eBay Selling Tips: Research, Listings, Offers and Fees From eBay’s Own Rules

These tips are for people who already have an eBay account and want listings to sell faster and for more. Each one comes from eBay’s own help pages, or from how sellers use the tools eBay gives them, and the sources are listed at the end. If you haven’t sold on eBay yet, start with our guide to selling on eBay and come back.

We make FLUF Connect, a tool for listing the same item on eBay and other marketplaces. Most of this page is about eBay itself.

How Does eBay Decide Which Listings Come First?

eBay’s default sort, Best Match, ranks listings on seven things, according to its own help page:

1. How well the listing matches the words the buyer searched for
2. How popular the item is
3. The price, including postage
4. The quality of the listing: description, photos and so on
5. How complete the listing is
6. The listing terms, such as the return policy and handling time
7. Your track record as a seller

eBay doesn’t publish how much each one weighs. Every tip below works on at least one of them.

How Do You Find What an Item Sells For on eBay?

Look at what sold, not at what is listed. Asking prices include listings that have sat for months. Search for the item, then tick Sold items in the filters. Check whether a price was a Best Offer, because the accepted offer can be lower than the price shown.

For a longer view, open Research in Seller Hub. eBay’s Product Research, formerly Terapeak, covers the last three years of eBay sales data.

To compare sold prices on eBay with other marketplaces in one search, use our free sold price checker.

How Do You Write an eBay Title and Item Specifics?

Write the title the way a buyer would search: brand, product, model or style, size, colour, then condition if it matters. Leave out words nobody types, such as “wow” or “look”. Use the full title length for words a buyer might search.

Then fill in every item specific eBay offers for the category. eBay says to add specifics “such as make, model, size, color, and style”, and that “the more we know about your item, the better we can match it to buyer searches”. Buyers also use specifics as search filters. A pair of jeans with no waist size disappears as soon as a buyer filters by size.

Our free eBay listing grader scores the listings in your shop out of 100 and shows what is missing from each one.

What Photos Work on eBay?

• You can add up to 24 photos to a listing for free. Use as many as the item needs.
• Show it from every angle, with close-ups of labels, serial numbers and the maker’s marks.
• Photograph every flaw or scratch. eBay asks for this, and it heads off “not as described” returns.
• Don’t add borders, text or watermarks to photos.
• Shoot in daylight against a plain background. A background remover helps with cluttered photos.

Should You Use Auction or Buy It Now?

Buy It Now suits most second-hand stock. Fixed-price listings run Good ‘Til Cancelled by default, which means eBay keeps relisting them every month until they sell or you end them. Add Best Offer so buyers can make an offer. Many will, and a reasonable offer that comes in is a sale you might otherwise miss.

Auctions suit items with a lot of demand and no clear price, such as rare collectables, where bidders set the price for you.

If you get many offers, set a floor. FLUF Connect can accept Best Offers on eBay at or above a percentage of your price you choose, and send a counter-offer to the ones below it.

Should You Offer Free Returns on eBay?

It helps in search. eBay lists the return policy and handling time among the listing terms Best Match looks at. Top Rated Plus, which adds a badge and a fee discount on eBay.com, needs a free return period of 30 days or more and same or next business day handling.

Ship fast and add tracking whenever you can. eBay’s help page asks sellers to “use tracking where possible”, and late deliveries count against your seller level.

How Do You Become a Top Rated Seller on eBay?

eBay rates every seller each month as Top Rated, Above Standard or Below Standard, based on defects, late deliveries and cases. For eBay.com buyers, Top Rated needs, over the last 12 months:

Listings from a Top Rated seller that also offer same or next business day handling and 30-day free returns get the Top Rated Plus badge, and eBay takes 10% off their final value fees.

How Do You Turn eBay Watchers Into Sales?

Send them an offer. When someone watches a listing, or puts it in their basket and doesn’t buy within five days, eBay lets you send them a private discount:

• The offer must be at least 5% below the Buy It Now price.
• It goes to up to 30 of the most recent interested buyers.
• On eBay.com and eBay.co.uk, buyers have 96 hours to accept.

FLUF Connect can send these offers for you. You choose the discount, how many hours to wait after someone starts watching, and the message buyers see.

Are eBay Promoted Listings Worth It?

They can be, on items with competition in search. eBay has two kinds:

• General (cost per sale): you set an ad rate from 2% to 100%. You pay only if a buyer clicks the ad and buys the item within 30 days, and the rate applies to the whole sale amount, postage and tax included.
• Priority (cost per click): you pay for each click, whether or not it sells.

Start General campaigns at a low rate on items with enough margin, and check whether promoted items sell faster than the rest. Work the ad rate into your price, because it comes on top of the final value fee. FLUF Connect can promote eBay listings automatically by rules you set, such as every item in a price range.

What Does eBay Charge Sellers?

In the US the fee is worked out on the total the buyer pays, postage and sales tax included. The eBay fee calculator shows what you take home on any price, and the eBay fees guide covers business sellers and other categories.

How Do You Get Old eBay Stock Moving?

• Check it against sold prices again. Prices change, and an item priced above recent sales will sit.
• Run a sale event. In Seller Hub, go to Marketing, then Create discount, then Sale event. One event can include up to 10,000 items.
• Send offers to watchers on anything with watchers and no sale.
• Fix the listing. Missing specifics, few photos or a vague title hold back old listings too.
• Show it to more buyers. An item that doesn’t sell on eBay may sell on Depop, Vinted, Etsy or Facebook Marketplace, where different buyers are looking.

Can You Sell Your eBay Stock on Other Marketplaces Too?

Yes. FLUF Connect copies your eBay listings, with photos, titles and item specifics, to the other marketplaces you choose. When an item sells on one, it comes down from eBay and the rest, so you don’t sell the same thing twice. It can also leave positive feedback for eBay buyers after a sale, after a delay you set.

More for eBay sellers: eBay seller tools, eBay seller benchmarks from real shops, and running more than one eBay account.