Now that you know eBay can make you a fortune—how will you do it? It’s all well and good to set up an account on eBay, list a few items and sell them, but anyone can do that. Wouldn’t you rather become a TOP SELLER on eBay? Wouldn’t you like to bring in thousands and thousands of dollars a month?

Who wouldn’t?

The first thing that you have to do is understand the way eBay works, the way a buyer’s mind works and what attracts them and how to make your offers irresistible to them.

Don’t just look around your house, see something that you’re not using any longer and decide that would be a nice thing to get rid of. Unless that’s exactly what you want to do.

Wouldn’t you rather discover what eBay buyers are buying? You need to know what items to sell, what to charge for them and how to sell them. In order to do this you’re going to have to put in a little study time—but that’s ok, because it’s going to help you get an edge over other eBay sellers.

The first thing you need to do is look at past sales trends. eBay makes this easy for you by providing a Completed Listings search tool. By using this tool you can see what items sold for, what percentages were sold, and discover selling strategies that worked the items you’re planning on selling.

Go to eBay and click on the Advanced Search at the top of the page. Enter the items that you want to know about. Say you’re planning on selling used cell phones. Enter those keywords, check the Completed Listings Only box and click on the search button. Pages of items that have sold will load for you and you’ll be able to view what other sellers listed their used cell phones for, what types, brands, with what features and how they sold.

Used cell phones (our example item) that sold are marked in green. The ones that didn’t sell are in red. Because you don’t want your potential item to be marked in red (unsold) you’re going to study the successful sales groups. What was the final selling price for the item? What’s a usual starting price?

Study the ads of those that sold versus the ones that didn’t: how did they phrase their ad? Did they use bold titles? How did they describe their product? Look at the pictures they used and see how they presented their item for sale. Was the item featured using subtitles, bolded text or more photos from the gallery? Top sellers often use the upgraded features to showcase their wares—to garner more attention and thus make more sales. If your ad stands out it’s more likely to get noticed and bid on.

Did the seller have a posted guarantee or return policy? Check their shipping rates and features. Did the seller upgrade to What kinds of payment did the seller accept?

Your item is more likely to sell if you offer more payment methods. EBay allows you to accept certain kinds of payment options and decline to use others.

The options available for being paid on eBay are the following:

Most sellers on eBay take paypal and some take paypal and credit card payments.

It stands to reason that the more payment methods you accept, the more likely you are make a sale. The problem lies in the fact that some people who purchase on eBay are not always scrupulous. Although there are plenty of honest buyers who prefer to purchase on eBay with money orders and cashier’s checks, there are also many who use those methods of payment fraudulently and you’re opening yourself up to some risk. Fake money orders are a real problem and you will have to decide if you’re willing to take on that issue.

Back to our search on how items have sold before.

In order to understand what’s going on with supply and demand for used cell phones (or any item that you’re looking to sell) do an active listings search. This will show you how many are for sale, asking prices and give you ideas on how to word YOUR ads.