How to Increase Sales on eBay: 10 Proven Selling Strategies for 2025

Whether you've been selling on eBay for a while or just starting out, slow sales can be cause for concern. A slump in sales immediately affects your bottom line, and can pose a real risk to your eBay Store if not addressed quickly. Unfortunately, there are many factors outside of your control that can affect your eBay sales including seasonality, market trends, and new competition in your selling niche, to name a few. But while there are many factors outside of your control that can cause a slump in your sales, there are still many things within your power that you can do to increase sales on eBay. In this guide, we'll go over four key factors that have a direct effect on your eBay sales, and draw on our vast eBay selling experience to give you ten proven strategies for increasing eBay sales and maximizing earnings. Keep reading for a comprehensive look at how to increase your sales on eBay by improving your overall selling strategy so you can get more out of your eBay business.

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Key Factors that Affect Sales on eBay

Right before we dive into ten strategies for increasing eBay sales, we'll take a moment to examine the four key factors that can affect them. They are:

• Feedback & Seller Ratings: While they no longer count towards your seller rating, your feedback score and seller ratings do have a considerable effect on your seller reputation, which in turn can be a deciding factor in a shopper's purchase decision. Making feedback and ratings a priority by encouraging positive feedback and removing negative feedback will help improve your reputation as a seller, improve trust with buyers, and increase your sales on eBay. Additionally, keeping up with your eBay Store's account health is integral to your success on the platform, and you'll need to attain (and maintain) Top Rated Seller status in order to keep the sales coming.  
• Product Quality & Descriptions: Whether you sell on eBay or any other retail platform, you need to offer products that shoppers actually want to buy. This seems obvious, but many sellers, especially on eBay, will list basically anything while doing the bare minimum in terms of product descriptions, and expect the sales to come rolling in. Invariably, sellers quickly discover that this approach simply doesn't work; you need to ensure that your products are in-demand and high-quality, and that your product descriptions honestly and clearly convey what it is you're selling. This not only helps prevent any confusion with buyers, but also increases your visibility in buyer searches.
• Shipping & Handling: The rise of ecommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart has set the tone for the type of fulfillment experience that online shoppers have come to expect, even when shopping on other platforms. Even if you sell only on eBay, you should always strive to meet a high standard for shipping and handling in terms of both time and price. This will give your listings better visibility and increase your conversion rate, ultimately helping you get more sales on eBay.
• Pricing & Competition: It's no surprise that buyers love a good deal, and that's probably even more true on eBay than on other ecommerce marketplaces that aren't primarily known for auctions and best offers. The better price you're able to offer your buyers, the higher your chances of increasing your sales on eBay.

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10 Proven Strategies to Increase Sales on eBay

Now, with an understanding of the key factors that affect eBay sales, we'll take a look at ten strategies for improving your performance on each one. From how to create better optimized product listings that drive conversion, to visibility-boosting strategies that get your listings seen by more shoppers, these strategies will help you overhaul your eBay selling strategy and get more out of each and every listing.

1. Optimize Your Product Listings

Optimized listings are visible listings, and visible listings are the only listings that have a chance of resulting in a sale. For this reason, every aspect of your listings must be optimized for visibility, including the listing title, product identifiers, item images, and product description. Targeting the correct keywords, as well as implementing them correctly into every part of your listing, is essential for creating an optimized listing that not only ranks well in relevant buyer searches, but also converts shoppers into buyers.

2. Utilize eBay's Promoted Listings Feature

eBay gives sellers a powerful listing promotion tool that they can use to promote individual listings and increase their sales. eBay Promoted Listings offers two types of listing promotion campaigns: Promoted Listings Standard and Promoted Listings Advanced. Promoted Listings Standard is a commission-based advertising strategy, where the seller only pays for the promotion if it results in a sale. This type of promotion places enrolled listings in premium locations both on and off eBay, making it a great choice for attracting customers who otherwise may have chosen to purchase elsewhere. Promoted Listings Advanced, however, works on a cost-per-click (CPC) model, where your listing is placed at the top of search results and in premium, targeted placements on eBay. Any time an interested shopper clicks on the listing, the seller pays an advertising fee to eBay. Learn more about eBay promoted listings and how to use them to your advantage with our comprehensive guide to eBay Ads.  

3. Take Advantage of Seller Hub Promotions

Buyers love a good discount, and eBay sellers with an eBay Store subscription have access to a powerful discount manager tool known as Seller Hub Promotions. Seller Hub Promotions enable sellers to run a variety of sales-driving promotional offers on their listings, including bulk discounts, custom coupon codes, and category-wide price drops. Promotions like these are a great way to boost sales on eBay listings that already perform well in searches and get a good amount of impressions, but struggle to get the same level of conversion.

