Make Money Selling Your Kids’ Clothes on Ebay, Part 2

This is the second in a two part series about selling your kids’ clothes on eBay. For the first part, go here.

When you sell your kids’ clothes, there are several ways you can maximize your earnings:

Presentation
-Make sure all of the clothes are clean and wrinkle free.

-Carefully look them over to find any stains or tears. When writing up the auction, make sure to clearly state what defects are in the clothing and take a picture of those defects.

-Take pictures in good light so buyers can see the clothing in detail

-Outfits almost always sell better than individual pieces of clothing

-When listing your clothes, try to have several available in the same size. Let’s say you have two daughters; the oldest one has outgrown her size 8 clothes, the youngest her size 6 clothes. Rather than listing them as you can, focus on one daughter’s clothing first. Create auctions or fixed price listings for all of your daughter’s size 8 clothes first and then move on to the size 6 or vice versa. If someone likes some of your items in size 8, they are likely to look at the rest of the auctions and see if you have more things to sell in that size that they would like to buy. Why? Because the buyer almost always pays less in shipping this way.

Shipping
-Offer shipping discounts. For example, state in your listing that each additional item is only $2 to be shipped. If a person buys one item from you and pays $3.50 in shipping, only charge them $2 more for the next item they buy. So, if they buy two items from you and they are shipped together, instead of paying $7 ($3.50 for each listing they buy), they will only pay $5.50 in shipping. The more they buy the better bargain it is for them with shipping. This encourages a buyer to purchase more than one item from you.

-Let the buyer know the maximum they will pay for shipping. To ship a priority large size flat rate box in the US, shipping is $13.95. You can let the buyer know that is the maximum they will pay for shipping. So, if they buy 5 outfits from you, as long as they all fit in a large flat rate box, they will only have to pay $13.95.

-Give a reasonable shipping cost. List what the shipping cost actually is. A shirt might cost $2.85 to ship first class; don’t give a shipping price of $5.00. You will lose many potential bidders who do not want to pay inflated shipping costs.

Pay attention to end times
-If you live on the east coast and have your auction end at 8 p.m. in your time zone, it will only be 5 p.m. on the west coast; you could potentially miss out on many bidders. Try to end your auctions so it is at least 7 p.m. on the west coast and 11 p.m. on the east coast.

-There is a way to have all of your auctions end at the same time. If you are going to list with the auction format, I do not recommend this. Some people like to bid on multiple items and they wait until there is about 30 seconds left in the auction to place their bid. This is called sniping (sp.), and a buyer can’t do it if all of your auctions end at the same time. Spread out your auction ending times, if only buy a few minutes.

And there you have it, a quick tutorial on selling your kids’ clothes on eBay. If you have any more questions, please leave me a comment or e-mail me privately.