How To Not Make Money On eBay

Every year during the holidays there is a hot video game console that is in short order, which leads to the eBay hounds making a quick buck online by gobbling up supplies and selling them to families unfortunate enough not to find one on their own, often marked up by 100% or more. This year is no different, and the hot item last Christmas, the Nintendo Wii, is again on every one's wish list but no one's shelves. Sure enough, on eBay at this moment are over 15,000 Wiis, and most will sell for around $500 dollars (literally 100% more than they retail for). While searching for my own amusement I ran into this listing and had to laugh at the amateur mistakes that are going to cost the seller potentially hundreds of dollars:

1. You have to have a picture in the gallery. This listing is sandwiched in between 50 other Wiis being sold on the same page, and the majority of them show a real, actual picture of the console to catch your eye as you scan through the list. This auction is going to get ignored by less savvy consumers as they will pass right over the little camera.gif

2. Don't all CAPS anything. Is jacobrs64 shouting out the name of the console? Using WII looks like a failed attempt to reference the Second Great War, not the name of a console. Its Wii. See how cute the little ii is? Its there for a reason, its part of the identity of the system, and its what people are going to recognize.

3. Don't put Used in the title. Its a turn off for most customers. When they are looking at an item and 49 of them say New and 1 says Used, no one is going to look at the used one. Instead, don't make any reference to its status in the title. Let a customer get into your listing before discovering that its actually used merchandise, and at that point they may have already convinced themselves that your console is exactly what they are looking for. Adding Used to the title is only potentially turning away customers, and it sure as hell isn't drawing in any more.
4. Don't make typos in your listing. This is important in any part of the listing, but especially the title. What is a Bundel? Misspellings shows unprofessionalism and sloppiness, and may give the customer the idea that you are an untrustable, angry 15 year old rebelling against your parents for not letting you go out with your friends by selling all of your possessions on the internets and striking out on your own, because nobody rules you! Nobody tells you what to do! Especially the english language.

5. Again, grammar. I don't think the word "game" works the same was as the words "deer" or "fish" in that the singular form is identical to the plural form.

In just the listing title alone, I have 5 reasons why consumers are not going to bid on this item. I found this about an hour before the auction ended and kept an eye on it. As you can see this bundle only ended up going to $375, whereas auctions for just the Wii console alone were routinely getting up to the $500 mark. These simple mistakes potentially ended up costing jacobrs64 over $100.