I dreamt that "Once Upon A Time Ebay Showed Everyone's Listings, Equally...At No Extra Charge..."

[intimewithmusic]

Then I woke up... 

My very 1st listing. No white background, No "sell similar" rigaramarole, no "item horrifics", no "pay to play".

THOSE were the days! 🙂

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@intimewithmusic wrote:

Then I woke up... 

My very 1st listing. No white background, No "sell similar" rigaramarole, no "item horrifics", no "pay to play".

THOSE were the days! 🙂

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Are you back to working concerts and ummm breathing in those crazy fumes?

-Lotz

[intimewithmusic]

Hi Lotz. Funny you bring that up. I was asked to work a cancer benefit last month at the Hard Rock with many of the great Canadian iconic bands Loverboy, Prism, Lee Aaron, Chilliwack etc.  I like doing benefits because they give so many good memories. Everyone is in good spirits. I did the Variety cloub Telethon for years. My friend and I put Ray Charles in a maintenance closet to practise one year. I said, "We can't put him in here. It's a storage room!." He said "How will he ever know?"... so the two of us put Ray Charles in the closet.

This time \he 5 hour drive, gas, hotel cost etc convinced me to pass. It was a big sold out reunion like event. Lot's of huggy huggy. Shortly after my friend got Covid and then pnemeonia. So the answer is thankfully "No concerts and no fumes".

With respect to this post my sales dropped off like most so I worked hard to keep my store fresh. the harder I work the slower the sales. Recently, I noticed an American seller with 62 listings. The items are regular thrift store items. Lot's of baby clothes and trinkets etc. Average price $10-$30 (USD) No store & weak listings. Most items including clothing are photographed on the floor. 

Out of curiosity I looked at her sales. 182 items in 90 days. After giving my head a shake I noticed they were all sold at auction. A $10 item would start at .99 and a $30 item would start at $9.99. She was turning everything she listed every 30 days. Why?

Shipping of course. The first advantage of selling i the US. The 2nd being a 10X market. 

Auctions. Depending on your risk potential they bypass any need to refresh BIN items. 

I looked back to when I began 10 years ago and made the above post. The post included a photograph of my very 1st listing. When I posted it the photo stuck. I waited for it to circulate through eBay, refreshed and there it was. A few minutes later it was gone. I repeated the process and there it was. Now it's gone... This seems to be the norm here. To put things into context I'm putting it back! 

  I hope all the hard working sellers have a great 4th quarter! It's been a downhill ride for most of us. Things used to sell. 

 Those were the days! 🙂

[intimewithmusic]

Kudos to anyone who noticed the exchange rate in this listing!!!

[busybeas_books]

Back when I started in 2002 all my listings were auctions. I didn't have a store to have BINs until a few years later. Around 75% of the listings sold the first time up. Those that didn't got a lower starting amount and relisted. My first sale was a Gumby shaped radio. Bought at garage sale for $2.00, sold for $10. 

[msau4301]

My sales, like everyone's have been slower lately and I chalked it up to shipping increases, people's lack of extra income and the fact that I don't ship internationally anymore (that was about 30% of my sales).

But I recently got a lot of vintage 80's action figures, I know nothingat all about them, took me a while to figure out who they were and look what they might be worth and I listed them on auction (I still do mostly auctions, just like when I started in 2014) and two of them had bidders within 5 minutes! I guess there are always people out there looking for something!

P.S. I looked back at that exchange rate in 2013 wowzers!

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

The last 2 auctions I ran mostly as a lark in the last 2 to 3 years sold at the opening bid of a penny and .99 cents. Both buyers were irked that shipping was more than the selling price. I no longer sell using auctions. Just not worth the time and trouble. Really not worth it unless it is something extremely rare and/or the opening bid covers your costs. Welcome to the world of instant gratification!!

[msau4301]

True enough! I mostly sell vintage toys so the values are often tough to decide, sometimes people are buying for nostalgic reasons (that's what I do anyways!) Sometimes I'm lucky, some times not so much but I start at the lowest I would take just in case (found out very early on that lesson!).

