Tips for professional sellers

MQLs, or multiple-quantity listings, give you the opportunity to list more than one of the same item, within the same listing.

You can easily create an MQL by clicking on ‘Add a quantity to this listing’ during the listing process. Or, if you’re using My Products, select the ‘List as Buy Now only’ option.

Trade Me’s in-house payment facility is known as Ping.

Ping makes buying and selling easier, faster and safer. Ping allows customers to make instant payments from their bank account, Ping balance or credit/debit card.

We are able to set you up with Ping with either a New Zealand bank account or an overseas bank account. There will be differences based on which bank account you provide so please get in touch with your Account Manager to fund out more.

For overseas sellers Ping and Afterpay will be the only payment methods available.

Auto-billing is a great way to ensure your products continue to relist automatically without worrying about your account balance.

Once set up, auto-billing will automatically charge your credit card on a weekly basis for the fees you’ve incurred. Every Tuesday, we check your balance and if you’re in debt, we’ll pop you an email with a heads up on how much you’ll be charged. Then on the Thursday of that week, we’ll automatically charge your saved credit card.

If you credit your account between Tuesday and Thursday, we'll deduct that from the amount that is due to be charged. For example, if Tuesday's account balance was -$200 and you topped up by $50, we'd only charge your credit card $150 on the Thursday.

Throughout this process, as long as auto-billing is active on your account, you’ll be able to relist while in debt.

If your credit card declines, your auto-billing is turned off and you'll go back to the usual prepaid process. You're able to enable and disable auto-billing at any time via your My Trade Me page.

If you’re using My Products or Tradevine, you’ll have access to combined shipping. This enables your buyers to qualify for free shipping when purchasing from you through the Shopping Cart.

Combined shipping can be tailored to you, either by setting up a dollar value or a number of items a buyer needs to purchase from you to qualify for free shipping.

Making great listings is key, and a big part of this are your product photos. As a professional seller, your photos are even more important.

• To increase the chances of a sale, make sure your pictures are good quality and easy on the eye, and that they accurately portray your product.
• Make sure your lighting doesn’t distort the colouring of the item in the image compared to the actual item.
• Plain backgrounds are best, ideally white.
• Ensure your picture is sharp and in focus.
• Make use of having up to 20 free photos on your listing and take pictures of all angles of the product. Also including extra information like labels and accessories is great.
• Include pictures of any damage.
• If you use images that aren’t yours, make sure you have permission from the rights holder so you’re not breaching anyone’s copyright.

You can see more about the Marketplace photo policies and guidelines here.

Multiple-variant listings (MVLs) are a collection of listings for a product that has many versions such as different colours and sizes. Each version of the product (variant) has its own listing number, but we treat the collection as a single listing.

MVLs are designed to give you an easier and smarter way to sell variants of a product on Trade Me for example Hoodies that come in various sizes and colours. Using MVL listings will help buyers to easily find the right item.