4. Utilize eBay's Best Offer Feature

One of eBay's biggest selling points from both a buyer's and seller's perspective is the wide variety of selling formats it offers. Among the most popular selling formats is the eBay Best Offer feature, which allows sellers to accept offers on fixed-price listings, and provides a forum for sellers and buyers to negotiate a price via offers and counteroffers. Best Offers are especially useful for listings that have a lot of competition, since they combine the best of both worlds: a fixed-price listing for buyers who don't want to haggle, and an implicit invitation for buyers who do to negotiate a small discount. Plus, when you use 3Dsellers to manage your eBay selling accounts, you can automate Best Offers entirely, saving you precious time while simultaneously increasing your eBay sales.

5. Offer Free Shipping & Returns

Nothing pours cold water on a buyer's intent to purchase more than a shipping cost tacked on at checkout, especially when it's a significant one. Online shoppers, particularly those in the US and Canada, have come to expect free shipping when they order something online, and may very well choose to move on to the next seller if you don't meet those expectations. To avoid missed sales, opt to offer free shipping and raise the price of the item to recoup costs. Furthermore, offering a fair return policy will go a long way towards increasing your sales on eBay by giving buyers added peace of mind when they buy from you.

6. Become Top Rated Seller

eBay regularly assess and evaluates its sellers on a variety of metrics, and assigns them a seller rating based on their performance. This rating is a reflection of the quality of buying experience you offer your buyers, and can have a significant impact on your eBay sales. For starters, buyers cannot see your seller rating, unless you are Top Rated. This means that if they see nothing, they may very well assume you're Below Standard, which comes with its own selling restrictions and hurts your ability to sell on eBay. To avoid this, work to achieve and maintain Top Rated seller status on eBay by reducing the number of late shipments, cases closed without seller resolution, and transaction defects. Check out our comprehensive guide to learn more about how to become an eBay Top Rated Seller.

7. Optimize Your Return Policy

While eBay doesn't require sellers to accept returns, it does require sellers to clearly state their return policies on each listing. This is done by creating return policy templates as part of your eBay Business Policies, and applying the right return policy to each item you list. A return policy of at least 30 days will help give buyers more confidence in you as a seller, and increase your chances of making a sale. Furthermore, sellers who want to become eligible for Top Rated Plus status, which brings with it perks like better seller protections and discounted final value fees, have to offer a return period of 30 days on their listings.  

8. Enable Strike-Trough Pricing (STP) on Your Listings

You don't need to be a marketing genius to know that discounts are a good way to drive sales. But more important than offering a discount is ensuring that shoppers know they're getting a discount. If you're one of the sellers on eBay who has access to strike-through pricing, enable it on your listings. Strike-through pricing shows buyers that they're getting a good deal with you, and can significantly increase your chances of making a sale.  

9. Offer World Wide Shipping

Offering international shipping means instantly multiplying your pool of potential buyers and dramatically expanding your reach. eBay makes it incredibly easy for sellers to sell internationally with the eBay Global Shipping Program, which enables sellers to offer worldwide shipping and fulfill international orders by sending them to a domestic forwarding warehouse operated by eBay. Plus, all additional shipping and customs costs are the responsibility of the buyer, so you won't have to worry about pricey shipping rates or unexpected customs problems.

10. Optimize Listings for Mobile Users

With the majority of online traffic coming from mobile phones, ensuring that your eBay listings are responsive – that is, can automatically adapt for optimal viewing on mobile phone screens – is crucial. This is easy to do when you use 3Dsellers to list on eBay, since all of 3Dsellers' professional eBay listing templates are 100% responsive, making them the perfect choice for creating eBay listings that rank and convert, both on desktop and on mobile. Additionally, eBay allows sellers to create a mobile-optimized description, which is shorter than its desktop version and optimized for reading on mobile phones. When you manage your eBay listings with 3Dsellers, you can automatically generate mobile descriptions with built-in, AI-powered listing optimization tools, so you can get more out of every listing, both on desktop and on mobile.

Bonus Tip: Provide Excellent Customer Service to Gain Positive Feedback

While your eBay Store's feedback score no longer affects your seller status and overall account health, it's still an important part of your reputation as a seller, and will have a direct effect on your ability to get sales on eBay. Since feedback is a reflection of each buyer's buying experience, the best way to earn positive feedback is to ensure that you offer a positive buying experience from start to finish. This means shipping things out on time (or even ahead of schedule whenever possible), answering messages promptly, and creating high-quality, informative listings that help you avoid unnecessary returns. Providing your customers with good service can be challenging, however, especially if you manage multiple eBay selling accounts. If you're struggling to provide consistently excellent service, consider using a helpdesk like 3Dsellers' multichannel ecommerce helpdesk, to consolidate and manage your customer interactions.

