Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how to set your eBay listing apart from other resellers.
How To Add Video To An eBay Listing To Help Increase Sales
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Setting Your Listing Apart From Other Resellers
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about how to set your listings apart from other resellers.
Rob: All right, guys. Today we are excited to talk about how to set your listings apart from other resellers. What can you actually do?
Melissa: Yeah, there's a lot of people selling on all the apps, you know now. So, what are some things you can do to hopefully get your listings seen a little bit more.
Rob: Just stand out.
Melissa: Just stand out, yeah. To stand out. So we just wanted to go through a couple things. You've done a couple of eBay reviews for some of our members and like going through, and so we see some of these things over and over again, like in people's stores or in their listings. So we just wanted to pull out a couple of 'em Yeah.
And talk about them today.
Rob: Hopefully they will help you with your store and help you with some sales right now.
Melissa: Yeah. So the first one to start off with is probably, I don't, not the biggest one. Maybe it's the biggest one is pictures. I mean, your pictures are really, if you're selling on eBay, your pictures are everything that a customer's looking at.
They don't have anything. They're not looking and inspecting the item in person. They only have pictures to go on. So they're very important.
Rob: So if you are coming from another reselling app or platform marketplace, OfferUp, you have to remember all of these other platforms, the people are looking at the items before they exchange the cash for it. In eBay, they are not, they are going off of what your description says and what your pictures look like.
That is the only thing that they're going off of. They have trust in what you are portraying is accurate. So it's very, very important that you are getting not just great pictures, but pictures of any imperfections of any damage to the item. And then noting it in the description. Very, very important.
People are not able to touch, feel, inspect the item before they get it. And this will help a lot with returns. A lot of sellers reach out to us and say hey, how do you guys keep from getting so many returns? It's because we very accurately describe our items and we get great pictures on our items.
Melissa: Yeah, if anything is, it's any kind of damage, we always take a picture. There are times every once in a while that we might not see it and we don't get a picture, but we do accurately describe it, which we'll get into the descriptions in a little bit. But another note that you had about pictures that we were talking about was your background.
So when you are trying to sell something and like we have a couple places we can take pictures and it's great if you can have one place, like set up for pictures and that's where you take all your pictures. But we have the warehouse, which we can take pictures or we take pictures in our house or we could take 'em outside too.
So some people like to go outside for good lighting. The problem with pictures outside is somebody can see an item and then they think that maybe you've left it outside. Like, I get the bright lighting, like it's really good, but at at the same time, they might not picture that item in their home.
Rob: So yeah, so even a little bit further than I further step forward.
And then what Melissa's saying is like if you're taking pictures of furniture and you have it outside in a field, in a driveway, something like that people might think hey, where are they actually storing this? Are they storing this outside? When I get this, is it gonna be something outside? Now you might take a picture of a push lawnmower or something like that and try and sell it.
That's in your driveway, that's outside in the field. That makes sense. That's an outside unit. So, try to, if it's possible, not always possible because some people don't have the capabilities of doing it. Our shop where my warehouse is, I don't have a good corner or a good display where I can actually set up inside stuff.
Melissa: And get, that's one of our goals for this.
Rob: It is, it's get a good place to get a good background where it looks like it's supposed to be there, like it's a edge of a living room or a dining room, something like that. So right now we have a big eight chair table that's in our living room. And when I have something that's expensive, I will move that table out of the way.
So I have a nice corner, nice backdrop. I mean a nice wall. And it has good lighting by a window. And it just works. And that's only for interior stuff. Now I'm not bringing outside stuff in. No. And trying to get those pictures. I can take outside stuff at the warehouse, on the concrete, in the garage, that kind stuff.
Melissa: Personal stuff doesn't matter that much. Yeah. Like for the equipment and that kind of thing. If you have like a concrete scrubber. Yeah. What Like any of those kind of machines like that people are expecting those to be in a warehouse and that's fine. Yeah. But like the, the turbo chefs you brought in the house, anything like appliances you try to bring into the house?
Cuz it's just that nicer background. We have like wood on the wall and one, we do some pictures in here too, but, and we just have white wood on a wall, so it's just like a nice, clear background and you just had to do with what you have. So sometimes, like before we had that nicer wall. I remember I just like hung up a sheet and just made it like no wrinkles.
Yeah. Like that's the background. But anything, just plain background and bright lights if you can do it. So.
Rob: While we're talking about this, I'm thinking of, and I wish, I know the statistics on this of houses that actually realtors, there's companies that actually go in and stage houses when they go off for sale.
And I'm curious of the statistics on this. Similar to doing something like this, you're trying to stage your item in the event that the buyer can picture what it will look like in their house, from the staging that you have. Now, if you have something, a couch that's out in a field somewhere, they can't picture that in their house.
