I'm just going to give you some short notes here on what make a good Ebay Ad.
Look and see where other people have listed similar things. Find one that's the same as yours, check what category it is in, and then see if you can find the button on the page to "sell one like this". That will start you out in the right place.
As Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet used to say, "just the facts".
Keep it brief. Don't feel you have to write a novel. What is it, what is the condition, is there anything special about it, is there anything wrong with it.
If it's a car, start with year, make, model, miles and condition.
If it's a book, include title, author, condition, and ISBN number.
If it's a coat, include manufacturer, size, condition, color, style, and how long you've had it.
Do not include sales pitches such as "buy me right away, best deal ever, won't last long, going out of business". These make you look like a chump, waste space, and make your sales information less believable. People don't want to feel they are dealing with a high pressure sales person. We want to present honest information without a lot of sales fluff.
You should include a couple of pictures of your item.
Pictures should be clear, easy to look at, and well lit.
Avoid pictures taken with flash. Avoid pictures that are blurry or taken with cell phones. Avoid pictures that are backlit or have busy backgrounds.
Do not use images taken from catalogs or other website. Take your own. They will be more believable.
Don't hide flaws in your product. If it has scratches or dents say so, and make sure they are visible in the pictures. This gives you credibility. It prevents angry customers from saying they've been cheated. It keeps your feedback high.
Ebay is not a catalog, it's an auction site. Start the bidding really low, at a price nobody would pass up. You want to get the bidding going. If you ask for full retail price there is no auction.
If you want to sell at full retail, then Ebay is not the right place for you to be selling.
I sold a car once, and started the bidding at $100 and sold for more than $5,000.
You have to take a bit of a risk, but people will bid. If you have a good product at a super cheap price you will get some bidding going. What you really want is to get a bidding war going. People bid once, then get outbid, bid again, and in the end you will get the best price this way.
It may be helpful to have a look at completed auctions to see what other similar products have sold for.
The one exception is that if you have a product that is one of a kind or not well known, you might want to start the pricing at a minimum price you feel is fair. That's because you might not get any bids. But if you are selling something common and in demand, you are pretty safe to start the price at something low like 99 cents.
Here's a listing I posted yesterday on Ebay, for an adaptor that hooks an Apple Cinema Monitor to a Macbook Pro. I bought two of these on Ebay last week for $60. I tested them both and they both work fine and are in perfect like new condition. I'm going to use one and sell the other.
Here's the listing:
I chose the category by looking for other similar items. and then clicking the button for "sell one like this".
I chose the title for the listing by putting in words I thought people would search for.
I chose $25 for the start price because I think this is about half of what the item is worth. I usually would start lower, but on this one, I wasn't sure how many people are looking for this item, and I didn't want to risk selling it for a dollar. In this case it seems to have worked out ok. I had it up on Ebay less than a day when someone met my starting bid for $25.
I've seen other similar adaptors generally for sale around $75 to $125 and the new one from apple is $175. I think mine is a good deal.
The picture is not original - I used the one that was on the Ebay ad from the guy that sold me this item. His picture is good enough - it's the same unit - and it's clear and shows the condition and the ends of the plugs. I decided to just go ahead and use this.
Here's the description:
I've tried to keep it simple.
I've tried to give good logical reasons why anybody who needs this kind of adaptor should buy the one I am selling.
The person who buys this item will get a good product at a good price and I think they will be happy.
I've tried to avoid sounding like a salesperson and I've avoided things like ***** LOOOK **** BUY ME NOW**** which really contribute nothing to sales at all.
If I was going to try to make a better ad, I'd take a better picture and try to write shorter copy about the product. I could probably reduce the text to about half and the shorter it is, the better. But there is a tradeoff in time, and I basically just wanted to get it up and sold. So, there you go. I will check back next week and see how it does. Even if I just get $25 I'll be happy. I don't need this item and I am happy to pass it along to someone else who can use it.