Sell your perfume on eBay? This is how you might make it work for you

    If you are going to sell your perfume online, eBay is a platform to consider whether or not you have a website of your own. A listing on eBay costs no more than a few dollars. Budget $50 or $100 for eBay and you can run a number of advertising tests. The downside is that ALL of this money can be wasted without producing either sales or useful marketing data; but you won't know until you try.

    On eBay you face an amazing wall of competition. Search "perfume" and you'll come up with over 1/4 million results so your first challenge is to get people to find your listing. Once you've listed your perfume in the only logical eBay category for it -- health and beauty > fragrances > men's fragrances, women's fragrances, or unisex fragrances -- your tests will be your selections of keywords.

    Your keyword tests are important. If you can find productive keywords for eBay, keywords that will bring viewers to your listings, you can use those keywords on eBay for other fragrances you might develop. You can also use them on web pages, blogs, and elsewhere to generate appropriate traffic.

    In selecting keywords to test, drop all thought of hyperbole. "Fantastic," "Amazing," "New," won't help you. Nobody is searching for "amazing" products unless perhaps they are looking for superhero comic books. Think of how you might search if you wanted to discover a deliciously unique new fragrance from a company nobody you know has ever heard of; if you wanted to be the first among your friends to wear an outstanding but unknown scent.

    Possible search terms that seekers might really use are "handmade," "indie," "artisinal," and "niche." And don't forget to add the word "perfume," "cologne," or "fragrance" to these. This will be the most important word of all.

    Although it is not at all inevitable, you want to assume that some people will find your listing. This means you have a chance to give them a pitch for your fragrance. Beyond the basic listing outline eBay gives you, you can edit and add. EBay encourages you to write an extended description of your fragrance. You can use this opportunity not only to write about your fragrance but to introduce your company, lay our your credentials, expound on your creative philosophy, spell out your offer in detail, give your guarantee, tell whether returns will be accepted, and give a link to your website, blog, Facebook page or other internet presence you might have.

    One question eBay will ask you when you're making your lists is "how many do you have available?" This gives you the potential of using a single listing to sell more than one bottle of your perfume. You may not find your first experience with eBay productive but if, in time, you master the art of selling your fragrance on eBay, hypothetically you'll be able to sell many bottles from a single listing.

    When you specify your charge for shipping, eBay will, based on your location and method of shipping, calculate the approximate date a buyer can expect to receive their order. If you accept returns you can specify who will pay the return shipping; you or the buyer.

    Once your listing has been posted, you can check back to see how many people have viewed it. Your own views will be counted too so, if the number is small, it's likely it is your own views that are showing and, possibly, nobody has seen your offer.

    Here in the U.S. I can only ship by surface mail (which eBay translates as First Class, based on the small weight of a bottle of perfume.) If you are in a country other than the United States, you'll have to look up your local postal regulations and limit your offer to the areas to which you can make a shipment.

    Finally, since you are making an offer to sell perfume, you should be prepared to ship what you are selling -- a box, bubble wrap, and, when I ship perfume I like to place the bubble wrapped bottle inside a sealed baggie. It's bad if your bottle leaks. It's really bad if your bottle leaks and wets your box... and other people's mail.

    Will I get any activity from my offer on eBay? At this point I don't know. But eBay is too powerful a tool to blow off without testing.

    A final thought. At your blog, website or social media, you might mention that you fragrance or fragrances are available on eBay AND give a keyword that will lead people to your posted items.