How To Get Less Money For Your Trains On Ebay

Advice About Selling Toy Trains On Ebay.

Are you making these mistakes and loosing money?

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Here's a list of What NOT to do, or How to get less money for your trains on eBbay. All of these examples are real. In fact, you can see many of them every day on eBay.

Use fancy backgrounds- Especially ones that make it harder to read your text. Sure you have been practicing with your html code and just learned how to put backgrounds on your pages. If you want to show off your html skills build a web site. Don't practice in your ebay auctions.
Use animated pictures to spruce up your listings. Buyers are looking to purchase something, they are not looking for entertaining animated cartoons or pictures of your dog wagging its tail. See my comments above.
Charge exorbitant shipping fees. You might be able to take advantage of a few people who don't check the shipping charges before bidding, but in the end you will only ruin your reputation. One person I have seen charges $9.00 to ship Hot Wheels cars. You can mail them for $3.20 and the post office will supply the box. He doesn't get many repeat buyers.
Write meaningless or cute titles. I have seen titles like "choo choo woo woo train set, and "old train thing." There are hundreds or thousands of items on ebay in the train categories. A simple title like "Lionel 2046 Engine with OB" is enough. I bought a very rare and expensive item for a song because the seller had a cute title and no one else bid. His loss; my gain. He. He.
Save time on listing by writing a simple description. I really love "See Photo" especially when the photo has the sellers pool in the background. Be realistic in your description. List the faults, if any, and tell the buyer exactly what they're buying. Remember, there are hundreds of trains for sale, and you have to make the buyer want your train more than all the others he can choose from. Tell him why he should buy yours. Write your description just like you would tell someone on the phone about the train. Answer any questions the buyer might have in the listing. If you force the buyer to jump through hoops to find out about your train they will just go on to the next listing.
Don't include pictures. I don't know what the value of a picture is but I have never bought anything without a picture. Some of my earliest listings contained terrible pictures and still sold for lots of money. Maybe the picture just lets the buyer know you actually have the item, or maybe it serves to confirm what they thought it was. A terrible picture is better than no picture.
Use links to pictures or tell buyers to email you for a photo. If you don't know how to post pictures on the web- Learn. Your Internet Service Provider will talk you through it in a few minutes. Just call tech support.
Include HUGE pictures. I mean file size not inches. A buyer is not going to wait for your 360KB picture of your backyard to load just to see the 4 inch long train car sitting on a brick next to your pool. Center your item in the photo and crop out the excess. If the picture is still too large use a program like Super JPG from bluemountain.com to lower the file size. Always take pictures in 72 dpi.
List your item in strange categories. If buyers can't find your train, they can't bid on it. If you are selling Lionel trains list them in one of the Lionel Categories. If you don't know where to list them, search for similar items and put your in the same category.