In our experience, however, an excellent buying experience is only half the battle; more often than not, even very happy buyers can simply forget to leave you positive feedback. To make sure you get the feedback you deserve out of these positive buying experiences, consider using a feedback reminder tool like the one offered by 3Dsellers. This tool allows you to follow up with buyers and remind them to leave feedback with personalized messages, enables you to leave feedback automatically for your buyers, and even notifies you when you receive a negative or neutral feedback so you can reach out to the buyer work with them to remove the negative feedback as soon as possible.

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Final Thoughts: Increasing Sales on eBay

Getting more sales on eBay requires a multifaceted approach, one that strikes a balance between good customer service and optimized, high-quality listings that result in good visibility and conversion. Depending on where your eBay listings are currently lacking, you may need to prioritize any one of these things to increase eBay sales and get the most out of your eBay business.

Ultimately, increasing eBay sales will always be an uphill battle. With every shift in market trends and every policy change, you'll need to tweak your selling strategy for better performance and sales. When you manage your eBay business with a smart eBay lister like 3Dsellers, this becomes much easier to do quickly and efficiently. 3Dsellers enables you to make bulk updates to your eBay listings with ease, so you can do everything from optimizing prices to adding visibility-boosting product identifiers in minutes. Furthermore, 3Dsellers has an integrated eBay helpdesk, which helps you provide better service to your customers to drive sales. Finally, its selection of fully-customizable, mobile-responsive listing templates help you create optimized listings that sell more, and its support for as many eBay selling accounts as you need allows you to tap into virtually unlimited selling potential.

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FAQS for Getting more Sales on eBay

Now that we've reviewed key strategies for increasing eBay sales, we'll dive into some frequently asked questions about selling more on eBay. Check out these frequently asked questions from our seller community, and learn everything else there is to know about getting more sales on eBay.

- Q: How can I improve my seller ratings on eBay?

Seller ratings on eBay offer buyers a way to share their buying experience with other shoppers. As such, they have a significant impact on your eBay sales, and when leveraged correctly, can be a powerful tool for increasing them.

Improving seller ratings requires two things: providing a top-tier customer experience, and ensuring that buyers actually remember to leave you feedback for it. For the first step, you need to provide a positive shopping experience for your buyers from start to finish. This means fast and (ideally) free shipping, prompt and professional responses to buyer messages, informative listings, and careful item packaging so buyers receive the item they ordered in one piece. Once you've got a solid system in place and can consistently provide your buyers with good service, all that's left to do is ensure that your buyers remember to actually leave you feedback. You can do this with a third-party feedback reminder, like the one available on 3Dsellers, or manually, by following up with each buyer individually and requesting them to take a moment to leave feedback.

- Q: What is the best tool to use for optimizing eBay listings?

Optimizing eBay listings is no simple task, and getting it right can be the difference between increasing your eBay sales or taking your listings' visibility. If you know what you're doing, however, an eBay lister with bulk editing functionality like 3Dsellers is a powerful tool for optimizing your eBay listings, no matter how many live listings and selling accounts you have. 3Dsellers has a selection of powerful eBay listing optimization tools, including fully customizable listing templates that help you create professional, responsive eBay listings for all your items easily and efficiently, no coding skills required.

- Q: What are the benefits of offering free shipping and returns on eBay?

Online shoppers have come to expect free (or very cheap) shipping and generous return windows when they place an order online, and sellers who don't meet those expectations can quickly find themselves outpaced by the competition. On eBay, offering at least 30 days to return is all but expected, while free shipping to the contiguous United States quickly becoming the norm. Aside from how attractive these two perks are to potential shoppers, there is another sales-boosting benefit to offering free shipping and returns: eligibility for Top Rated Seller Plus status. Sellers who've attained this status enjoy increased listing visibility, discounted final value fees, better seller protections, and, ultimately, an increase in their eBay sales.

- Q: How can I become a top-rated seller on eBay?

Attaining Top Rated Seller status on eBay requires two things: sufficient sales volume and adhering to seller performance standards. To qualify, your eBay account must

• Be at least 90 days old
• Have a minimum of 100 transactions AND $1,000 in sales with eBay shoppers based in the US
• Be compliant with eBay's selling and listing policies

Additionally, your account will be evaluated monthly on the following metrics:

• Number of cases closed without seller resolution. You must have no more than 2 cases closed without seller resolution (up to 0.3% of total transactions) in the evaluation period.
• Transaction defect rate. Your transaction defect rate, a sum of your cases closed without seller resolution and transaction cancellations initiated by the seller, must be lower than 0.5% of all your transactions, and must be associated with no more than 3 individual buyers.
• Late shipment rate. No more than 5 of your orders, or up to 3% of your transactions, may be shipped late.
• Valid tracking. At least 95% of your orders must be shipped on time, with tracking information that is validated by the carrier.