What’s the fastest way to sell something on eBay?

The first step in selling something on eBay is to sign up for an eBay account. If you don’t already have an account you can use their new customer signup form and sign up without too much fuss.

Once you have an account set up, here’s how I suggest you proceed…

First, search for items similar to what you want to sell. Now click on one of the matching items, then, on that auction listing page, click on the category name (for example, I’ll search on “Menorah” in honor of the first night of Hannukah, then click on the very first match, which at the top of the listing page indicates it’s Listed in category:
Collectibles — Religions, Spirituality — Judaica — Other Judaica. In this case, I’d click on “Other Judaica”).

Once you’re on the category page, near the top of the page, to the right, you’ll see a little link that says the magic words: Sell in this category. Click on that and you’ll be on the first page of a multipage form that prompts you to enter all the necessary information, description, title, opening bid price, and auction duration.

Hopefully when you searched for similar products, you noticed the average selling price: that’s a good indicator of what your starting price should be. Indeed, one of the most common errors with neophyte eBay sellers is to set their starting price too high. Trust the system and start too low instead. If it’s really too low, multiple people will promptly bid it up to where the market believes it’s fairly priced.

There’s a whole economics treatise waiting to be written about how online auctions are the perfect capitalistic environment where everything is sold purely based on its perceived value to the community, but I diverge!

In addition to selling price, you might want to see what titles garner the most bids in your category too. Definitely load the title with all the relevant keywords, including manufacturer, artist, item name, brand name, size, and any other relevant elements that might be a search query word.

Finally, enter an engaging, enjoyable and readable description. I believe that auctions with interesting descriptions do better than those that are just a few terse telegraph-style sentences with nothing to engage the potential buyer.

Good luck with your auction! Come back in a week and let us know how it went.