posted on October 12, 2001 11:17:54 PM new
I like to pay ebay as little as possible on listing fees therefore I like to start my auctions at $ 9.99. I was looking at the completed items and notice that the same widgets by a different seller had recently closed. Seller # 1 started at $ 4.00 sold at $19.19. Seller # 2 started at $ 16.99 and closed at $ 16.99. Mine started at $ 9.99 and sold from $10.50 - $ 15.50. I have more of these same widgets. Would you keep them the starting price at $9.99 and take what you get? Or would you start them at $16.99 and give ebay another 25 cents for listing and 30 cents (or around that) for FVF? By the way, my widget is New With Tags and both of these others are used in like new condition.
I know it all depends who is bidding and what they want at the time your item is up for auction to determine the final bid. Timing is 99.9% of the game!
At $9.99 starting bid they all sell. But at $16.99 starting bid it sold too. I have a really good following of bidders that watch my auctions on a regular basic and I get lots of newbies that bid early. I can live with the profit on the $9.99 but of course would be happier with the profit on $16.99.
I was just curious what you other sellers would do. How do you determine the starting bid? Am I getting too greedy?
I am sure there are more of these widgets in completed items but for some reason I can not search descriptions in completed items and I do not even put the brand name of this widget in the title and I would guess other sellers do not either.
I think that a lower starting bid sometimes gets you more bids BUT at 25 cents a bid, maybe a higher starting price with less bids is better. Who really knows for sure?
posted on October 13, 2001 12:51:28 AM new
i start off with a price i'm happy enough with if that's where it ends. sometimes the bidding goes much higher, and i'm *very* happy. sometimes something ends with just one or a few bids. in the past week or so, more of my listings have ended with one or a few bids, usually the last day or snipes. (got to admit it makes checking my ebay selling page not much fun). and of course then there are the no bid items, but let's not go there
it is fun to see lots of bids, which an item with a lower opening sometimes brings (and sometimes doesn't), but after doing it the way you do for quite a while, and then experimenting this way, i've found overall this works better for me.
posted on October 13, 2001 01:00:06 AM new
You don't get paid by how many bids you get. Give eBay the extra money and start them at $16.99 It use to not matter what price you started at everything went high but now days you need to set your price on most items.
posted on October 13, 2001 01:32:13 AM new
16.99 FOR SURE, your time is worth money,if they go high enough it will be equal to almost selling 2 items but 1 items works,emails,fb,,all of that..just good biz..
you must do something better than the other sellers,,better pics better description...
a few times i sold things for say 15.00 later i see these poor souls selling same thing for 4.00 no bids..I feel we need to work smart not so hard..
If we only value our item at a low price bidders will too..cannot understand people that list at 1.00 nr...with ebay outages,slow times..i would give the bidder 1.00 to not have to wrap it..LOL...good luck...go for it..
posted on October 13, 2001 02:11:16 AM new
Timetravelers
Sometimes I wonder what is the catch
All I know is I would not keep starting my new items at $9.99 if two other sellers can start used ones at prices below me and above me and fetch higher ending realizations. I would start looking for a problem in my listing.
posted on October 13, 2001 05:59:04 AM new
I think there is more to the equation than "when" you start the auctions.
1. How much is your shipping? Is it stated in the auctions? How much is the shipping in the other auctions?
If your shipping is higher, it might account for lower bids.
2. What is your feedback? What is the feedback of the other sellers. Don't discount feedback, and how others, particularly newbies view feedback. If you have several negatives, and the other sellers don't, that might make a difference. If you have a low feedback number it might make a difference.
3. When are you ending the auctions, and when are the other auctions ending? Ending times/days can make a difference as well. It also might make a difference if you have more than one of the widgits up/ending at the same time.
4. How many widgits go "unsold" when started at the higher price? Some bidders want the competition and feel ownership of an item they bid on. That may explain why the item starting at the lowest amount went the highest. If you start the item at $16.99 and have it go unsold a few times before it does sell, you are "wasting" the extra listing fees. Those fees add up and cut into the profit of the item.
Lots of things affect the ending price on auctions. It's not simply the starting price.
posted on October 13, 2001 02:38:21 PM new
igolf - very good questions.
