Author
|
Topic: Ebay, how do they do it???
|
|
Scott G. Bruce
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 229
From: Boulder, Colorado, USA
Registered: May 2005
|
posted February 21, 2006 08:49 AM
Dear Mark,
As someone who sells regularly on ebay, I can understand your frustration. Here's something I've learned: bidders are much more interested in bidding on items that they feel emotionally invested in, so you will almost always get the best results by starting an auction with a very low bid ($0.01 or 0.99) and having no reserve. This gives everyone the idea that they have a chance of winning. For example, I had a pile of old Dragon Magazines (200 or so) from the Dungeons and Dragons game. I wanted to get about $200 for them. I started the bidding at $0.99 and put a reserve bid of $100 on them. Hardly anyone touched them. The bidding stopped at $40. Just wanting to be rid of them, I relisted at $0.99, but with no reserve. A bidding war ensured and they went for $235! There are risks to this approach, of course. Sometimes you'll only get one bidder and there goes your item for $0.99. But most times I've found that low, low starting bids with no reserves capture the competitive imagination of ebayers and drive up bids.
Hope that this helps.
SGB
-------------------- "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|