With my stuff anyways I get more action with the auctions, I've often wondered if the way they are shown to people on the site is different (since there is a time limit), always seems I suddenly get a pile of views or activity at the last few hours which I thought might be because of those that use "ending soon" hoping to dive in at the end. I've never used the "promoted" at all, so I don't know about that. If I get no activity I may try but for now I just keep my fingers crossed. I'm not selling as a business though, that would be different. I'm just a collector who unloads extra stuff when I overbuy (or get large lots with parts I don't want) and often my friends and family give me stuff when they're cleaning out their basements. A few years back the woman that works at the post office I go to gave me a huge garbage bag of toys she was going to toss. So I've been lucky in that way anyways.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@msau4301 

When I first landed on eBay and was running everything with auctions, I sold a piece of office equipment for 2250 (USD). I really miss those days. Probably of the most stressful days of my life, but well worth the final outcome. Currently I have enough stress so really don't need any more. With auctions I was not always that lucky but I did okay.

Now, almost everything I sell includes best offer and usually that is the go to. Unfortunately the opinion of THE PRICE and what most are willing to pay are at 2 different ends of the rainbow. Anyone that is doing well with auctions, more power to them and congrats. Did I ever think I would need to promote my listings to sell with some sence of consistently. Never in a million years!!!

-Lotz

[intimewithmusic]

Gumby? That would be great. I worked for General Paint in the 70's.  I still have the radio from marketting shaped as a paint can. No Gumby value there! 

[intimewithmusic]

My theory is over the pandemic a lot of new sellers came online. So many eBay was inundated with same-same items under $50us. So many that the buyers market became too dilluted to show them. That spawed the birth of "Promoted Listings". 

The items that were similar still flooded thru the gates of eBay. Eventually promoting at 1% lost any potency so they eliminated 1%. Currently Promoted Listing effectiveness is hovering at much high costs. 

So what about auctions? When I looked at this US seller example it made me wonder , "eBay knows the auction is short lived 10 days maximum. For these types of items, does auctioning give the listings more exposure than if the same items were a BIN?"

I'm not saying one way or the other. Rather than working to refresh items through "Sell similar", which I think has already re-flooded eBay again (because everyone has been doing that for a year), or  entering all those Item Horrifics,  or doing all Pr Lstg at 10% and paying fees in excess of 22%,

auctioning may be less work. The lower value rec'd may be worth considering? If there's less time spent babysitting listings more time is available to keep the auctioneer busy. As well many folks (including me) search by "Auction Only" and a lot fewer sellers use the auction format. 

Of course it depends on what you sell and if there are comps .

Just a theory. 

IT

PS Funny thing... I jusat looked at your listings and see that you did group most of them in lots! Great minds think alike! LOL

With respect to your action figures I suggest selling them internationally however you may consider selling them in lots of like items to make the shipping appear more competitive. IE: a group of items that don't exceed 500/750/1000 grams etc. 

[intimewithmusic]

Auctions on eBay are definitely tricky. for those that rely on them it's a good thing many eBay sellers don't use them because it leaves a wide open window for those that do. 

The other problem  with eBay auctions is that they do not give prospective buyers any advance warning in the way auction houses do with their customer lists & websites.

Maybe a seller could do that with the "newsletters"? I've never sent one out and never rec'd one from an Ebay seller. It would be good to get some feedback on that from eBay sellers. 

My solution is to take a "one off" item that's difficult to set a price on & list it high as a BIN BO for a few months. You may get some offers and questions. The least you get is the view count. It helps to determine an auction Start Price. 

[flipistics]

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@intimewithmusic wrote:

My solution is to take a "one off" item that's difficult to set a price on & list it high as a BIN BO for a few months. You may get some offers and questions. The least you get is the view count. It helps to determine an auction Start Price. 

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I think I'd almost suggest the opposite. Take the "one off" and set a high auction starting price (the price you'd set as BIN) and see what happens. You can relist and lower it once or twice if there's no bids, then move it over to BIN.