Seller #1 started at $4 sold at $19.19 11 bids. Shipping stated $5.20 (how is not mentioned). Sunday at 11:07 am start and end. Rating is 477 = 525 positive, 2 neutral, 1 old neg.
Seller #2 started at $16.99 sold at $16.99. Shipping $6.50 priority mail. Sunday at 10:53 am - 10 day auction. Rating is 385 = 406 positive 2 neutrals, 1 old neg.
Me start at $9.99 sold at $12.50. Shipping $5.75 Priority mail with DC. Start and end on Monday 7:00 PM. Rating is 1484 = 1910 positive, 2 neutrals, 1 old neg.
Looking at this it looks like SUNDAY may be the answer here. But in reality I have stopped listing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because they are the least profitable for me. I sell big and tall men's new clothing.
I have a bunch more of these widgets in varies size and colors to list this Monday. I can not decide whether to continue at $9.99 or go to $16.99. What to do? What to do?
posted on October 13, 2001 06:33:18 PM new
There are a lot of good ideas here! On ending time of the auction, I have read on this board that sometimes Wednesdays are good days to end aucitons. This is because many people get paid on Thursday or Friday.
Try listing a widget for a $1.00 starting and with $1.00 in the title. I did this and my widget which usually sells for around $20.00, is now over this, and has over 2 days to go. If it goes higher than this, I might start others a buck. If anything, it may cause bidders to look at you other auctions. You may want to consider starting 2 auction for a buck and mention this in your description. This may give you and idea of what people are really willing to pay for your item.
posted on October 14, 2001 01:01:20 PM new
Hi RichieRich~ I was shopping for men's clothing just recently and came across your auctions! I am *sure* it was you! Just wanted to tell you that I think your auctions look very nice and organized. I think whatever you are doing, to keep doing it because it looks like you are doing very well!
And to answer your question, I think you bring up a good topic. I've always started my auctions at higher prices - like $16.99, $18.99, etc. But, the past couple of weeks I decided to start everything at $9.99 with no reserve (and I always put a BIN in my auctions). This last week was one of the best weeks I've had!!! I am definitely going to continue doing it this way. AND, my Ebay listing fees have cut down drastically! The less I pay ebay in listing fees, the better
I also have a "shipping special" in my auctions. Purchase 3 or more items for $6 shipping. I just had a lady purchase 18 items from me in TWO DAYS! She is happy, and I'm even happier!
posted on October 14, 2001 01:42:55 PM new
what would I do?
Not a direct answer to your question, but the heart of your quest is to selling fees.
I would open a store today, not a stupid ebay store(unless maybe they start making them a little more like epeir stores then they would be a little better), then every item I sell would have my domain name on it when it ships. Also you have search engine hits and if your on that web site that is Y! something you can get into their shopping searches.
posted on October 14, 2001 04:25:53 PM newEG
fact still remains that you are paying way more for the sale through ebay than you would through a sore. Also as much as you think you have repeat customers you have no idea until you start your own domain and you advertise it effectively. I get repeat customers on ebay all the time, one item here one there. when they come to my site they buy several items at once, never complain about anything and I really have only had one problem with my store in months compared to ebay. When they come to the store it's like they are "pre-qualified".
I don't think that you will find a better person than I that push people to my ebay store, I would love to sell every item that we list on ebay instead of the 22%(lasts months average) that we get on ebay. We have quick links and searches that take you from every auction to our ebay store. it has helped but not to the extent that I would hope.
Case in point, I don't like to close auctions on Sunday, usually I'm at church most of the day and today we have a sick baby so we stayed home. 560+ auctions running on ebay now and 430+ items in our ebay store total right at 1000 items listed on ebay actually more because the items in the store are multiple(dutch?) items. as of right now this is my standing today.
eBay:
has generated from midnight last night. one buy it now for 14.99 and 4 bids that total 58.96 for a total of 73.95 of course 58.96 is just a potential sale, they can back out or they could be out bid, who knows. ebay has generated 19 emails that I have returned today, both for past and present sales, also 2 of those emails today were people wanting to know the manufacture of the items I was selling(I've never had this question asked from a person on my web site). of the auctions running right now we have had 651 page views of active auctions and 681 page views of all auctions being counted.
