Imagine this: you went to a boot sale this morning, you bought something you know is worth hundreds of pounds, but it only cost you £1.
And now you want to get it listed on eBay, as fast as you can, because this time next week you'll be hundreds or thousands of pounds better off! Is it possible? Perhaps! It all depends on how fast you do actually list that product on eBay and what mistakes or omissions you make on the way.
There are many factors to consider during the listing process, any one of which can send your profits sky- rocketing or causing your item to go unsold.
Here are just a few essential requirements for your eBay listings: 1: Spellcheck Before Uploading Your Listings This is essential for several reasons: * - Misspellings and grammatical errors make your listings look very unprofessional and will deter some people from bidding.
* - Misspellings, especially in the title, mean your listings will not show to potential bidders using the correct spelling in eBay's search engines to find items such as you are selling.
* - Misspellings will be picked up by arbitrage enthusiasts seeking errors in other people's listings.
The end result is your valuable item will be bought way below its real market value and resold soon afterwards at many times the amount you received.
If you are uploading directly through eBay use the spellchecker at the top of the description box.
Turbo Lister also has an integrated spellchecking facility.
But for most people the best way to spellcheck is to create all listings in Word and use the inbuilt spellchecking facility before uploading to eBay.
This is especially useful if you regularly list similar or identical products and allows your Word files to be stored on your desktop and on a separate CD or hard drive.
The beauty of having listings kept separate from your computer safeguards against losing all your work if your computer crashes.
But most important of all, having used Turbo Lister for more than four years, I've faced several incidents of Turbo Lister crashing, leaving me no option but to download the programme again, and lose everything stored on Turbo Lister.
There are ways to back up Turbo Lister records but personally I've found the whole process very confusing and rarely worthwhile.
2: Keep in Contact With Visitors to Your Listings Use whatever means possible to capture the name and email address of anyone who visits your listings.
This means you can keep people undated on new products and special offers in future.
The best way to do this, which means you'll never break eBay rules, is by inviting people to join your Shop newsletter or add you to their 'Favourite Sellers' listing.
3: Use Light Coloured Backgrounds Use light coloured backgrounds and simple plain borders in your listings.
Dark and gaudy backgrounds look amateurish and dark text on a dark background either makes your description difficult or impossible to read.
A plain cream or white background is best, together with one of eBay's plain borders like: Elegant Floral, Blueprint, Retro Beige, Victorian, Boxes, Circles, Gold Frame.
4: Use Plain Fonts Use fonts that make reading easy on the eye.
Gaudy fonts look unprofessional and might detract from your credibility.
The plainest fonts are best: Times, Times New Roman, Arial, New York, Verdana.
5: Keep Tabs on How Many People Visit Your Listings Do this by using counters in your listings.
They are provided by eBay, free of charge, during the listing process.
Counters let you see how many visits each listing gets, from which you can plan and make changes (lots of visits but no bids is a sign something is wrong in your listing; few visits and several bids normally indicates a hot product).
Few visits and plentiful bids could indicate a niche market, one with fewer members but one hundred per cent responsive buyers.
Tick the box that prevents your counters being seen by anyone but you and cut down on competitors poaching your best listings and product ideas.