I've been thinking about selling stuff at Ebay... but I have a question: I've seen people selling loads of items at the same time, for example, some guy selling cheap necklaces and bracelets. If you check his items for sale, he has about 150 live auctiong going on... but only has bids on a few of them. So, what happens to the auctions that don't get any bidders? Is that just wasted money? Doesn't seen like such a good deal if you list 100 items and end up selling 10 or 15, since ebay's listing fees aren't cheap at all
Most of these guys run an ebay shop which, depending on the package, allow the same listing to run until they get sold. The item gets relisted if it doesn't sell. Becuase it's a shop the fees are a completely different structure and relistings till sold are free. I think.
I think the listing fees are a lot cheaper if you have an eBay store. I know someone that sells at a ration of about 1 to 30 and makes real good money. They basically list stuff by just pushing a button <added> mcfox is also right, we posted at the same time </added>
They sure are. Also, if you re-list a regular item that didn't sell and it sells second time round you get the second listing fee refunded in full.
Yeah, I know about that, but if it doesn't sell the second time then you are screwed. And putting up a store would involve big bucks, no regular seller could do that... Oh, well... back to the drawing board to figure out plan B...
Ebay has a forum where you can post your questions and perhaps get a better answer. Since I also see many sellers with loads of listings for the same product, I have to assume that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs. When I buy, I usually avoid sellers with the huge numbers of listings however. I generally find that their feedback isn't as good and quality of the product a bit more dubious. Frequently the list price is almost negligible, like $1.00 but with a high shipping cost so the fees paid per listing is quite small. Personally, I have had good luck with eBay both as a seller and buyer abeit in small quantities. I think the key on eBay is to find a product that isn't as competitive and will pay a decent margin.
I used to have an ebay store and it only cost $10 per month for the actual store. I was actually a power seller for a while. The initial listings are what will cost you but it won't be that much unless you list thousands of items. I actually stopped doing it because back then store items didn't show up in regular searches and most people didn't know enough to search in the stores. I ended up having to make regular listings just to get people into the store part. But I think it is set up better now so you may want to check it out. Now if for example you search for widgets, after all the regular auctions for widgets, it would give you one result from every store selling widgets. Hope that helps.
The basic eBay store fee is $15.95 per month and each listing costs .02¢ (.03¢ if you use a gallery picture). When you sign up for a store, you get it free for 30 days to try. If you have stuff that you want to sell for a set price, this is the way to go. BUT the final value fees are higher for store items. I think they're around 8%. They give you a 50% discount on those if the buyer comes to your store from an outside link...emails, your website, etc. Big downside - eBay stores are NOT included in the regular search. The regular auction listing fees are .35¢ for items $9.99 and under (+ .25¢ to add a gallery picture). Auction listings are a crap shoot - especially right now during the summer months, but they are good for drawing people to an eBay store. More than anything, it depends on what you've got to sell. We sell driftwood at auction only and it does good 90% of the time. It did lousy trying to sell it in a store. The biggest key to selling anything on eBay is research. Search the closed listings for the items you want to sell to give you some idea of how saturated the market is, the average starting bid, how many bidders, etc. Right now is definitely not the time to start selling, but it's an excellent time to buy. Sales are darn near stagnant. Hopefully, it should start to pick up after school starts though. Edited to add: FTEGal posted while I was typing. She's right about the store listings showing up at the bottom of the regular search. I think the search is set to show those if there are less than 10 regular auctions. HTH
Great, thanks for the comments, I'll go read the FAQ at Ebay now to learn more about how the stores work
You might want to try Yahoo auctions, they are fee-free. Only problem is, ther aren't as many bidders/users, so the price you'd get for the item might be less than what you'd get on eBay. Josh
www.andale.com has a cool research tool you may want to check out also Fryman. You can see what a particular product has sold for, etc, etc, etc
Yeah, I looked at Yahoo, but they don't seem to have any buyers, and the items up for auction are just junk