Every week thousands of people are selling their unwanted goods online with the purpose to make some money on the side. With eBay, one of the biggest and most popular platforms, selling online has become a lot more convenient and faster. However, to successfully become the next eBay “Powerseller” there are a number of important points to consider before you go ahead.

A highly successful UK top seller named “vintageneil” has revealed his top-tips in a blog post. Below is a summary of them. Spend time on research, and lots of it. If you know exactly what you want to sell then that’s great, but check out your potential competitors, your potential suppliers, your potential customers and even your own soul. Being a successful seller on eBay can be immensely rewarding but requires work. Some new sellers spend many months researching before going “live”.One single, and poorly shot, photo on each of your listings is not going to help you become a Power Seller. There are many guides to photography on Ebay and it’s worth to check them out. One quick (and cheap) tip is: Get a single sheet of tissue paper (purple is a good one), and scrunch it up several times so that when you lay it flat it has thousands of random creases all over it. Tape it to a large piece of card (maybe the bottom cut out of a tomato box) and you have an instant backdrop for small items that look great in photos.

Many sellers can’t be bothered to provide a half decent description of the item they’re trying to sell. That’s a shame as creating a description either invokes bidders to get into a bidding war with another bidder or creates the desire to make an instant purchase using “Buy it Now”. It’s essential to lift your listing above the rest. There are many very successful sellers on eBay who do not use any fancy graphics at all, but just concentrate on providing an honest and detailed description of the item Including phrases in your small print, such as “I will not be responsible for items lost in the post” is the kiss of death for buyers, so make sure you come across as reasonable and honest. Don’t create extra work for yourself. Set out your policies clearly and firmly, but in a friendly manner. Make sure your postage rates are not hidden in your listings, and don’t overcharge for PAYMENT METHODS

If you’re serious about selling, you have to offer PayPal as a payment method. There’s no getting away from it, and it’s essential for receiving payments from buyers overseas. The protection and convenience it offers buyers means you really need to offer it as your main form of payment. Just accept Paypal, cheques and postal orders, to fulfil most buyers’ expectations. Customers expect to be kept informed, every step of the way, and that means a sale confirmation email, a payment received email and a despatch confirmation email. If you are forgetful, or you plan to sell a lot of items then it is best to automate this procedure from the very start. Subscribe to eBay’s “Selling Manager Pro” rather than a third party product. It’s very reliable, generally, and if anything goes wrong your customers will be more likely to empathise if the error lies with eBay.

New sellers have an incredible advantage, when it comes to packing, over larger sellers. You can show, through attention to detail, a level of service that simply cannot be matched by your bigger competitors. Describe how you pack your items, in detail, to show your customers what a great service they can expect from you.

Don’t fall at the last hurdle. Make sure you get everything right and try to foresee problems before they happen, such as address errors, damage, over or undercharging, Post Office scale errors, forgetting the customs label, and so on. We all must start somewhere when it comes to building feedback. Feedback is one of the reasons behind the success of eBay and buyers value it as a means by which they can judge sellers before parting with their cash, so much so that there are many programs available on the internet which allow buyers to scrutinise individual’s feedback. Be patient and build up your Feedback by buying your postal supplies, and other things you may need, from other eBay sellers.Storage is critical. If you end up with stuff all over the place it may affect business reputation, possibly your marriage, probably your sanity, and your home just won’t look like a home anymore. Even selling small items, such as books like I do, will cause you headaches if you don’t keep your stock neat and tidy. If space is at a premium then you’re obviously not going to be selling antique furniture, but even the smallest of items will use up all your available space eventually.