Now, I don't want to steer you the wrong way. If you do not have the capabilities of doing something inside the house, you can't move something around or do something, don't by any means, get some pictures wherever it's at and get it list. Pictures are better than no pictures whatsoever or letting the item sit.
That's one of those things. But if you do have the capability of maybe moving a dining room table over, maybe moving something around in your house to get really good pictures, that's gonna set you apart from other sellers as trying to stage those items where they actually belong.
Melissa: And we are definitely gravitating towards the larger items because that's what we sell mostly.
But I do realize a lot of people sell smaller items too. So you can easily set up a table. Some people like light boxes. It has to be a certain, you know, you can only fit certain things in them, but just set up a table with a nice light and, and have that be your area. It can just be a little table and that's where you set up and have a background and just don't have anything behind it.
That's a, a big thing if you're taking pictures. You just don't want a lot of clutter. Absolutely. You want just the item. And, and you can always, if your lighting isn't great, you can brighten up the photos. You just don't wanna change the color of the item at all. Like if you brighten it, don't change anything else.
Just brighten the picture. Yeah. So, so pictures are probably the most important thing about your listings. Absolutely. That you can probably agree.
Rob: Good pictures and pictures that show imperfections, scratches, scrapes, anything like that that the buyer might not be able to see from an overall picture.
Make sure you're taking closeups and making sure you're noting that in the description as well.
Melissa: Yeah. So the next one would be videos. So adding videos we started to do last year, and they really help our items sell. So, we sell stuff more that we wanna show that it works, so it makes sense.
Sometimes it might not make sense if you're selling a squishmallow that whatever, that you know, you're taking a video of, it might not make sense. For some people it does make sense and people wanna see they're gonna spend $2,000 with us on appliance. They wanna know that it works. They wanna see that it works and that's gonna help them be more confident in the purchase.
Rob: Yeah. The last two turbo chefs that we sold, $8,500, $10,000, our turbo chefs versus everybody else's who were listed had had a video on there. We put a video
Melissa: nobody else had a video?
Rob: Nobody else has a video, so, They'll take a picture of it actually plugged in that you can see the lights on it, but nobody will go that extra step to actually get a video.
I shouldn't say nobody, but a lot of people are not going that extra step right now, to do videos on their listings. And that will totally set you apart. If you're able to do it right now eBay is only allowing, I think it is around for an iPhone, they're only allowing roughly about 50 seconds of a video, which is plenty of time to get, give somebody a walk around of something, showing something that it works.
Like the turbo chefs, I actually started up, so they could see the countdown. Yeah, and you can, you can do all that in a 50-second video just so people see that you went the extra mile for that. And I think people greatly appreciate that right now.
Melissa: Yeah. And we have a video we can link in the show notes to a video of posting a video, in your eBay store. It's different links other, we know people have different lengths of time. It matters like
Rob: it's gonna be the size, the,
Melissa: the size of the file. Yeah. And it's what your device converts it to or something. Yeah. So it depends on how much you
Rob: quality, the quality of the video.
Okay. Is definitely what it depends on. So, and eBay's made it very easy now. You can't do it from your phone yet, but you can do it unless you're downloading it to or uploading it to YouTube and then putting a link into the description where people can click on the link,
Melissa: which is what you used to have to do.
Rob: Yeah. But now they make it to where if you're on your desktop, you can actually just drag and drop a video into the picture area. As long as it's small enough, to fit in there, you can drag it, drop it in there, and it actually uploads and it's, it's ready to go right there. And they put it on your second, on your picture roll.
They put it on the second picture. And somebody can actually jump in there and, press play for the video.
Melissa: Wow. Which is very helpful. You can get everything from your phone. So the next one would be setting accurate descriptions. So setting the tone for the sale. So this is something that we are really big on.
You've made the mistake. Many times the other way, of not setting the proper expectation for items. So you learn from your mistakes, right? Yeah.
Rob: So I didn't have this kind of stuff when I was starting out. I didn't have podcasts, I didn't have courses, I didn't have people that went before me and teaching me this.
I learned all this by school of hard knocks. I learned what not to do. And that's kind of what we try to help you guys take the shortcut versus doing something, that you are learning that way. But this is definitely, and it might sound counterintuitive to people, it might be like, yeah, this is the, what are you, what are you talking about?
And it's, you have to understand people don't see these items. So you wanna describe the item the best you possibly can. We almost turn people off to our item and I accurately do pictures, show all the imperfections and in the description the same way. I tell people, please have proper expectations.
It's a used item. Please expect it to have scrapes, scratches, scuffs, any of that stuff. Even if it doesn't have it on the item. I still put that almost in every single one of my listings. Things that I shouldn't say almost. I do every listing if it's a used item. I put that inside the listing. I listed a stroller last night, and this stroller is beautiful.
