How to Stay Profitable and Save Time on eBay in 2023!

In 1995, eBay sold its first item: a broken laser pointer. Since then, eBay has grown in what it offers, with more and more people turning eBay into a side hustle where they list, re-list and cross-list almost any item imaginable. You can even buy the empty boxes for some of the world’s favorite electronics – though you probably shouldn’t.

With so many millions of dollars made from buying and selling on eBay, it is only natural to want a slice of the action: 187 million users worldwide. This makes eBay a platform that has a massive exposure potential. Think, if just 1% of those users discover your items, you would have 1.87 million potential customers! However success comes at a cost – not just financial but mental and physical. It’s estimated that almost half of entrepreneurs suffer from depression due to stress and poor time management, and professional sellers are no different.

Good titles, accurate descriptions, high quality photos, and good eBay inventory management will make you stand out from the crowd. An eBay inventory management and automation tool like PrimeLister however – will help you do all that while also taking stress off your shoulders by freeing up time. Your evenings are yours again.

In this article, we’ll run you through almost everything that you need to know to successfully start selling on eBay, and tell you a little bit about increasing profits and saving time with our automated cross-listing tool PrimeLister.

Posting an Item

Let’s start with the basics: How to post an item for sale on eBay. Here is a quick and simple step-by-step tutorial to get you started.

1. First you need an eBay account. Get one here if you don’t have one already. It’s free.
2. Click on MY eBAY in the top right-hand corner.
3. Click on SELLING and CREATE A LISTING down the left-hand side of the page.
4. Add your title.
5. Add your photos.
6. Add your description, categories, price, and postage.
7. Submit/publish the listing.
8. You now have an item for sale. It’s that simple.

So why don’t things sell this easily? Because every one of your competitors knows the basics!

How to Increase Sales on eBay

There is a long list of things that you can be doing above and beyond your competition to increase your eBay sales. This includes:

• SELL ONE LIKE THIS.

This function exists to save you time. In the game of selling, time is money, and more free time is better mental health. The less time you spend writing up all of the details the more time you can spend gaining exposure or simply relaxing. To use the SELL ONE LIKE THIS function, see if the exact item you are about to put up for sale is on eBay already. If it is, you can click this button to copy all the important details (brand, style, color) to your own custom listing.

• CROSS-LIST

This is the act of listing the same item on multiple platforms. If you were trying to sell some tie-dye t-shirts, for instance, and you placed them on eBay, you would reach many customers. If you were to cross-list these shirts to Etsy you would double your customers. Then, cross-listing from eBay to Mercari triples your customers. Every time you cross-list you increase your exposure and your chances of a sale.

• MANAGE YOUR INVENTORY ONLINE

By this we mean your online inventory. Selling on eBay means you can have lists upon lists of all the items you have for sales. If someone sees something they like that you are selling, they may visit your page. Having an unorganized inventory makes it less likely you will up-sell anything extra to them.  Read the section on eBay Inventory Management Tips to learn how to keep this place organized.

• MANAGING YOUR INVENTORY OFFLINE

eBay inventory management tips go beyond keeping things organized on the online store. Failing to keep your in-house inventory organized means that you may sell something, and then fail to find it. This could damage your reputation, which will then damage your seller rating. This is one of the many reasons why you need to keep your offline inventory organized. Read on to find some useful tips on this topic.

eBay Inventory Management Tips

We have highlighted two areas where keeping your inventory managed efficiently is important: Online and Offline.

Online you need to ensure that things remain organized. It’s not a problem when you have ten or 20 listings but when you have 60, 70 or even 100 plus things get difficult. Here’s why:

• If you need to take an item down because it has been cross-listed and sold elsewhere, how long will it take you to find it on your online store looking through 100+ listings? Keeping it organized saves you time. An eBay tool like PrimeLister centralizes your listings on a dashboard, allowing you to manage all items across all platforms from a single place.
• People who buy online like to window shop. If they see an item that you are selling in the clothing department and decide to visit your store, they will be disappointed to have to shift through jewelry listings to find more clothes. Keeping it organized increases your chances of extra sales.
• It looks more professional. People are more likely to trust a seller that looks more professional. This is especially useful if you are just starting out and your seller rating is low. Remember, marginal gains compound, and your reputation is part of the long game you play.

Offline you need to keep your items for sale organized. If you can, organize your items into a dedicated room, and categorize them! Again, this is especially important when you have many items. Here’s why:

• It prevents you from losing or misplacing items you are trying to sell.
• It helps protect the items from being damaged while you are trying to sell them.
• It reduces the amount of stress on the seller (you!) when it comes to posting an item.
• The seller can always see what they have for sale and what they don’t. They will know when they need to re-stock, or stop buying.

Here are some useful tips and tricks to help you take your eBay inventory management to the next level.

Online

Use categories and tags for every item as you put them up. This enables you and the viewer to sort items by category and more easily find what they need.

