My first foray into E-bay selling

[gene]

I am reminded, again, of the great, late, George Carlin.

If someone steals from you, they are a thief. If you steal from someone, they are dumb. LOL

On a different note, and in keeping with this forum's tradition of getting off topic, several months ago I heard a guy say,

"If, during the course of your day, you run into an a$$hole, then you ran into an a$$hole. If, during the course of your day, you run into 5 a$$holes, then you are an a$$hole."

I have actually been counting every day since, and I will admit that there have been a few days where I quit counting at 4. LOL

gene

[Steve at Silverstone Fabrics]

Hey Guy's, Thanks for reminding me of the different strategies  that occur when you have an auction vs a Buy It Now listing.

We always sell as a BIN......we determine the price point we want and then we want to sell it ASAP. With a BIN listing, you do not have to wait a week to sell the item. I know that we are missing on  "bidding wars" but we are happy with our pricing recipe.

We  have a group of customers that monitor our new listings and they make purchases within minutes of a fabric being listed.

While we are on the eBay topic.....have any of you lost an item you are bidding on because someone bought it with 3 seconds left on the auction? I know I have. Here is how they do it they use a "sniper" service . 

The one I use is AuctionSniper http://www.auctionsniper.com/     This is a cheap way to win auctions. It frees me up from having to be a the computer and it always me to "set" my maximum bid level. Steve

[BigJohn]

Sterry56:

        I've used      https://www.quicksnipe.com/     for some time now with lots of success, and it's free!

[Steve at Silverstone Fabrics]

BigJohn, "FREE".......Life is Good!  Thanks for the link. Steve

[kodydog]

I sold a Gibson guitar once on E-Bay. I had a couple bids and then it died at $ 250 with no activity for several days. On the day the auction was ending the price soared and just before it closed the price went nuts. It ended at over $ 1,000 because 3 bidders went to battle near the end.
Of course the winner contacted me and said " Sorry my wife had a hissy fit and I cannot buy it now ". I repeated the auction again and this time sold it for $ 1,200 and again the winner contacted me and said he had an emergency come up and couldn't pay. I ended up selling it privately to a professional studio musician in Nashville.

Ya know Mojo that would really suck. To go to all that the trouble then some idiot backs out of the deal. It would seem E-bay could somehow verify before they let any old clown start bidding. How do they know its not just some punk kid messing around.

[BigJohn]

Chris:

     When you have someone back out on an auction do you still have to pay Ebay? If you do it would really bite!

[sofadoc]

When you have someone back out on an auction do you still have to pay Ebay?

According to E-bay's resolution center, if a buyer has a history of unpaid items, they get their buying privileges taken away.
After the seller has taken the required steps, they can request that the case be closed, at which time they would be refunded the "final value fee".
The seller also has the option to offer the item to the next highest bidder, or re-list the item.

[sofadoc]

Here's the final tally:

I set the opening bid at $100. In the final 10 seconds of the auction, the bidding went from $107.50 to $142.50 (no doubt the handywork of Bidnip, or some other sniping service).
The button maker set was almost brand new. Rochford sells the same set for around $250. I could've easily sold the set privately for $125.

So the set sold for $142.50+ $20 shipping.
E-bay got $15.13 (9% of the final value)  Paypal got $5.01 (2.9%)

E-bay also had "insertion fees" which vary, depending on how many pics you upload. The first pic is free. Additional pics are .35 each. Enlargement option is .50 per pic.

[bobbin]

So what do you think of your overall "e bay experience"?  Are you about to become the next big thing on e-bay, or is selling privately easier?

[fingers]

 My best ebay experience was selling an out dated, professional audio/hearing tester......that I literally picked out of a dumpster while looking for boxes to ship ebay items in. Listed it not having a clue whether it worked or not and clearly stated the fact. In the end it sold for $130. Not bad for a little dumpster diving.

[sofadoc]

So what do you think of your overall "e bay experience"?  Are you about to become the next big thing on e-bay, or is selling privately easier?

The button maker experiment was technically a "wash". I've been watching similar sets on E-bay for over a year. I've seen used ones sell for more than the cost of a new set. I guess the ONLY time that E-bay shoppers exercise good bidding judgement, is when "Ole Doc" is the seller. >:(

I recently inheirited over 700 Beanie Babies in "mint" condition that have been stored in air-tight containers  for over 12 years. During the Beanie Baby craze, some of them sold for obscene amounts. I have no idea if there is still a big demand or not.

If I thought people would get into a bidding war for them, I'd try selling them individually, on in small lots on E-bay. But if I'm going to just end up selling them for 5 bucks apiece, I'd just as soon go the private route. Selling them on E-bay would involve taking and uploading a ton of pics, as well as a lot of packing and shipping.

[MinUph]

sofa,
 Give the beanies a shot on eBay. You might be surprised. I've had some auctions take off in the past and it is allot of fun watching the war. Packing and shipping a beanie can't be all that much work. A little box and some paper. You can use USPS to ship them and they will get picked up at your mail box. Just include the cost in your auction. Try one or two at first. Have fun with it.
  You could make a template of the best selling auction and reuse it just changing the pertinent information. eBay has a tool you can download and use for building auctions. It would help using this. It's called Turbo Lister.

[sofadoc]

sofa,
  Give the beanies a shot on eBay. You might be surprised.

I guess I'll go through them, and see if I have any rare ones. If all I have is a bunch of "99 centers", I'll probably just try to sell the whole lot locally.
An elderly retired couple live next door. Back in the day, they were antique dealers, where they made a decent living. But, now in their retirement, they tell me that they make more money selling small antique items on E-bay than they ever did in their "heyday".

[fragged8]

stuff you get for free or for very little is easy to sell on feebay.

its when you buy from manufacturers and get a tiny margin
is when you have trouble selling.