What’s that rule again? If you haven’t worn it in six months, get rid of it? If we followed that rule, just about all of us would have a pretty decent pile of clothes that we should be getting rid of right now. What if I told you that you could earn some spare money by selling that clothing on eBay?
Selling that no longer used clothing on eBay takes a little bit of time, but is really quite simple, and you are almost guaranteed to get more money for your clothes than you would if you held a garage sale! So, where do you start? Read on to find an introduction to the basics of selling clothing on eBay.
Your first step is to sort the outfits you want to sell into spring/summer clothing and fall/ winter clothing. You will want to sell your clothing “with the season,” meaning that if it is spring now, you should be selling your spring and summer clothing. Pack the opposite season clothing away in a labeled box so you can easily find it when the seasons change.
Next, sort the current season’s clothing by size. It is best to sell all of the clothing in the same size at the same time so if one person finds something they like, they might find others they like and bid on them all, eBayers LOVE repeat customers.
It is significant to launder the clothing that you are going to sell, and steam or iron them, if necessary. It’s important that they are looking their best for the next step!
Photographing your clothing is one of the most important steps in this process because eBay shoppers need to really be able to see the clothing well since they can’t actually touch them or try them on. It is by far the easiest to use a digital camera so you can upload your photos right to your computer and then to eBay. If you don’t have your own, see if you can borrow one from somebody you know.
Most big clothing sellers on eBay use some type of mannequin, mannequins that hang on your wall can be purchased for less than $25 on eBay. to show their clothing, but if you don’t have one, you have a few other options. You could put a simple hook in a solid colored wall, and hang the clothing on hangers from it. This works very well for just about all types of clothing, other than outfits, unless you have the special display hangers that show off a top and bottom together.
An extra option is to lay the clothing on top of a solid colored piece of fabric on any flat surface. The trick here is to take the photos aiming straight down at the clothing and not on an angle. You might have to get up on a chair to accomplish this, but it really helps because clothing shot on an angle can really disfigure things and not give the potential bidder a true idea of what it looks like.
One important thing to keep in mind, no matter how you photograph your clothing, is to have good lighting! Natural light works great, so if you can be near a large window where the sun shines in, that would work very well. If not, you might want to consider setting up a few of those inexpensive work lights with clamps to shine on the clothing from different directions.
When you are done taking your photos, upload them onto your computer and do some simple editing with the photo software that came with your camera, or any other photo editing software that you are comfortable with.
The vital things that you should do are: remove needless background by cropping the photo so the item is the focus and not a lot of background, resize the photos so they are no too large, 350 pixels on the longest side works pretty well, and improve them by playing with the brightness or color levels, if necessary. Some programs have some type of “Quick Fix” button that will do that for you.
Next, you will need to sign-up for an eBay seller’s account if you don’t have one already.
Now you are ready to actually create and launch your auction listings. If you need some help with the basics of how to do this; check out eBay’s help pages and Learning Center.
Finally, you can sit back and enjoy the roller coaster ride of watching your auctions throughout the week. Keep in mind that sometimes items get the most bids during the final minutes.
