eBay

thebookcompany22 · ‎07-14-2022

hello everyone -

I have been actively doing lots of regular auctions every week for the last 90 days [books] .. its been an interesting journey playing around with different sales windows (ie: having listings end around 7pm MST cause its early hours for international buyers -- selling weekdays over weekends etc etc)

For LONG TERM sellers -- is it better to just list an item with a buy now offer?

ie: book is listed at $35/45/65 with a make an offer option

versus regular $1 auction items which could sell for any rate (averages around $35 per item) -- any feedback and suggestions from experienced sellers would be appreciated.

Just seeking to maximize offerings and reach with our potential buyer audience --

I like the idea of doing buy now listings with a "make an offer" option as they stay on the ebay listings for 28 days .. but, i am open to any suggestions from experienced ebay folk.

Thank you - thank you.

J

reallynicestamps · ‎07-14-2022

EBay brands itself as an auction site, but hasn't really been one for about 20 years, since Stores started being included in Search.

Only about 15% of listings are Auction and most of those have either a Buy It Now or Best Offer option, either of which changes the auction to Fixed Price.

Auctions also have a much higher rate of Unpaid Items, because buyers get sick of waiting and move on.

On my bookselling ID, I use Fixed Price with Best Offer. When the month is up the listing automatically relists at no labour to me.

Books are a long tail item and are slow to sell, so having them up for a month is an immediate benefit.

Never never never use $1 openings for auctions.

Remember all eBay suggestions are good for eBay not necessarily for sellers.

Price your listings to cover all your costs and make a profit. And your costs include your labour.

The minimum wage in BC is 25c a minute.

If you are unsure of pricing, take a look at Addall.com for the pricing on a dozen different book sites, including ABE and AZ.

Most of my books are cheap SF/F paperbacks and my prices include the shipping cost. When I can't ship by lettermail, I use Calculated Shipping like you.

It does help to have a niche. Do you ever go to When Words Collide? It has been virtual for the past three years but they usually do have a lively dealer floor.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-17-2022

Thanks!

Have been doing $1 auctions to gauge the market and it averages out okay.

In the fall aiming to do more buy now and sit on inventory.

byto253 · ‎08-18-2022

If you have not, suggest checking out Chitchats as a shipping option. For some items it will likely be a good saving on shipping, just depends on size and weight. They have 3 drop locations in Calgary as well. It can be tough to compete with the US media mail rates.

ilikehockeyjerseys · ‎08-18-2022

Auctions only work well for items that have an extremely high level of demand. They do not work well for most collectibles, or niche items. Those items tend to have a limited amount of buyers, so they will never reach maximum value. You're better off pricing your Buy It Now so that the total price (BIN+Shipping) is similar to the cheapest price shipped to Canada from other competing listings. Then you can use tactics like markdowns, send offers to buyer, or best offer to sell the item quicker. Most collectibles or niche items take months to sell.

I sell mostly out of print media, priced for the Canadian market, and I usually expect an individual item to take 3 or so months to sell. Something extremely high end (priced at a few hundred bucks) will either sell right away because there is a collector actively looking for it, or it will take a very long time to sell because you have to wait until a collector decides they need it. For a $500 piece of OOP media, there might be a handful of people in all of the USA/Canada who will pay that for it. So you can imagine, you won't find a buyer very quickly. If you auction something like that, you're going to end up getting a lot less for it because the demand isn't there to drive it up to the upper end of the market value.

What I find auctions most useful for is liquidating. I have thousands of pieces of media pass through my eBay store yearly as a one man operation. Due to things like changes in demand, bad stock decisions, or just having extra common inventory from collections I purchased where the desirable items hve already sold, I might end up with a bunch of stale inventory. If I auction a lot of stale items, maybe I only walk away with $1 per item after deducting eBay fees and shipping, but it clears up space for items that aren't likely to sell on their own, and it gives me some additional cash flow. These items are usually sunk cost type items, where I have already turned a profit on the original collection they came from.

In short, I would avoid auctions, unless it is a liquidation type scenario or unless it is an extremely high demand item with hundreds or thousands of potential buyers who all value the item at a specific price. I assume most OOP books wouldn't fall under that description.

byto253 · ‎08-18-2022

I will use an auction as well when I am not sure on value, but have a good idea for a minimum value. I will run the auction, and if there is only one bidder, I get an acceptable price. If nobody bids I will run it BIN at the opening bid amount, and that works a lot of the time since many people are not tuned in to auctions. And here and there, enough to keep doing it, an item gets run up a little or a lot on the auction.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-20-2022

Thanks for the insights everyone.

Contemplating setting up the eBay store subscription for the ability to send offers or include coupons for the buyers that .. I ship to.

I am about to order a bunch of books ($3,4,5 a piece) and then setup a but it now option.

Then do the $1 auctions to draw in folks however-- it's all a gambit as sometimes you get a buyer that picks up 9x items for $16 pls shipping cause there was no bidders.

Other times there's bidding wars and shoots up to $40-50-100 sometimes.