I would consider it an excellent condition, and I still do not put that in my description. I always put the best that I had described something as in good condition, used in good condition. Please look at pictures for details or please will look at, pictures for conditions. And then I'll take closeups of all that kind of stuff.
But never will I say something is in excellent condition. I do not wanna set the tone for misrepresenting the item if my definition of excellent is not the buyer's definition of excellent.
Melissa: I still remember your story of the Nordic Track, the $1,700 Nordic Track. The guy got it. This was way back, right?
A long time. This was your first, yeah. You're probably 20 some years ago. Big nor that was your first higher end sale, right? The big Nordic track.
Rob: Yep. Nordic Track Medalist. It was a gray one. Heavy one. Yeah. I sold that in mint condition and learned that the gentleman who bought it did not think it was in mint condition.
And I learned that the hard way. So yeah, that was one of those returns. That you had to take. And yeah, you, you just want to make sure you're setting the tone for that buyer. A lot of times our buyers get stuff. They're like, this isn't way better condition than you, portrayed it to be. And that's what we want.
We want to under promise and overdeliver on our, on all of our items. If you're building a business, a side hustle of business, you wanna build something that you can, you can. You can live on that you can depend on. And when you're selling stuff saying this is an excellent mid condition, your feedback is gonna start going down and down and down.
Cause people are gonna say, this is not excellent condition. There was scratches here, there are scrapes here. You didn't note that kind of stuff. And so you just wanna set the bar high for those buyers that are gonna buy your items.
Melissa: Yeah. And we did only have in the last I looked at it in the last two years, we had one return that we had to do and we had, I think three other cases open, but that we ended up winning, winning the cases, partly like damage or whatever.
So, and we'll, we'll have to talk about those soon. Yeah. But, but it was so low because we do set those expectations up for the buyer.
Rob: And the one return that we did do, I mean, it was the fault, it was my fault, it was a baby scale. And I, it showed, you could see inside the little scale where it shows the weight.
You could see it said pounds and it said, what was the other one? European kilograms. It said both of those and it was on kilogram. And I figured this's just a program, you have to program something and it would switch over to pounds. Well come to find out, you couldn't switch it over. This one.
Melissa: You were supposed to be able to, but this one didn't switch over. Oh, maybe this model didn't.
Rob: It was created, it was supposed to, but it. Built only to be in kilograms and you couldn't change it over to the pounds. And it was my fault. I, I, made the mistake of assuming that it could be changed to pounds.
I even took the picture of the item in kilograms. But it's one of those things that the guy got it and said, hey, I don't want to convert this to pounds every time I do a weight. I need my money back. And I understood it. I actually called the manufacturer and tried to find out how to walk through the steps and he's like, if it doesn't do this, then it was only created to go in kilograms.
So that was my mistake. I took it. Praise the Lord. It wasn't a, like a $10,000 sale. I think I'd be a little careful, more careful on those, but $150. Yeah, like $150. Was it? And I actually brought it, I gave the guy the return listed it back, sold it in a week or two with just the kilogram, and noted in the description, hey, we, this does not change out of kilograms.
It will not go to pounds. It's only in kilograms. So that's what you need here, this is the scale for you. And then we just sold it again. But, that was the only return.
Melissa: You sold it again, like we did really quick a month later?
Rob: Really quick. So it was good. Yeah.
Melissa: So, so yeah. So make sure you have accurate descriptions and we do, we put everything in the description and the more you can write in your description, the more eBay likes that.
So they like to have a lot of description.
Rob: They do and a lot of people right now are only doing like a little tiny paragraph saying, hey, this is the item, this is what it is, and that's it. I personally, and I can't prove this, I think eBay's algorithms love it. If you got like paragraphs inside your descriptions, might be a little bit harder for the buyer to, to do it.
But I always have a standard procedure for when I'm actually doing that. I talk a little bit about the items. I give the disclosure of scrape, scratches and scuffs. I talk about shipping. So I split it up into a couple little paragraphs. And then I put our terms and conditions, which is just a lot of stuff, and I label it terms and conditions, and then people can see what are terms and conditions that I've written for the last 20 years.
All the incidents that I've gone through, put it in the terms and conditions to protect myself. But that's it. So our, our, every description that we do is a huge, huge, I, I don't know how many words, probably a couple thousand words in that. And the buyer, can I put the most important stuff at the top, terms and conditions are at the bottom.
And anything that I'm referring to terms and conditions, I'll write it in a little sentence up top. Please refer and make them go down and read the terms and conditions on that.
Melissa: Yeah, but also to note terms and conditions don't hold up as much as they used to hold up on eBay.
