Look! @@," or any other terms your customers are unlikely to be using as a search term.  Since eBay uses an exact-match search (as opposed to fuzzy search), the words in your titles must be spelled correctly to show up in search results.  If you have the time you could include some common misspellings (Lauren, Ralph Lauren, Loren, Loran, for example) in your search enginer optimizations, to accommodate the more spelling-challenged among us.  Do be sure absolutely sure that the correct spelling is also there (several times in the ad).  With only 45 characters available for a title, there's rarely room to spare in an auction title.  If you want to highlight condition, scarcity, or other special aspects of the item, take the extra space available and provide it in the subtitle (do remember there is an additional charge for having a subtitle).  Although subtitles are indexed only in “Search Title and Description” searches on eBay (not the more common and automatic title-only searches), they do appear in all other search results and category listings.  So, they are effective in getting extra attention and potential customers if the expected profit is high enough to warrant the additional listing expense.  A good rule of thumb is to remember that a subtitle costs 50 cents, so it would not likely be worth the investment on any item expected to sell for less than $25.

5.  GEM FIVE:

Learning IS Earning:  A little color and good formatting in your store and auctions is more inviting and professional.   The more polished and professional the ad is written and presented, the more clear the important details are to your customers.  The most vital details are those involving payment and shipping.  These are usually buried beneath the photos in eBay's default auction page design. There are many websites and some eBay groups who can help with designing ad templates that give you a more polished presence on eBay.  The bottom line here is this:  The more clear, simple and easy to find your terms are, the less likely you are to be hassled by confused or disappointed customers and or non-paying bidders.  While on the subject of learning -- I am glad you have found this guide -- be sure to spend some time each week taking advantage of the free education these guides provide.  Why make the same mistakes that others have made and learned from?

6.  GEM SIX:

HTML: Polish it up to look great.  eBay's Sell Your Item form provides a rudimentary “What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) description editor that operates with Internet Explorer only.  As a tool, it offers little more than basic control over the font size and limited types, left, center and right margin and color appearance.  For the best-looking (and most feature-rich descriptions, including such niceties as in-line images, tables, and even JavaScript), you'll want to turn to your favorite Web page editor software; Adobe GoLive, Netscape Composer, or even Microsoft Word will do. 

The problem with these applications is that they generate complete, standalone pages, not the insertable HTML code that supports it (which you need for eBay).  You need the HTML code that can be pasted into a Web form. Fortunately, there is software such as Creative Element Power Tools (free trial, $18 registration fee) that comes with an Extract HTML Page Content tool to bridge this gap.  Type and format your auction description in your Web page editor and save it as an HTML file.  Then, right-click on the file, select Extract Page Content, and paste the formatted text into the description field of eBay's Sell Your Item form.  Finally, click on “Preview Your Description” to double-check your work.

7. GEM SEVEN:

Make it EASY to get Paid!  The easier paying you is for your customers, the more likely they'll be complete the deal (and in a timely manner).  Making it easy for them to pay you also makes it more likely you will get their business and, once you do, you will keep it.  Love it or hate it, the single most popular payment method available on eBay is PayPal.  PayPal allows members to send money to anyone with an e-mail address. The cost of using PayPal goes to the sellers at 3 percent of the amount a seller receives which delights the customers too.  As much as we would all like to keep the 3% that PayPal takes of most of our sales, the simple truth is we get more sales and complete them more effectively when using PayPal.  The additional bids you will attract and buyers you will have, will more than make up for the 3 percent user fee long term.

Although PayPal goes to great lengths to safeguard its members, you'd be smart to take a few, easy extra steps to protect yourself. 

As a seller, you may refuse any payments from buyers who don't provide confirmed addresses (confirmed buyers have been verified by PayPal through their credit card address records.  So, when selling to PayPal confirmed customers you know your customer is not using a stolen credit card).  If you ship to a non-confirmed address you'll be forced to forfeit any money later found to be spent against a stolen credit card. 

And as a buyer, always fund your payments with a credit card or PayPal.  This protects buyers from fraud and non-delivery of goods.  If purchased through your credit card, use their appeal process first (payment dispute department) and PayPal buyer protection as a second layer.   Do remember that even if a seller says "no refunds or returns" they are NOT protected against poor descriptions or selling items that are other than they advertised.  If you pay with PayPal you CAN dispute the sale and recover your money after proving you returned the merchandise.  Try to work with the seller first but if they will not respond or work with you -- file a dispute in PayPal (inside of the 45 day window).