I should value my time to make the items and price accordingly -- I just don't want to sit on items for 2-3 months to sell .. feels like a mixed bag.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-20-2022

I'll check out your offerings to get a better sense of it all.

Buy it now does make the most sense -- I've been getting advice from a an old eBay power seller (10g a mo before he was banned - haha) and he says just stick to the auctions as there's a niche market thats always seeking out these books (occult, philosophy books)

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-20-2022

I've heard of that shipping place however-- my studio is downtown Calgary and to transport items, buy labels, upload tracking codes etc-- not sure it's much of a saving compared to just going through ebay.

Maybe I am missing something @byto253 [also for context I no longer drive since moving back to the city a few months ago--]

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎08-20-2022

@thebookcompany22 wrote:
hello everyone -

I have been actively doing lots of regular auctions every week for the last 90 days [books] .. its been an interesting journey playing around with different sales windows (ie: having listings end around 7pm MST cause its early hours for international buyers -- selling weekdays over weekends etc etc)

For LONG TERM sellers -- is it better to just list an item with a buy now offer?

ie: book is listed at $35/45/65 with a make an offer option

versus regular $1 auction items which could sell for any rate (averages around $35 per item) -- any feedback and suggestions from experienced sellers would be appreciated.

Just seeking to maximize offerings and reach with our potential buyer audience --

I like the idea of doing buy now listings with a "make an offer" option as they stay on the ebay listings for 28 days .. but, i am open to any suggestions from experienced ebay folk.

Thank you - thank you.

J

As an FYI the coupon thang is only on dot com so would mean either free or flat rate shipping. It's supposed to evenually be available on dot ca but there is no official timeline.

Help page dot com

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/seller-hub-promotions?id=4094&st=3&pos=3&query=Selle...

Dot Ca options:

dot com options:

-Lotz

clemowbooks · ‎08-20-2022

Books can be slow sellers.

I have sold books that have been listed for five years or more.

One change I would make is switching your listings from dotCA to dotCOM.

First because your lowest price immediately become 20c higher ( 99c US is $1.20 Cdn.)

Then because many US buyers are confused by seeing multiple currencies.

Overseas customers understand the US dollar, but not necessarily the Canadian dollar.

A drawback is that you would have to use Flat Rate rather than Calculated Shipping, which could be important because parcel rates are based on destination as well as dimensions and weight.

byto253 · ‎08-20-2022

If you can get your parcels to one of the 3 Calgary drop off spots, it is actually very easy. If you cannot, that is moot of course.

The process is straight forward. I import Ebay sales info to Chitchat (1 click), then just fill in the weight and dimensions and buy the label. The customs, addressing and uploading of tracking info to Ebay is done automatically by chitchats.

byto253 · ‎08-20-2022

Or at least items under 2 KG so flat rate small packet is applicable.

flipistics · ‎08-21-2022

@thebookcompany22 wrote:
I'll check out your offerings to get a better sense of it all.

Buy it now does make the most sense -- I've been getting advice from a an old eBay power seller (10g a mo before he was banned - haha) and he says just stick to the auctions as there's a niche market thats always seeking out these books (occult, philosophy books)

He also sold in very high traffic categories. Auctions require a lot of eyeballs.

I would recommend NOT using auctions, or if you really want to, START the auction at the lowest price you would be happy with. If you're worried about leaving money on the table when using buy it now, then you could always overprice your items by a good bit and discount the items by 10% a week or something like that. At the very least, you could experiment with a few different approaches and see what works best for you.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-21-2022

I mostly just the app and edit listings on the site (.can) for auto relisting [kinda hate that] and subtle bonus options that the app doesn't have -- like second chance offerings etc

Good to know that the store features for Canada aren't the same as I thought.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-21-2022

Didn't know about the ability to do .com listings -- always thought eBay just auto adjusted the starting prices based on the buyers country.

. . .

So far I've been selling about 2/3 of what I list for books via 7 day auctions starting at $1 with. $5 handling and buyer pays shipping -- usually toss a deal on handling costs when they win 3+ items as costs if packaging and cardboard via uline isn't that much.

We mainly do books in the occult / philosophy / Magick - woo woo so there's a niche audience.

So far I've been averaging around that $40cdn /$30usd -- I am just convinced I have to get my volume up as we are allowed 220ish listings .. as mentioned on the thread we will be ordering a bunch of books via Amazon at author pricing ($3/4/5$) and listing as buy now starting at regular prices (25-45$)

It's just interesting to see buyers win our stuff and then relist it on their site for $85 and I wonder if I am missing out as I'd prefer not to sit on inventory .. but, don't want to devalue the time to craft it all.

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-21-2022

I'll check out that chitchat and see where these locations are .. I have the account setup that buyers pay for shipping so I don't generally think about it as I'm more focused in getting it dropped off at the post office the same day we print labels to keep our stats up 🐱

Good to know regardless

thebookcompany22 · ‎08-21-2022

Like that idea of buy now offering and adjust the prices down a bit each week.

Starting in the fall I'll be going from $1 to a higher starting auction price.

With the $5 handling cost it covers our material costs if it undersells .. it can be disheartening to make a leather book and it sells for way way way way less than what we figured it would go for.