How to sell more cards on eBay

The three levers

Each lever has a number in eBay's Seller Hub:

The three multiply. With made-up numbers, 300 listings each shown 40 times a week, clicked 1% of the time, with 5% of clicks buying, make 300 × 40 × 1% × 5% = 6 sales a week. Double any one and sales roughly double, so start with the weakest of the three in your store.

Find your weakest lever

In Seller Hub, open Performance, then Traffic. It shows listing impressions, click-through rate, page views and sales conversion rate. Read them like this:

• Not many active listings, and most of them sell. You're short of inventory. Work on lever 1.
• Plenty of listings, few impressions. Buyers can't find them. Work on lever 2, starting with titles and item specifics.
• Impressions, but few clicks. Buyers see the listing and pass. Also lever 2; check the first photo and the price with shipping.
• Clicks, but few sales. Work on lever 3, usually starting with price.

You can also run your store through the grader, which checks your public listings the way a buyer sees them.

Price affects all three

The same card is usually listed by several sellers at once, and buyers compare them in search on the total price including shipping. Price affects whether they click your listing, whether they buy once they're on it, and what you keep after fees.

• Price from sold prices. Asking prices only show what other sellers hope to get. Here's how to see sold items on eBay.
• Check what you keep. Run your price through the fee calculator before you list, especially under $5.
• Watchers but no sale usually means the price is a little high. Send the watchers an offer rather than cutting the price for everyone.

Lever 1: List more of the right cards

Most cards sell for a few dollars, and only some of your listings sell in a given month, so more listings usually means more sales. That only holds for cards people want, though. Choose what to list first, then speed up the listing.

List the right cards first

• Cards that have sold recently. A quick sold-items search tells you whether anyone buys that card, and for how much.
• Players and sets people are watching now. Rookies in their first season, a player on a hot streak, a set that just released, the sport that's in season.
• Cards worth listing on their own. Below a few dollars, fees and shipping take most of the sale. Group those into team or player lots, or read how sellers make $1 cards work.

Make listing faster

• Work in batches. Sort a stack of cards, photograph all of them, then list all of them.
• Set up once. A fixed spot for photos with the same background and light, listing templates or “Sell similar” for cards from the same set, and shipping and return policies saved in your account.
• Record where each card is stored. Put a box and row in the custom label (SKU) so you can find a card the minute it sells.
• Consider a scanner and listing software once you're listing hundreds of cards a month. Tools such as CardDealerPro scan the card, identify it and build the listing for you. Whether that pays off depends on how many cards you list a month; see a working scanner setup.
• Set a daily number. Twenty cards a day is about 600 new listings a month. Track listings added each week next to sales to see whether more listings bring more sales in your store.

Bulk-made listings often come out with thin titles and blank item specifics, which hurts lever 2. Spot-check a few with the title checker.

Lever 2: Get seen and clicked

eBay's search, Best Match, decides which listings a buyer sees first. eBay says it weighs how well a listing matches the search, how popular it is, its price including shipping, and the seller's terms and track record. For cards, most of what you control is in the title and the item specifics, which feed the search filters. After that come the first photo, which is the thumbnail in search, and the price with shipping. In our study of live eBay card listings, 55% of single-card titles left out the card number and 0% of single cards had no item specifics at all.

eBay SEO for card sellers covers each of these in detail, with title examples for sports and Pokémon cards.

Lever 3: Close the sale

On the listing page, buyers check that the card and its condition are what they expect, and that the price is fair.

• Photograph the front and the back. For raw cards worth more than a few dollars, buyers want to see corners, edges and centering. For slabs, make the label readable. In our study of live eBay card listings, 37% of listings showed one photo or none.
• Describe condition honestly. Name the flaws. Buyers who find one you didn't mention return the card.
• Take offers on cards worth haggling over. Plenty of card buyers look for Best Offer first. Here's how to set up Best Offer without answering lowballs all day.
• Pick the right format. Auctions suit cards in demand, and Buy It Now suits most of the rest. See auction vs Buy It Now.
• Look like a seller people trust. Fast handling time, a returns policy and good feedback all show on the listing.

Sell more cards per order

Three cards in one order means one label and one per-order fee instead of three. Offer combined shipping, set up a “buy more, save more” discount, and use your store's categories so a buyer who likes one card finds the rest of that player or team. Coupons and discounts for card sellers covers the options.

What to fix first

• Under about 100 listings. List more.
• Lots of listings, few impressions or clicks. Fix titles and item specifics. They cost nothing to fix and help every listing.
• Good traffic, few sales. Check prices against what each card has recently sold for.