A seller must have a powerful listing with great pictures for this type of auction, but it’s not necessary for every type of listing. High ticket collectibles offer a great opportunity for profit but also need special precautions.

1. Price: decide the lowest amount you will accept for each figurine and set that price as a reserve. Then make your opening bid absurdly low.

For example, if you want $1,000 – make your opening bid a dollar. If you’re doing a reserve then there is no risk, because you won’t have to sell unless the bidding reaches $1000, but the low price attracts buyers. Reserves can put some bidders off though

2. Devote space in your listing explaining how you will pack your item to ensure safe transit. This is important because in the back of every buyer’s mind is the dread of receiving a package that is broken. The buyer needs to know that the seller has carefully considered this issue and has a solution.

3. For the protection of both seller and buyer insist that the buyer pay for appropriate insurance. This is not an option. You do not want the liability of a broken collectible that costs hundreds of dollars. If a customer objects to paying for insurance, this might possibly be a red flag. A genuine collector is very eager to add to her collection and wants the item to be protected.

4. Every buyer has heard horror stories of fraud on eBay so anything you can do to prove the authenticity of your collectible is worth your time. Is there a maker’s mark on the bottom? Do you have the original box or other container? Labels?  Is there a certificate of authenticity or an appraisal? If so, then be certain to emphasize these traits with photos for proof.

5. With an expensive item, always offer the option of an escrow service. This is will be at the buyer’s expense. They may not want this service, but make certain they have the option. You know that your merchandise is legitimate, but the buyer may not be certain so this is a great way to instill confidence.

6. If you ship worldwide, you need to take special steps to protect yourself. In the US we have AVS (Address Verification System) which offers some protection. A huge portion of fraud suffered by buyers occurs outside the United States and you are justified in protecting yourself. Losing the purchase price on a $5 item isn’t such a big deal – but a $1,000 collectible absolutely matters.

Your bank can advise you on the time it will take to verify foreign funds. Be certain to let any prospective buyer know in your auction that there will be a delay if they are outside of your country. Do not let your merchandise out of your hands until you are sure.

Follow these rules when selling expensive collectibles and you will make more money and increase buyer confidence.

Always try installing used software before you sell it, as this might help you talk about what you’re selling and if the installs are ok

With that said, here is what you cannot sell. And you certainly don’t want to buy it either. As a buyer you might just get ripped off. As a seller, you will get suspended and possible even banned.

1. Pirated Software.

This one rather obvious, but pirated software can get you in trouble. The biggest things to look out for are auctions that don’t have pictures or have stock pictures. Unrealistically low prices are a good sign of pirated software as is a lack of manuals. Many software makers including Microsoft come with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) which you should confirm comes with your software. And make sure it’s not on CD-R.

2 Download only software is often pirated but not always. Some small developers allow download licenses for their software to be resold on sites like eBay.

2.Beta Software.

Beta software is pre-release software. It’s issued by companies for testing purposes. Generally there’s no permission for their beta software to be sold or redistributed. Don’t buy or sell anything that says it’s beta. Return anything that says beta or “not for resale” on the CD or during the install.

3. Academic Software.

Some companies sell educational editions or student licenses for their software that are designed to be affordable to students and teachers. You can only sell this software if you are a licensed educational reseller for the company and a buyer has to be an educational user. Academic software will usually say somewhere on its CD or in its installation what it is.

4. OEM Software.

OEM is short for Original Equipment Manufacturer. This is software that is only supposed to be distributed with a new computer, usually pre-installed. The licenses for this software usually prohibit you from selling it without also selling the hardware.

Look for the message “for sale with a new computer only.” But realize that it’s usually ok to bundle any OEM software you come across with computers that you sell on eBay.

Understand that if you sell software that’s prohibited, eBay might shut down your auction, suspend or ban you. And sellers will probably leave you negative feedback. As a buyer just be aware of these types of software.

For the most part, users just use the search bar to type in general terms.

Rarely do buyers check the “Search Title and Description” checkbox , which gives much more specific results. The checkbox isn’t even an option on the front page so it takes a savvy buyer/bidder to even know about it

Which just brings us to the fact that your title keywords are super important. A few buyers browse categories rather than search, but you’ll want to focus on what the majority does.

What this means is that most searches are only checking the title of your auction and not the words in your description and if you know this you’ll be ahead of the curve.

Here is a priority list for precisely picking the right ones for each of your ads:

Most of these rules apply most of the time, but there are exceptions. You have 55-70 characters for your title so do your best to get as many of these in as you can.

1. Obvious keywords that are specific to the product, spelled correctly.

2. A misspellings (or two) of the obvious keywords from the last rule.

3. One or two eBay keywords such as NR, OOP, Free S&H. A lot of experienced buyers search for these.

4. Other general keywords like NEW, NIB, MIB, NWT, Wholesale, Lot, etc. You can only use ones that are relevant to what you’re selling but they are very powerful.

Take this list and refer to it each time you list. You usually won’t be able to fit them all but try to do as many as you can. Once your listing is done with relevant stuff, start adding the misspell and the keywords and fit what you can into the 55-70 character limit.

If you intend to list multiple copies of the same item don’t do dutch auctions. Instead do different listing with different titles for each. This will increase traffic to your items and will attract different types of bidder and searchers.

Go make money,

Timothy Black

At some point you are probably going to want to upgrade your PayPal account to a business account. If you have had a PayPal account and you now want to be serious about selling on eBay it is a good idea to do this right away. If you have never set up a PayPal account, I would just start with a business account. That way you can just dive right in and start making some serious money without the restrictions that PayPal puts in place with a personal account, which is only about $500 per month at the time of this writing.

This short video shows you how to upgrade your PayPal account.

One of the cool things about PayPal is that you can transfer money as often as you want to your bank account. You can transfer once a week, once a month, daily, or even a few times a day. This is a great way to have money coming in constantly. This short video walks you through how to drop money into your bank account. You can also have checks sent to you, but that takes a long time and PayPal charges you a fee for printing a check and postage. I recommend just having the money come straight to your bank account since it only takes 48-72 hours to transfer.