Selling Your Quilts on eBay

If you're looking for ways to sell your quilts to a worldwide audience, then eBay is the site for you. As the most popular shopping web site on the World Wide Web, you can be sure that the people who visit eBay like to shop – and there's plenty of opportunity to sell your quilts on eBay. According to the company, on any given day there are more than 16 million items listed on its site, and these items are divided among 27,000 categories.

Some quilt stores have already started to leverage the power of eBay. If you're not one of those quilting businesses, you had better think about doing something about it.

The tens of millions of people registered to use eBay can either buy or sell. The transactions are based on an auction-style model where sellers list their products and buyers bid for the right to buy the product. However, if you're offering a quilt or quilting-related item and would rather list a sales price, eBay lets you use the Buy-It-Now feature, which disables the auctioning feature.

Other tools eBay offers include online payment for your quilting sales via PayPal, which simplifies the process of collecting funds from those who purchase your quilts via eBay, and a selection of seller tools.

So once you're ready to start selling your quilts on eBay, you must sign up for the right to buy or sell. Just go to the web site — Click here for eBay! — and click on the “register” link at the very top of the page.

Once you've started listing your quilts and/or quilting products, you'll also want to pay special care to the sections under which you list your quilts. For instance, some of the categories on eBay include quilt pattern, baby quilt, twin quilt, quilt book, antique quilt and quilt fabric. Perhaps you can try to list your quilt fabrics under as many categories as you can. This may increase your response rate.

Also be sure to upload photos of all the quilts or quilting supplies you are selling via eBay. There's nothing worse than to see a product description with no photo. If you can provide a compelling photo of your quilt, you stand a better chance of selling quilts via eBay. And don't take the task of writing the promotional copy too lightly, either. If you want people to buy quilts from you, you need to entice them into doing so.

The best way to learn about eBay is to use it. Sign up for an account, and then just start looking at the quilting items for sale. Check out other quilters and what they are doing to sell their goods. Find quilt product descriptions you like (and that make you want to buy!), and start saving a file of the good descriptions. And, if you want, bid on an item. You can watch the process and see if you win.

Using eBay to sell your quilts is an excellent idea. Some quilters, in fact, sell entirely via eBay and make a nice profit, as they don't have to worry about renting a brick-and-mortar building. But others simply see eBay as another avenue for selling their quilts and quilting products.

As the owner of a quilt business, you need to exploit every available opportunity to sell your products. Using a web site like eBay enables you to leverage the power of the Internet to potentially sell your products to a global audience.

Many quilt businesses are currently using eBay. This question is: Are you?

Chuck Smith is the owner of QuiltingBusiness.com, the web's only site dedicated to helping you make money with your quilting. Visit QuiltingBusiness.com today to sign up for the FREE email mini-course: “7 Unique Ways to Make Money with Your Quilting.”