8.  GEM EIGHT:

Pretty as the Picture Sells Best.  Nothing is more important to your sale than a good photo.  You can improve your auction photography skills with a few simple tricks:

- Shoot item from an angle to exaggerate depth.  It will appear as if it is about to jump out of the screen.
- Light the item from two different sources (including your camera's flash). This will reduce shadows and enhance detail.  If you can use natural daylight - so much the better.
- Make sure the camera is in focus!  Today, many digital cameras come with super smart focus systems that work exceptionally well. 
- Move farther away from your item to help your camera focus on the whole thing, and crop out excess background later.
- Fill the picture frame with the item.  This gives prospective buyers an opportunity to look closely at the item, and see as much detail as a picture will allow. 

9.  GEM NINE:

Communication Channels – Keep ‘em Open.  We all Hate junk mail (SPAM).  However, attempts to curb it may be backfiring on you as a buyer or seller.  Overly aggressive spam filters are probably the biggest cause of negative feedback on eBay.  Too often, the sellers' answers to questions or notes to the buyer often don’t make it to the email “in-box” and wind up in the SPAM folder.  Then we are often guilty of not checking our SPAM folder for any legitimate email that may have been sidelined because it came from a previously unknown sender.  Bidders frequently retract bids after receiving no replies to questions .  Sellers who need additional information or clarification from a buyer often get none -- usually because spam filters, on either or both ends, are so dilligent they stop eBay email from previously unknown email addresses.  The best solution I know is to use eBay’s contact member form in the “My Messages” area of eBay for any contact with buyers and sellers.  Sellers should use it and buyers should routinely check eBay's "My Messages" for messages from their sellers.  If it is in eBay email you also have the added benefit of KNOWING it is real -- that is a gift of safety in itself.

If you suspect that your e-mail isn't reaching its destination, there are a number of back doors you can use.  First, as stated above, use eBay's Contact Member form whenever possible.  E-mail originating directly from eBay's servers is less likely to be trapped by an overzealous junk email filter.  If that doesn't work, send your message from an alternate account just in case your return address is what's causing the problem.  If you're a seller, put a note in your auction and payment instructions that tells customers to disable their spam filters if they don't get e-mail from you.  Finally, try to answer your bidders' questions right in the auction description, or your own frequently asked questions section to educate—as well as reassure—all your potential customers at the same time.  If nothing else, it saves you time in the long haul.

10.  GEM TEN:

Like A Jewel Box -- E Bay has a Tool Box full of Goodies For YOU: 

My favorite is TurboLister 2 (TL2):  Creating new eBay listings can be cumbersome and time-consuming, especially if you're listing a dozen or more items at once.  Automated listing software such as the database program TurboLister2 (Available Free from eBay), lets you create templates with your basics in each file.  You can use the templates over and over again just putting in the details and photos each time.  TL2 allows inline and group editing (change last weeks auction items that did not sell into items to stock your eBay store using just a couple of mouse clicks).  You can save and backup all your listings on your hard drive, making selling similar items or relisting the same item again unbelievably fast and easy.  Turbolister2 also synchronizes with your current listings any time you like to assure you have an up to date inventory (what has sold, what is for sale and in what format, what is ending soon, what can be relisted, are all up to date, post synchronization).  TL2 also lets you see what you uploaded by date and time.  Finally, TL2 lets you choose, reformat and change specific items or put a group of items on sale efficiently at the click of a mouse.

You can also use listing tools to schedule your listings without additional fees (a service for which eBay otherwise charges a dime per listing). You can also take your time to compose your listings at 1:00 A.M. and then upload them to eBay the next day before  work.  Auctions that begin and end during normal waking hours (by your customers' clocks) fetch higher prices than those that close while your customers are asleep.  eBay's Turbo Lister application for Windows is available for free from http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister (normal listing fees still apply). 

Another worthy and free tool is Auction Submit, which adds post-auction record keeping, such as the final price and high bidder of each successful auction. Both tools help you list more items in less time and fund your own happy shopping at the world's largest flea market.

Want to know more?  Visit my guides for great, easy to follow instructions on many different aspects of buying selling and safety on eBay.  Please drop by my auctions (Pepper120851) for uncommon bargains daily.  Take a peek at my store "The Write Place" where there is always a SALE going on everyday because YOU name the price you pay for everything you find there!  I also offer the best combined shipping on eBay -- only $1.00 for each additional item.  Check out my return policy and feedback -- you CAN bid with confidence

Happy and Successful eBaying! 

Pepper