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’re
selling information products and rely on the quantity
of sales for profit, this wont be effective; but if
you’re selling a number of expensive, high profit-margin
items, featuring your auction is probably a good idea.
