Oct
9
Why I Like Selling on eBay
Filed Under Miscellaneous
It’s easy to rant — especially when it comes to eBay. For a change, I wanted to share a couple of positive experiences I’ve had selling on eBay lately. They both involved auctions in which I was selling text books towards the beginning of the school year. The first involved a bidding war in which I was the primary beneficiary and the second involved a kind-hearted fellow eBayer who politely reminded me that can’t spell.
Recently I posted an auction for a homeschool math curriculum that we had purchased but never used. The books were still in there shrink wrap, and still had their price tags affixed. That’s how I knew they were worth $62.00. A quick visit to the publishers web site informed me that they were still selling for that price and the books in my possession were the current edition. So I included this information in the auction item’s description. I was hopeful that pointing out that the books sell for $62.00 when purchased from the publisher, I might get $50.00.
Boy was I proud of myself when the bid price passed that mark and approached the retail value. I found myself on the good side of an emotional bidding war. My wife and I observed in amazement as the bid price surpassed the publisher’s price and finally closed at $80.00! Like the commercial says, “It’s better when you win it!… Shop victoriously.” Oh… and to top off a great auction, the bidder gave me a great comment with the positive feedback.
Another textbook I was selling was a grammar book. This was pretty popular curriculum among the homeschool crowd, so I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any early bidders on the 99 cent, no reserve listing. After a few days, I learned why there were no bids on my grammar text auction yet.
Out of the blue came a message from another eBay member politely informing me that I had misspelled “grammar” in the listings title. (Who knew it wasn’t spelled “grammer” with an “e”?) Obviously the people searching for this text (home school moms and teachers) could spell better than me and consequently my listings were not including in their search results. I quickly sent off a reply expressing my thanks and corrected my listing. The auction closed for the amount I was hoping for, so there was no permanent damage — just a little bruising to my ego and a valuable lesson learned. (At least it wasn’t a $500,000 lesson!) It was also a notable example of one member of the eBay community reaching out to help another member. Thanks!
I promise to read the spelling text books before I sell them next time!
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I have tried this myself with great success. The good thing as you suggest about misspelling intentionally is it a captures a restricted group that then limits the competition.