In February 2014, Tamebay co-editor Dan Wilson will be looking at starting an ecommerce business from scratch. Read all the Ecommerce start-up 2014 posts here.Start on eBay. Then branch out. The choice is yours. Dan’s focus is ecommerce success, profitability and efficiency. Check out his book: Make Serious Money on eBay UK, Amazon & Beyond.
Successfully completing your first eBay sales
From day one, you want to ensure that you’re building a solid eBay reputation and getting glowing feedback from your buyers is very important as you start out and also important to your business ongoing.
It’s more than getting positive feedback marks (you should aim for 100% positive), you need consistently high Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs): the five star scores that buyers use to rate specific aspects of your seller performance.
DSRs are significant for two reasons. Firstly, eBay monitors them and will sanction sellers that perform badly (limiting their ability to sell). But more importantly they are one factor that determines how prominently you show in eBay search.
Put simply, the better your DSRs the greater the likelihood that the items you’re selling will bob up to the top of the list in search results. So past performance could affect future sales.
So bear that in mind as you make your first eBay sales at the start of your ecommerce journey. Lightning swift despatch after payment is very important, honest description of the items for sale too. And package your items very well and don’t rip off buyers on postage. If you do all that, you probably can’t go far wrong.
Remember, buyer expectaions are increasing all the time so you have to be really swift and efficient to impress these days.
