Making a Living from Your eBay Business (2nd Edition)

As you learned way back in Chapter 1, "So You Want to Start an eBay Business...," when you have an item to sell, you can choose to sell it in one of several different ways. While the most traditional way to sell is via eBay's standard online auction process, you can also choose various auction and fixed-price options. Which of these options is best for you? Table 21.1 takes you through the basics.

Table 21.1. eBay Pricing Options

Pricing Option

Pros

Cons

Traditional online auction

Good for items where you're not sure of marketplace upside, and for rare and collectible items; familiar to all experienced eBay buyers

Bad for commodity items; never sure of final price or results; makes you wait seven days to make the sale

Reserve price auction

Good for high-priced items; good if you have a minimum price in mind but you don't want to publicize the price

Confusing to some buyers; could reduce the number of bids on an item

Dutch auction

Good if you have a large quantity of the same item that you believe has upside potential

Confusing to many buyers; if you simply want to sell a bunch of items at a given price, use a fixed-price listing instead

Auction with Buy It Now option

Good if you think you can sell an item at a given price, while still maintaining the familiarity of the auction process; good for commodity items

Reduces the upside of unrestrained bidding

Fixed-price listing (for a fixed listing period)

Good for commodity items; good if you have quantities of a single item

Reduces the upside of unrestrained bidding; might turn off some buyers who prefer the traditional auction process

Fixed-price listing in an eBay Store

Good for commodity items; good if you have quantities of a single item; a good way to "park" items between auctions

Items are not as visible as they are on the main eBay site; no pricing upside

In years past, I would have never advised sellers to run anything but a traditional auction or an auction with the Buy It Now option. Today, however, an increasing number of transactions on the eBay site are of the fixed-price variety; more and more sellers are going the fixed-price route, and more and more buyers are buying fixed-price or Buy It Now items that they can receive faster than they can if they bid on an item listed for a seven-day auction. (Plus, there's no guarantee that they'll win the auction; when they buy a fixed-price or Buy It Now item, they're placing an actual order.)

Note

There are even more pricing options you can choose from, beyond those discussed here. For example, eBay offers the Best Offer option, which lets potential buyers make you an offer below your listed price; there's also eBay's Want It Now feature, which lets you hook up with interested buyers who've made a request for a specific item. While it pays to check out these other options, the basic choice of auction versus fixed-price remains the most important decision to make.

Should you go the auction route or the fixed-price route? It all depends on the type of product you're selling, the type of competition you face (both on and off eBay), and your own business expectations. For many sellers, running a traditional auction with the Buy It Now option is a good compromise, the best of both worlds, as it were. But that's not the only way to go, or necessarily always the best. You have to make this choice for yourself.

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