Hi all,

Can anybody give me advice and tips for selling models on eBay?

what do i have to be careful from?

what is the best and most successful strategies for selling?

And most importantly, how much should i sell a model for (based on a percentage of its worth)?

I can give a bunch of tips but I am at work right now; will post again later.

Here are my basic tips:

Use the search by sold items as your baseline. It will be your best friend. It will show you what people are actually willing to pay for an item.

Be aware of their fees. I usually pay between 15-20% or so. Make sure you take that into account when looking at what things have sold for.

In that same search, look at which listings sold at higher prices. If you look at the listing, you will see a button that says "Sell one like this". Click this to start your listing. It will pull alot of the information from the existing listing

Be sure to add good photos. If you list through the eBay app on your phone or tablet, you can take the photos right inside the app.

Purchase a small kitchen scale. Use that to weigh your items to estimate allow eBay to estimate shipping costs. Be sure to account for packaging bulk and weight.

Ship through eBay. The USPS and UPS give decent discounts that you cannot get elsewhere.

The USPS will pick up at your door for priority mail parcels if you want. Go to their website to request a package pickup

Only do international shipping through the eBay program. The customs forms and paperwork are killer. The buyer will pay if they want it and eBay will take care of all the extras.

If a buyer does not pay you within 24-48 hours you usually have a problem. Message them through eBay first, but escalate to the resolution center of you get no response. This happens to be on one transaction in every 20 or so.

With that being said, do not be afraid of buyers with low or no feedback. You can message them while the auction is live and confirm their intent to pay should they win. If they say no or do not answer, you can cancel their bid and potentially save your auction.

Hope that helps

Sean

Sean actually said much that I was going to say. If you decide to sell internationally, be aware there are a few countries/regions with histories of "losing" packages. You can block buyers from those places.

Just a quick thought that many dont know, if you are a new seller and use Paypal to collect funds, Ebay will hold your money until 2 to 4 days after the item has arrived at the shipping address to insure buyers. Ebay is notoriously a buyers company but really the only means to get a large audience. And right now the fees are 10% for normal auctions say under a $100.

A fee is also taken on shipping charges. Including shipping charges in your base price is partial work around but you need to have a method or experience in estimating the shipping costs.

You may want to offer to combine items in to one shipment. Just be sure to list all of your items to end at the same time or wait until all of your auction items have ended.

If you use PayPal, they take a fee too. In my opinion, PayPal is worth it.

Good luck.

Thank you for all your help.

Have your auctions last 7 days and have them load 1 or 2 minutes after each one (when you upload your auction, you can set the time when it loads (and it will close 7 days from then). By closing in sequence, you can get more eyes watching your ending auctions and hopefully entice more sales/bids. I try to upload/have them end starting about 9PM EST on a Sunday night -- when potential bidders might be free to monitor the auction right at close and hopefully add a late bid.

Remember, the default time is PST. So be mindful of that.

I second ericadeane on the timing. I generally start all my 7-day auctions on a Sunday so they end on the following Sunday. That way people have all week to search and find my auctions and as the timer runs out most people are home on Sunday to watch the auction end so they can snipe or up-bid versus other bidders.

Also photograph the hell out of everything and list any and all defects so noone can claim "not as described in listing" and screw you.

Hi,

I am responding to one part of a very good post a member left for you. There was great advice; however, I completely disagree with this statement:

Only do international shipping through the eBay program. The customs forms and paperwork are killer. The buyer will pay if they want it and eBay will take care of all the extras.

The ebay Global Shipping Program is a rip off. Not to all countries, but it is to some. I feel very qualified to say this as I have lived in both the USA and Canada using ebay in each country as a buyer and seller.

The Global Shipping Program (GSP) service comes with a charge that is reflected in the shipping costs - which are paid for by the purchaser. The purchaser ends up paying for shipping from you to the GSP facility, and then from the GSP facility to the buyers address along with any customs charges. This is not a free service. If you send directly to the buyer the shipping cost is less, and that is something that brings buyers back.

As for the paperwork involved in shipping outside the USA? It is next to nothing, usually it is a small form in which you declare the contents and value, it takes me all of 45 seconds to fill out while standing with the clerk at the post office.

Kits coming into Canada (I am not speaking about other countries) by way of the GSP get dinged for customs and duty charges by the GSP. If, as the seller, you ship to your buyer directly there is no duty and customs charges unless it is a very expensive large kit. For example I recently had to pay some duty on the 1/35 Trumpeter BR52 kit. Otherwise I have never paid customs or duty on kits coming to me from the USA directly from the seller.

As a buyer if I find a kit on ebay that is in the USA and that seller uses the GSP I will contact them and ask if they would be willing to sell the kit without using the GSP. It saves me money and I have never had a seller not want to do this.

Lastly, I have had kits come to me damaged and opened. The seller sent me the kit still in the plastic wrapper; however, the GSP opened it up. Who ever opened at the GSP must have chewed their way into the box as it was pretty mangled. I know this as there was a GSP notice inside the kit. This frustrated not only me but the seller as well, as he sold a sealed kit, and I had no reason not to believe him.

Personally, I would avoid the GSP and just ship directly to your buyer. Perhaps the GSP is useful to certain countries, but between Canada and the US it is nothing more than an unnecessary cash grab on ebay's part.