Best seller

My first batch of eBay sales are in the books. I sold 3 CDs, all my Transformers, a pair of Air Jordan retros and an Star Wars Hoth lot (AT-AT, Wampa & a playset) for a sales total of ~$390. My shipping charges look to cover actual shipping and almost all of the eBay and Paypal commissions and charges, leaving a net of about $390. And I'm happy with that, but I do think about ways in which I could have increased the windfall, among other issues:

1. The psychology of shipping costs. When I purchase an eBay item, i view shipping as part of bid price (ie I'm willing to pay $40 for something, shipping is $5, that makes my max bid $35). But will that always be true? Can seeing "free shipping" increase bids? Maybe. It does seem to be fairly common practice, though, to inflate shipping, as eBay doesn't take a commission from a shipping charge, hence my rationale for having a $7 shipping charge for a CD that costs <$2 to mail.

2. International buyers. Two items (a CD and the Transformers) sold to European buyers. And shipping overseas isn't particularly cheap, nor did I indicate I'd ship internationally. So that leaves me stating a shipping charge I hope they find acceptable. And that doesn't even get into issues with foreign use of Paypal. On the plus side, though, my buyers have good feedback.

3. Ad content. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was fairly direct and concise in my listings, because (a) I'm not a salesman and (b) i wasn't aware of all the issues that can arise (largely the international issue). I also skimped a bit on pictures, which is kind of dumb. The 15 cents for each additional photo, in retrospect, is a fairly good value.

4. The tension of a closing auction as a seller isn't all that different than a buyer. 5 of the 6 items had bids in the last minute. The transformers lot had the biggest last minute jump, and I'd say that was the only one I was very happy with. The others I was content with (around my target), but the transformers well exceeded expectations (I was thinking $60 or so).