With an estimated 25 million sellers and more than 1 billion active listings, eBay is one of the largest ecommerce platforms on the planet, attracting over 180M bargain hunting buyers every month. However, with so many third party sellers and an ocean of competition, standing out from the crowd has never been more of a challenge.
Thankfully, in this simple guide, I’m going to reveal 5 simple but effective ways to quickly increase your eBay sales, without spending a single cent on advertising or marketing. Whether you decide to implement one or all of the following techniques, you can be sure to see a fast spike in overall sales and traffic to your listings.
Offering an extended returns period is the quickest and most simple way to instantly create an edge over the competition. While most sellers opt to offer a 14-day or 30-day returns window, going that one step further by offering 45-day or 60-day returns is an almost guaranteed way to attract more sales. Put it this way, if you had multiple sellers to choose from but only one provided a 60-day returns policy, which seller would you place an order with? The majority of buyers would opt to purchase from the seller with the longest return window, as it allows them ample time to test the product out. You may even want to consider offering a warranty period which covers faults or defects to further distance yourself from the competition.
Running promoted listings is a sure-fire way to drastically increase your sales and obtain higher placement in the eBay search results. Essentially an internal advertising program in which you offer to pay a higher final value fee for more exposure on eBay, promoted listings are becoming increasingly popular amongst sellers. Thankfully, you only pay the higher fees after a sale has been generated by a user who clicks on your promoted listing. Therefore, you won’t need to worry about racking up a huge pay-per-click or advertising bill like with other e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon.
The more listings you have on eBay, the more sales you will make. Therefore, it’s important to constantly expand your product range where possible to increase the likelihood of finding a hot seller. If you have limited cash-flow, finding a wholesaler or manufacturer with net 30 or 60 payment terms will allow you to source more products without risking more upfront capital. Alternatively, dropshipping on eBay or harnessing the retail arbitrage model are both effective ways to quickly increase your product range while minimizing the common risks. Slow progress is still progress so be sure to keep listing new products as often as possible.
Creating keyword optimized titles is essential if you want to increase your eBay sales. Quite simply, if your title does not include relevant and targeted keywords, your listing is unlikely to appear in eBay search for those specific keywords. For example, if I were selling Wireless Bluetooth Headphones, I would be sure to use the full allocated space to create an optimized title such as ‘Wireless Bluetooth Headphones Earphones Headset’. Using a free keyword suggestion tool or trends spotter will help you to determine the most popular keywords related to the product you’re selling.
Using item specifics is a powerful way to increase your exposure on eBay and ensure you always appear in the search results when buyers use filters. Essentially product specifications such as size, weight, color and style, including as many item specifics as possible will help you to naturally increase your visibility on eBay as well as external search engines. In fact, certain product types already require mandatory item specifics such as clothing items or electronics. However, you should always go that one step further and provide additional specifics that may not be required such as brand, features, model, compatibility and so forth.
From extending your returns policy to running sponsored listings or rapidly expanding your product range through dropshipping, there are multiple ways to get that edge over other eBay sellers and increase sales. Whether you’re a veteran eBay seller or a complete newbie, trying and testing plays a major part in increasing your overall sales. You should never stop seeking new ways like considering selling on eBay and Shopify to boost sales and gain a competitive advantage over other sellers, particularly in a fast-changing industry such as ecommerce.
