I am relatively new to selling on eBay, but have about 15 years of marketing experience. That's enough to know two things:

1. Selling is not marketing, marketing is not selling, but they depend on each other

2. The best thing you can do for your marketing, and your sales, is to provide unforgettable customer service.

Actually, I think unforgettable (in a bad way) customer service has just as much impact, it's just not impact I want to have.

One thing I've noticed on eBay is a huge number of people trying to make money off of shipping and handling. I recently had a little dispute with someone who tried to charge me $80 to ship 10 pamphlets. Needless to say, I didn't think that was reasonable. Neither did eBay.

So not only did the seller lose the sale, he also lost all of my future business, and that might have been a lot of business, because I wanted these old, foreign-language pamphlets for some art projects, and was willing to buy about ten times as many as I originally planned to buy. Those were a test; if I was happy, I would have bought more.

My point here is not that I almost got ripped off.

My point is that by gouging me for $80, this guy lost $100 in sales.

I make my shipping charges beyond reasonable. Sometimes I even foot the bill for part of the insurance out of my sales revenue, and charge less than it actually costs to ship and insure the package. I did that today on a package.

But you know what? That was a customer I'll have for life. She bought something she really wanted, I gave her great customer service, I charged her fifty cents less than the Priority Mail and insurance combined, and I made a little more on the actual sale than I might have otherwise.

The real key to "marketing" is that you try to build value into what you're promoting and encourage people to buy it.

If you market correctly, people will pay more for what you're selling, and you won't need to gouge on shipping.