They have to go with eBay's policy. Yes. As long as they don't go against any of eBay's policies and it's what you have set up in your store. This is a side note. Yeah. Then you can be covered. But if, if it goes against eBay's policy, you can't have a terms and condition that goes against eBay's terms and conditions.
Yeah. So. Exactly. We learned that too.
Rob: Yep. Absolutely.
Melissa: Can't do that. So another one I have to for your listings is check prices. Sometimes once your listings are live, if you've had something listed for a little while, prices can change. So you might wanna check and see if you are so competitive in your listing and price. So.
Rob: A good rule of thumb is about 30 days if you have an item that's listing and it, some stuff sells quicker than other stuff. If you have something sitting for 30 days, go back and do another comp on it. Make sure that the items have sold, do actually fit with what the price is you're trying to get.
And yeah, if you know automatically like what retail is, I mean, we know when we're selling something what retail is. We're trying to stay at 50% of retail or competitively. Other stuff that is accurate. I mean, that is listed. We wanna stay competitive with that. So when buyers see it, ours is a no-brainer that they want to go with our item.
But again, like Melissa said, we list high value items. We're not listing little $20 items, the majority of our stuff is thousands and thousands of dollars that, that, those are our sales that we do. So yeah, but it's important if you do, I mean, list something, go back every 30 days. If it's not moving, check it out and see if you need to alter the price or, you know, accept offers.
If you haven't done that, I just went through on a couple of mine and I'm getting people, even when I don't typically don't accept offers. I'm still getting people emailing almost every single day saying, hey, would you accept this? Hey, would you accept this? They're not going through eBay's form of doing it because I don't accept offers on mine, but I still have people reaching out and asking me to take less for the items.
Melissa: And you do that sometimes too? I do. And you'll send an offer back?
Rob: Exactly. So if that's one of the things that you're, like, I switched a couple of my listings that I'm getting offers on, I switched it to or best offer to where they can actually reach out legitly and send me an offer that I can accept and then they have to actually pay for it because they're, it's a binding.
So, but that's just some things that you can do.
Melissa: And last thing that I have written down on my list is to keep listing. So obviously all the platforms love when you're active on the platform, so keeping on listing. I, we do notice that sometimes when people get started, they're, you know, excited they get stuff listed.
So maybe they list 10 items and then nothing. And then just sit there. And then they keep watching the items. Do I adjust the price? Do I adjust? I'm like, you just leave 'em, you keep listing more. Like keep, keep it going because the more you have listed, the more you're gonna sell. Okay. So you can't just like, wait for those 10 items to sell and then start again.
Just keep compounding it. Yeah. And then it will, things will sell.
It's a great point because a lot of people get on, they get three or four things listed and they're like, okay, nothing's selling. Well, keep listing. Yeah. That's what you wanna do. If you're priced accurately, if you're priced competitively, then the price is probably okay.
But people get frustrated after they list something for a week and they list four items, and it's like, okay, nothing's sold. Well, keep listing. Keep listing and consistently do that. And then you'll start to see the sales coming in. And then you're really building yourself a reliable business, a reliable income, because the more you listen, stay consistent.
The more sales come in and you can actually depend on that paycheck every single week.
Yeah. That's one thing, Stacy says in the group too, she said, I know my listings that I'm doing this month is my payday for next month. So like, I'm looking at everything that I'm getting done for this month as my paycheck for next month.
Absolutely. So, and that's a, that's a cool way to look at it. It is, it is. And you know, some stuff will sell quick and some stuff will take a little longer. It's just, it depends on what you have. But just keep listing. Yep. Keep the listings going.
Rob: So that's it. So awesome. Well, hopefully you guys enjoyed this.
Hopefully you got some great information. Guys, right now we are in the middle of enrollment for our Make Your First Thousand Dollar Single Flip. We're doing a live training, four week training. If you guys have not enrolled, if you not have registered for it, guys, go do it. 1000flip.com, did I get it right?
Melissa: We're super excited. It's a four week. We're doing a four week live workshop with you guys. We wanna walk you through the beginning steps of making that first thousand dollars sale on eBay. I know people get like a little bit overwhelmed or intimidated to, to get and do those higher dollar stuff and we're here to help walk you through it.
So you can have a couple of those start rolling in each month, so.
Rob: Absolutely. So go check it out. 1000flip.com. You can go and register there, for it, enroll into it. We're gonna be super, like Melissa said, it's a live training. We're gonna actually be doing the trainings, four week training. And it's gonna be so much fun.
You're gonna love it. You're gonna get some great value out of it. Very excited for that.
Melissa: We kick off January 24th.
Rob: Woohoo. All right, guys, have a great day.