Re-list any item that has been on your eBay store for more than 30 days. This prevents your online inventory looking like it has gone stale. Your presence will always be fresh. Few things are more off-putting to a buyer than looking at a dress that was listed 100+ days ago, and starting to think what’s wrong with it that it hasn’t been sold yet!

Experiment with eBay store management software. Software like PrimeLister comes with functions and tools to help you organize all your online inventory in one central location. So, if you have items on eBay and Poshmark, for example, you can place items into categories for both from the PrimeLister app.

Offline

Dedicate a space in your home for your inventory. You do not want to have to search your whole house for an item. Have one area where everything you are selling lives.

Decide on a storage plan. A couple of black bin bags will not suffice. Have a wardrobe, boxes, or even unsealed packages so you can prepare your items for postage ahead of time. Use a date system or a garment type system: Whatever works best for you. The point is to ensure your inventory stays organized so every item is safe and easy to find.

Create a labelling or recording system. Once you have everything organized create a spreadsheet in Excel or some similar software. Here you can list every item as you receive and ship it. List when it goes up for sale, how many times it has been re-listed, the price you bought it for and where you have stored it. This not only makes it easier for you to find a specific item, but it also allows you to keep an eye on items that have not sold for a long time.

Clear out regularly.  You know those items that are not selling? The ones your spreadsheet is going to start pointing out for you? Re-listed time and time again. Sell them as a job lot, or at a reduced rate. They are simply taking valuable storage space at the moment. Hold a clear-out every 4 to 6 months.

Should I use eBay?

There are so many other options, it does beg the question: What is the best site to sell clothes on?

With sites like Poshmark, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace and Mercari, is eBay really the one you want to use for your clothes? Each platform has its positives and its negatives. Each platform caters towards a different type of crowd.

But the honest truth of the matter is to increase your sales for the maximum potential, you want to be using all platforms.

You do not need to choose one platform over the other. With the correct use of cross-listing you can easily place all your items on multiple platforms, gaining the most exposure and creating a name for yourself. PrimeLister centralizes your inventory management, making managing 4 stores about as easy as managing just 1.

Through cross-listing and cross-listing software, you can take your potential customers from that 1.87 million to 9.35 million. And that’s only if you catch the eye of 1% on each platform :)

Can You Cross-list on eBay?

Once upon a time cross-listing on eBay was discouraged, but the massive benefits of cross-listing have been embraced by the community. Many software applications exist that can streamline the process of cross-listing on eBay and from eBay to other platforms. One can also manually cross-list from eBay to platforms of their choice.

Can you Cross-list from eBay to Poshmark? Absolutely!  You can even Cross-list to Mercari, Etsy, Facebook and Depop with ease by using the PrimeLister cross-listing software.

How?

Manual Cross-listing

Without PrimeLister, there is a manual way to cross-list. While it will take longer, it is still effective. Follow these simple instructions:

1. Go to the first item on eBay you want to cross-List.
2. Open your platform of choice and log in / sign up.
3. Click on the Sell Now or Create a Listing button
4. Upload your chosen pictures.
5. You may need to make your title shorter or longer.
6. Copy and paste your description.
7. Fill in any of the blank boxes. (Category, style, color, etc)
8. Set Price.
9. Decide on Postage terms.
10. Submit the listing.
11. Repeat for all items you want to Cross-list.

While this sounds simple, after doing it to 10 items you may start to tire. After the 20th time you may start dreaming at night about PrimeLister. Imagine if you had 100 items to cross-list! This is where PrimeLister can save your day.

Cross-listing with PrimeLister

Using PrimeLister will save you time, reduce your stress, and improve your overall sales. To cross-list between all of your connected platforms, here’s what you need to do:

1. Install the PrimeLister extension. (TRY FOR FREE HERE)
2. In order to make your listing you have to go to one of your platforms and make your listings, so to cross-list from eBay, head to eBay and make your listings. If you already have a listing, skip to step 3.
3. Import your product list. Select the listings you wish to import, or use the bulk select option by clicking the checkbox at the top of your eBay list, click on the PrimeLister Actions button found on the left of the listing search bar, then choose import from the drop-down. The system will now import the listings.
4. Navigate to your PrimeLister inventory page.
5. Click on the item you wish to cross-list, click on the action’s dropdown then click cross-list, choose the platforms you wish to cross-list to and confirm.
6. From here you can cross-list from eBay to Poshmark, or to Mercari, Etsy, Instagram and Depop. Or even between Depop and Mercari. Alternatively, you can cross-list from Facebook Marketplace to eBay. All the options are available.
7. This will open new tabs as it works. DO NOT CLOSE THEM.
8. Check each tab and it’s listing to see if any changes need to be made. All of your descriptions, photos, and titles will have been copied to each platform from eBay, saving you lots of time.
9. Confirm each one and submit.

Give PrimeLister a try and see how much time you’ll save in just one week. Congratulate yourself on doing a 10-hour job inside an hour and treat yourself to coffee and cake. You’ve earned it.

https://primelister.com/free-trial