[intimewithmusic]

The reason to list as a BIN BO for a few months is to gather watchers and get feedback from collectors.. IE: "Advertise". You can include in the listing you will auction the item if it doesn't sell. (Creating a sense of urgency) 

In my way of thinking the reason to auction is to command a price higher than Fair Market Value by causing  a feeding frenzy. This happens if there's enough unique "widget" collector fish feeding at the time of the auction (watchers). Spontaneous random auctions are resrticted to  only have a few unique "widget" collector fish that happen to swim by during the short auction.  This may be OK for popular items such as a cell phone however the most buyers will pay is FMV. 

For "unique collectible widgets" there is no fair FMV.  Their value is determined by how many hungry fish are present at feeding time.

We often hear news stories like, " At Chisties Auction House Diana's pendant sold for a record $12 million to the surprise of the auction house. They expected $4million." (hypothetical) 

[mrdutch1001]

I still use auction format for many items, not because they are better suited to that format, in fact rarely do any of my competitors use auction format in some oof similar categories....BUT I still use auction format because GTC is a format that gives no sense of urgency for potential buyers to make a purchase....I have been selling here long enough to know that when GTC listings are used, they often just sit there and sit there and sit there...and after 10 days they just seem to become stagnant and just gather dust...rarely have I ever had a sale from a GTC listing after 10 days of a 30 day listing duration...I alternately use fixed price and auction format depending on the item/depending on the category/depending on the time of year...The shorter duration time has always worked best for my listings and 30 day duration just doesn't  work for my listings. I have 2 other selling sites where my listings are posted as fixed price...eBay gives me the choice to have auction or fixed price and I like having that choice...BTW, my auction start prices are very similar/very much same as the GTC fixed price so I never "lose $" by using auction format..

[flipistics]

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@mrdutch1001 wrote:

I still use auction format for many items, not because they are better suited to that format, in fact rarely do any of my competitors use auction format in some oof similar categories....BUT I still use auction format because GTC is a format that gives no sense of urgency for potential buyers to make a purchase....I have been selling here long enough to know that when GTC listings are used, they often just sit there and sit there and sit there...and after 10 days they just seem to become stagnant and just gather dust...rarely have I ever had a sale from a GTC listing after 10 days of a 30 day listing duration...I alternately use fixed price and auction format depending on the item/depending on the category/depending on the time of year...The shorter duration time has always worked best for my listings and 30 day duration just doesn't  work for my listings. I have 2 other selling sites where my listings are posted as fixed price...eBay gives me the choice to have auction or fixed price and I like having that choice...BTW, my auction start prices are very similar/very much same as the GTC fixed price so I never "lose $" by using auction format..

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That's interesting. I would say the counterpoint is that many people don't want to wait for something. When they decide they want it, they want it now. If they have to wait a few days for the auction to finish, they may buy it from someone else or lose interest.

I suspect there's no right or wrong way. It's interesting to see the different perspectives though.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@flipistics wrote:

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@mrdutch1001 wrote:

I still use auction format for many items, not because they are better suited to that format, in fact rarely do any of my competitors use auction format in some oof similar categories....BUT I still use auction format because GTC is a format that gives no sense of urgency for potential buyers to make a purchase....I have been selling here long enough to know that when GTC listings are used, they often just sit there and sit there and sit there...and after 10 days they just seem to become stagnant and just gather dust...rarely have I ever had a sale from a GTC listing after 10 days of a 30 day listing duration...I alternately use fixed price and auction format depending on the item/depending on the category/depending on the time of year...The shorter duration time has always worked best for my listings and 30 day duration just doesn't  work for my listings. I have 2 other selling sites where my listings are posted as fixed price...eBay gives me the choice to have auction or fixed price and I like having that choice...BTW, my auction start prices are very similar/very much same as the GTC fixed price so I never "lose $" by using auction format..

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That's interesting. I would say the counterpoint is that many people don't want to wait for something. When they decide they want it, they want it now. If they have to wait a few days for the auction to finish, they may buy it from someone else or lose interest.

I suspect there's no right or wrong way. It's interesting to see the different perspectives though.

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It's similar to the various techniques for bidding. Do you bid at beginning, watch or just monitor or lastly bid at the very end? Then there is bidding amount? A whole other can of worms.

-Lotz