Well I have been on e-Bay for one year now, and I'm, doing well, but just with a few auctions per week. I have been very succesful, specially with original paintings and wood crafts, however the amount of items moving per month is not very big, but I'm affraid that if I list many others simultaneusly, and feauture them I'll begin to loose money. One week, I uploaded around 20 items at a time, but I stil had the same 2 or 3 bids. However my buyers always are very satisfied with my items, some of them say they are even better that expected.
I took this as a hobby, but I'm planning to go for it. I really want this to be a full time job. Some of you that have more experience on this can tell me any advice? The full feature (99 bucks) service is good to boost sells? Thanks.
posted on October 1, 2000 01:50:49 PM
Things I sell are never more than a couple hundred dollars except for cars. I would never spend the $99 for a full feature unless I had a multi-thousand dollar item that would appeal to a broad catagory of people. I used to use catagory featured in EE/Tools/Ind. but now it is so crowded the featured take up a full page size.
During the summer NOTHING made any difference. Now that things are picking up again I may use featured where it is not too crowded.
posted on October 1, 2000 01:57:02 PM
Thanks for that. I have used the category featured, and the number of visits have jumped up to 10 times. However bids keep very much the same, why is this? If I have 1 or 2 bids without any featured, I expected 10 bids with it featured? Do you have any idea why is this?
On the other hand I wonder if featuring one item could help my other auctions going at the same time.
posted on October 1, 2000 02:35:03 PM
Careful wording of the item header helps. Get as many search words as you can on the line. using WOW or LOOK is a waste of letters. Write interesting discriptions, remember you are Selling! Make sure your scans are clear and small enough so they down load quickly. In three years everything I've posted has sold!
posted on October 1, 2000 06:45:53 PM
There are only so many buyers for a given item or items each week. There are many more lookers, but they either are just "shoppers" or they think if they don't bid it will be cheaper next week.
If you want to boost sales, you have to sell in diferent venues; I use Yahoo to build more volume.
Or you can change what you offer. Variety is the key to more sales. Some markets are seasonal, but a variety of items will let you stay busy.
posted on October 1, 2000 07:19:28 PM
I go to our local estate auctions and I buy anything that I think someone might be collecting, from dishes, books, childrens toys, linens, anything collectable.
Here is what I have been doing since mid August.
Start everything at $1.00(even if I paid $50.00 for it), run them for 10 days. Put 1 item in a popular "featured catagory"(then direct them to your other sales). Then make a link to your "personal gallery" on each auction page. You have to use the gallery feature for this, an extra $.25(well worth it). But it took 0ver 26 hrs before it got indexed for gallery view.
I think putting 1 item in a "feature catagory" really increase the hits and bid on my other auction.
I put 21 auctions on 2 nights ago and I already have 60 BIDS. Adding more auctions as I type this.
I want to try and at least add 10 auctions a night if I can. Its a goal I am going to shoot for now that the busy time is starting.
Its really not so easy with the wide variety of stuff I sell. Each piece has to be done on an individule bases.
Well anyway I'm happy so far with the results I've been getting.
posted on October 2, 2000 07:00:47 AM
I randomly place bonus items in packages of winning bidder especially if the item went for a high price. Bonus items are valued at $5.00 to $10.00. Cost to me is usually $2.00 to $5.00. Customers are very happy to receive and sometimes mention in feedback. Others considering bidding on my items read about bonus when reviewing my feedback. This encourages them to bid on my items.
posted on October 2, 2000 11:28:04 AM
Well,two things. First if you put $ 1,00 for each item, maybe it looks for the buyer that the item is cheap or not high value. How can I overcome that? Second, if you don't sell the first time and you relist it, does it affect the idea of the item? I mean, if I see the same item selling for several weeks I'd think that it is not worthy, or has something wrong.
