Getting Your Price On eBay While Keeping Your Fees Down
When you have the right item - something that has wide appeal
and is in high demand - you can usually safely save on your eBay
listing fees by simply using a low starting bid and letting
multiple bidders run the price up. As long as there are five or
six bidders, or more, you will more than likely get a final
price that you are happy with.
Unfortunately, while this is the ideal scenario, for a large
number of items in many categories, this just isn't always the
case. Many items on eBay have less than intense demand or they
appeal to a very narrow niche. When this is the case, different
listing techniques are needed.
In the past, many sellers used a reserve to protect items. But,
over the years reserve fees have significantly increased and
using a reserve has lost it's appeal to many sellers. This means
you must find different techniques to get the same results
without paying exorbitant fees. Here are three different
approaches you can take to accomplish this.
Use a high opening bid
This may seem like an obvious technique to replace a reserve
bid, but actually it's not that appealing. If you have an item
you feel you need to get $50 for, you can protect it with a
$49.99 opening bid, but eBay is still going to charge you $1.20
for that protection.
High opening bids also have a way of discouraging bidding. The
result will often be either the auction ends without any bids,
or a bidder will snipe the auction in the last seconds and buy
your item for it's starting bid. Neither of these is a desirable
outcome.
Listing in two categories with a low opening bid
True, listing in two categories will double your listing fees.
But, if you keep your opening bid at $9.99 or lower your listing
fees will still be only $.70.
This technique can be especially successful when you have an
item that a buyer isn't consciously looking for, but would be
interested in buying. Let's say you've acquired a nice
illustrated catalog of William Hoosier kitchen cabinets form
1917. The obvious place to list it is in Books>Catalogs where it
will attract quite a bit of attention. But, by also listing it
in Antiques>Furniture>Cabinets>Armoires, Cupboards>Post 1900 you
are able to put it in front of many bidders who would have an
interest in it, but wouldn't be actively looking for it.
This can be a very effective technique because it greatly
increases the chances that your catalog will be found by more
potential buyers. However, your catalog still won't be
protected, and there are some items that don't have
cross-category appeal.
Using a low opening bid with the option of a price revision
This technique keeps your listing fees low and also offers some
price protection for your item. Here's how it works.
Start your auction at a low opening bid and be sure to monitor
it daily. If it starts getting bids from several buyers you
don't need to do anything. However, if several days go by and it
just sits there without a bid, you simply revise the opening bid
to an amount more in line with what you need for the item.
This effectively returns you to the first tactic we discussed,
but you will have avoided giving the item away; while at the
same time given it a chance to attract attention.