How To Sell On Ebay: Pricing Strategy
How To Sell On Ebay: Pricing Strategy
Many new Ebay sellers make one of two mistakes: either they
overprice items to an unsellable extreme; or they lose money on
every transaction by setting low starting prices with no
restrictions.
In this lesson, I am going to go over which pricing strategies
to use and when if you are using a ten-day auction setup.
Strategy #1
If you are listing a popular item that you are confident will
sell for a high price, one strategy you can use is the ten-day,
one cent starting price, no reserve auction. This is the best
way to start a bidding war: pull in bidders early with a low
starting price and no reserve and give them ten days and two
weekends to battle it out.
Depending on the profit-margin of the item and the quality and
number of your competitors, you may want to consider using
listing upgrades, such as bold, highlight, and feature listing
options to ensure your auction sticks out of the crowd.
Please note that I do not recommend this strategy for beginners.
This is extremely high risk if you do not know how to take the
risk out of it - and this is not something I can teach you. You
must determine this by assessing your own personal inventory
with tests.
Strategy #2
Now, if you are new to Ebay or want to list an item with
undetermined popularity, you can use a safer, but potentially as
profitable bidding strategy for ten-day auctions.
You still wont use a reserve with this strategy. But instead of
setting the start price low to encourage a bidding war, you are
going to set your start price to your ideal selling price - and
then couple it with a buy it now price that is slightly higher.
This will put pressure on the buyer to buy it now instead of
watching. If she waits, she gains absolutely nothing--and she
risks someone else bidding (and ruining the low BIN price) or
just snatching it with the BIN option.
In addition, knowing that she will lose nothing anyway, she will
realize that she can get the item up to ten days sooner if she
uses the BIN option to order it then, rather than waiting for
the auction clock to tick down.
The strategy I described above is very safe. I use it for the
majority of my auctions and I always get positive results. At
worst, it will take me 3-4 weeks to sell an item, but I wont
ever lose money. I just adjust the price to compensate for
additional fees.
Strategy #3
Another effective way to use a ten-day setting is in conjunction
with dutch auctions--or auctions that sell a number of the same
item. Ten-day auctions will give you the longest amount of time
to move the highest amount of products.
You may also want to feature ten-day dutch auctions, depending
on what items you are selling. If you