Ever wonder how/why people sell items for like $0.01 on ebay?

So I used to buy ipod and iphone skins on ebay, just bidding between 1 and 5 cent on hundreds of them I would usually win a few of the bids per day. Then after I had a bunch of them I would resell them offering 5 different colors for 5 dollars. That's a pretty good profit, or would be at least if I could keep it up and sell thousands of them,(maybe if I started selling on the street instead of online) but it's just way too slow and tedious to bid on all those items.

In the beginning I was always wondering how the heck these people could keep selling these things for 5 cents ( with free shipping and handling) Specially from overseas like China. Even the postage stamps must cost more than that?!

So I figured out they do it just to get your email address. Even if they lose 5 cent per purchase, they still get a REAL email address every time which they can send targeted ads too (electronics related). Because I started to get tons and tons of spam.

So I guess this is a good tips for someone who wants to get into email marketing. It's a way to "buy" email addresses. I guess. Don't know how legal it is though.

 

well i dont care if they send me email since most of them wil go to spam orelse i will report them personally .. goods are cheap to produce in china.. if they sell some item for 1cent then they do make it up somehow from other items. Now the question is why would they do that? well as u said email ad.. ok i will go with that! then it also helps them to build their rep

 

None of these items are being sold for $0.05 ( whatever !! ) - it's just a starting price .. have you ever tried to "watch" on one of these items ? The final price is pretty close to products real value.

 

yes they do get sold for 5 cents, like I said I used to bid on hundreds of them setting my max bid price at 0.05 ANd I would win a few.

 

Any examples ( sold items ) ?

 

Tons

Those are just for the month of april though, and it looks like it's selling slower now than it used to.

I'll add this screenshot for now so you don't have to log in to ebay (to view completed listings)

 

Yes.. I think that's a tactic to increase positive ratings and reputation.

 

yea, as i said earlier they do that for feedbacks PLUS they will never sell stuffs at a loss; they know the tactics and they somehow make it up

 

They do it to up their feedback and become a powerseller faster.