My Evaluation Process on eBay: Part I
We have a good family friend who called me up today asking for my expertise to help him get started selling auto parts on eBay. While I am no expert on auto parts, I have developed a plan that will help him get started on eBay. This plan will allow him to determine the feasibility of selling each individual item.
The first thing I will be doing is searching each auto part on eBay, and checking out how many listings there are. If you are selling something very unique that no one else is selling, chances are that not many people are searching for such an item, especially if it’s an auto part 
Therefore, it’s not feasible that you’ll be able to easily sell that item on eBay, and receive multiple bids.
The next thing I look at is if the items that are listed have any bids. And if so, how many? If there are a few pages of the same item and very few bids, that probably means that there aren’t many people searching for the item on eBay, once again, making the item not feasible to sell.
The third thing that I will look at is if my family friend has an eBay account with a solid reputation. If he doesn’t I’ll recommend he use my eBay account. Now, I wouldn’t do this with just anyone, but this is someone who we are close with and trust. As a common buyer on eBay, I don’t like buying items from buyers with a low reputation, or no reputation. Most of the times I won’t bid if that is so. And that’s how most buyers think on eBay.
Anyways, I’m going to head over to this guy’s house a little later today to begin evaluating his auto parts. I will tell you how my evaluation goes in Part II of this article! But for now, I’d like to hear how you go about selling your things on eBay, so make sure to comment below.
Don’t forgot to check the “Completed Sales” section for the auto parts you
are researching.
Regarding your friend’s eBay account, even if he doesn’t have one he can get an account with a 100% Positive Feedback score pretty quickly.
All he has to do is win a bunch of auctions that are around $1.00 or less.
The best thing to do is bid on ebook type auctions.
Some are under $1.00 and there’s no shipping costs.
The Positive Feedback will add up quickly.
I agree with Patrick – much better to keep a separate account. I am thinking accounting / tax hassle, Paypal account linkage, money laundering checks (I have had my PayPal account frozen twice because I had received “a large amount of money”).
Also, completed sale stats. are essential – almost all of the action takes place in the final minutes (at least in my markets).
- Paul
I forgot – I know someone who used to do this in the UK with race car parts. Some of his best selling items were quite surprising, eg. colored safety harnesses which were difficult to find at “retail” race car stores.
I could put you in contact if you like.
- Paul