Don't Change Your Selling Identity Suddenly

Be sure that you, eBay, and your customers understand what you're selling

eBay is often made out to be a space of endless opportunity, and in some ways that's true, whether you're looking to start a business and pair with a supplier or start importing goods to make a living, or you're just looking to go through your house and turn stuff you never use into spending cash.

Diamonds are great, and it's great if you've got some to sell, but if you're used to selling knitted mittens, you'd better start slow and get an advisor.

Image: Jezper / Fotolia

But opportunity has to be seized gently or it can be squashed; this is just as true on eBay as it is in the offline world.

Here are some tips if you're considering doing something you haven't done before or selling something you haven't sold before on eBay:

• Make gradual changes to your product emphases.eBay notices and is suspcious of sellers that make sudden, radical changes to their product lines, not least because such changes often indicate that a seller's account has been stolen in order to commit fraud. If you're in the garden seeds business this week, carrying garden tools next week is probably fine—but don't suddenly start selling cars or diamond rings next week if you want to avoid scrutiny and the potential for a proactive suspension.
• Make gradual changes to your price categories.The same goes for item values; if you've always been a high-volume, low-dollar seller, you'll likely be noticed and proactively blocked if you suddenly switch to selling auction-house-worthy antiques worth tens of thousands of dollars.
• Realize that there are selling limits. eBay has become notoriously closed-mouthed about selling limits, but realize that they exist in many cases and are enforced. If you've been a low-dollar-volume or low-frequency seller, you likely won't be able to suddenly do many orders of magnitude more business next week, even if you spot a fabulous opportunity, because eBay likely won't let it happen.
• Understand your own limits. There are good reasons for all of these barriers, and it's not just about preventing fraud. Though many smaller sellers rarely think about such things, selling of any kind requires particular forms of expertise—everything from how to pack and ship items for best results to how to manage growing volume and handle Buyer Protectionclaims. You want to shift into higher volume goods? Are you really prepared to stay on top of a higher work volume, or will your orders get behind because you're unfamiliar with the territory? You're thinking of selling diamond rings worth tens of thousands of dollars? Have you ever done this before? How are your goods valued? How do you plan to ship and insure them? Do you have the reserve resources necessary to cope with a spate of claims? Do you know how to create item listings for the items in question that provide specialist buyers will all of the relevant information? These are kinds of experience and financial and organizational positions that are built slowly, and if eBay doesn't take an active hand in ensuring that you don't move more quickly than you're able to manage, you could find yourself in a sticky situation of your own creation with liabilities that you can't control.
• Start with one or two transactions. If you're going to change things up, start with a "dry run" of just a handful of transactions. Do your research beforehand, and use these transactions to help you to refine your process and gain experience. Keep the needed resources on hand to handle claims should anything go wrong. If everything works out, trend upward—gradually.
• Make your new identity official. Rather than mix your old selling identity and your new selling identity, either update your About Me page, eBay ID and other public-facing identifiers to match with your new business, or consider registering an additional eBay account to separate your new business from your existing business. Don't automatically think that because you have a history of high-volume sales in one area that you're better off using your existing account, its high feedback, and its higher selling limits to transition into a radically different area; you're every bit as likely to have trouble because of the change as you would if you simply registered a new account.
• Think about big-ticket one-off sales very carefully. Of course it's not an uncommon occurrence for sellers to have an established eBay business and a characteristic inventory but to suddenly find themselves with one or two unique items to sell. Maybe your aunt Edna died and left you the family jewels, or you stumbled across the antiques find of the century even though you normally do a brisk business in cell phone covers. There's nothing stopping you from listing one or two lone items of a different nature on eBay, but keep in mind everything you've read above. If the items are particularly valuable (in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollar range or more), ask yourself: Do I have the expertise to make this sale and shipment on eBay? Will people take me seriously and bid accordingly, or will my regular business identity and inventory lead these item(s) to be undervalued? Are there good reasons why eBay may be wary of letting me try to complete this particulartransaction on eBay, even if I'm an already established seller? If your answers to these questions suggest that eBay may be a complex or dubious propositiion for your one-off transactions, consider a local sale, a consignment sale, or some other avenue instead.

As this list of tips indicates, the days when eBay was a kind of "wild, wild west" of selling are essentially over. eBay is one of the leading online marketplaces now and is deeply emboriled in competition with other behemoths to remain at the top of the game.

And if you're in business for yourself, you should let some of the same concerns guide you if you're considering a change in business model, goods, or other major changes, whether temporary or permanent. Seize opportunity—but be smart about it, and don't do anything to hurt your business or your finances in the process.