1. How to get the Best Price for your Product

With everyone of my sales I am trying to make the best profit on the stock I have.

Profit comes from the price you sell for less expenses. The expenses are the acquisition costs of the item you are selling, your Ebay fees and any Paypal fees. You may try to make a bit extra on your postage costs.

Finally, you want to sell for the highest price. All seems very straightforward doesn't it ?

Well there is plenty of science and art to selling on Ebay, and over the next few entries I am going to look at all of them in detail.

So to get the best price - plenty of others will tell you that you need to photograph your item clearly, write a good description, and so on. But what you really need to do is differentiate.

Make your item different from others and someone with a particular requirement will buy the one you are selling - you can practically name your price.

So what is there to differentiate ?

There are clear cut factors such as:

• Price, well obviously you knew that
• Being willing to post worldwide
• Selling as sets

Price will always capture those keen for a bargain - but it won't get us the best profit unless we can obtain the item cheaper than others.

If you will post worldwide, when other only post to your home country, then that is a big differentiator. I learnt this selling satellite receivers, when they would sell for €30 in the UK, selling to Europe meant that I could sell at €90-€100. The units still only cost me €14 each, so you can see the advantage.

Sometimes you find that the stock you have is being undercut by other sellers, to near the price you can obtain stock. What do you do ? You need to differentiate. Try selling in pairs, try selling in fives, try selling in bulk. A profit of $2 on an item may not be worthwhile, but a profit of $10 on five items probably is, especially if you want to clear out the stock to make room for new items.

There are also "feelgood" factors. These are less clear-cut. Examples are:

• Having good feedback - nobody wants to buy from a seller with 94% feedback when they can obtain the same item from someone with 99% feedback.
• Say you will post the next-day, or on the same day, or that you will make a special journey to the shipper just so your buyer can get the item quickly.
• Find out about the product. Supply information such as handbooks on CD with the sale. This costs next to nothing. Print off instructions. Offer help by email.
• Change your wording.

The change of wording is subtle - and is for the next entry.