Web Site:
has generated from midnight last night. store had generated 357.51 in sales I forgot to mention in the last post that we pay .25 per transaction and 2.4% of the transaction to the CC company. the web site had generated 5 emails 1 was from someone that wanted their UPS tracking number(it was sent to them when their item shipped on Friday), 2 from people wanting to know if we could locate some things we don't carry, another from someone letting me know they got their items on Friday and apologized that they had not emailed me sooner, and the last person wanted me to match the price they had seen me selling an item for on ebay. Everything on the site is listed as retail, everything on ebay is listed at a reduced amount anywhere from wholesale plus 10 or 20% to retail minus 10 or 20% it just depends on the items and how good they sell or how bad we want them gone. Page views for the store are very high at 197 at 4:00 PM today we should set a record for the most page views per day, but that also means that sales are lower per page view, also sometimes what will happen is people will shop and then tonight we could get a bunch of orders when people are done shopping around.
so what does all this mean? ebay for us is more work for less money. People that come to the site have plastic in hand and are ready to buy, people on ebay are browsing. eBay for us is like Wal-Mart sticking the loss leader ads in the newspaper when our site sales are 80% of our total sales we will get out of ebay for a month or two and see if our numbers hold. if so eBay will be gone, we may list from time to time but not at the numbers we do now.
I've been selling on ebay for 4 years, I wouldn't be where I am today, good or bad, if not for ebay. eBay is not our partner and they don't care to see us succeed in many cases they are our direct competition, when in competition there is no reason to play unless it is to win and you will never do that if your playing just on eBays field. If your playing by their rules and you start to get a little ahead they just slant them back in their favor.
eBay has a record quarter they raise their listing fees 20+%. Tools like the Watch feature hurts the seller, how many people do you get per 1000 auctions that send you a email saying, "I missed your auction for xyz can I still buy it now?" or "I had your auction marked in my watched auctions and I didn't get to the computer in time to bid can I still buy it?". If you get these people do you send them to another auction do you send them a email saying you can buy it now for xx.xx send it to.... eBay looses the sale for the FVF and we loose hundreds of potential sales a year because of a stupid feature. The only thing I use the feature for is to spy on my competition. They list something with a featured listing I mark it and see how it does, not good guess I'll not give ebay the extra monies to list that way so ebay even looses by this feature.
eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 14, 2001 06:48:09 PM new
Hi, need your wisdom here...have been on Auctions for over 3 years.perfect feedback..it.was a great needed supplement for us,,has really been slow in the past year.if we had a similar item in a different color or whatever we would state in auction..see our...red one..whatever.give a little discount..happy to combine shipping.WORKED GREAT...also had link to our website of all our auction sites & buy direct on our auctions & me page..
when Ebay "changed the rules"this killed us..cannot say "we have a matching" whatever to this set..you can have it for free shipping if you buy both..THAT IS AWFUL.i say will combine see our other items...i feel we are their (EBAYS)customer using their service..we should be "ALLOWED" to link & say what we like..i feel very strongly this is just wrong,,& we all acted like sheep & LET THEM do this..if we had really objected,united..this could have been stopped.
So now i can't say anything but (click here see my store,(a big flop no hits),,no link allowed to website of course)cannot even say buy these earrings..& we will give free shipping if you buy the matching necklace on auction or store now..
i have put my website,auctions,store everything in search engines..i am missing something here.?.
i keep trying so hard..Prices have gone low for us..
even things we always sold from 29.99-83.00 now go for 19.99.may have to relist.to get it...tried many different things but always specializing in one..that specializing has saved us...even less profit it is consistent..should we just only do that item?this is the one item THAT DOES ACTUALLY bring in new people from searches.
We
tried a bunch of free sites...huge waste of time,but learned a lot about promoting..
seems if we put min bid 1.00 every time ebay goes down & we lose..any insight would be appreciated..
Starting to see more people stating"not about auctions" it's about the website.(used to use auctions to pull people to the website.)now all we get is the winners to see our link to website in EOA we lose all the lookers that used to see our link.
i do need to get pics & clearly state prices etc on website better instead of HANDING OVER MY VISITORS that "I" brought in from other sites & search engine.TO EBAY..am i on the right track?thanks for any help...I HAVE BEEN SO PECKED TO DEATH..i have almost no feathers left..LOL
