19 Nov
2006
19 Nov
'06
10:59 p.m.
You are not thinking like a successful seller. Some comments...
Sellers often miss the fact that if they start the
auction at
a lower price, they get several people interested in the item.
These people will often start bidding against each other.
There are plenty of times, especially with something that is either
really obscure (low demand due to not many potential buyers) or fairly
common (commodity items) when starting an auction too low ends up in
failure. Sure, two people can get into a bidding war, but often the
bidding war is just a bunch of smoke if one or more of the players are
bottom feeders. There are plenty of bottom feeders at any auction,
live or online.
With a reserve, many will quite early, even if they
are only
a few dollors away from the reserve.
When reserves are not met, no harm done to the seller. A reserve makes
a lot of sense when an item does have a market, and it is known that
there are people willing to pay a good price, but are not always in
the market. If the seller can stand having things not reach auction,
but eventually will at a good price - all the better. It is something
that many people have to learn when selling - that a string of
failures will often end up all the better.
They just get frustrated.
But the item sticks in their minds. Collectors tend to forget about
many human emotions when the desire to have something overtakes the
rest. Often the frustration dies out, and a seller starts to lust for
the thing that caused all the problems in the first place. When it
comes to higher ticket items, it is often wise to set a high reserve,
expecting it not to get hit, just to let people know the item is in
the market. This will give many more sellers time to scrape money
together for the more realistic sale.
Sellers also should not start there titles with things
like
"vintage" or "rare". The people that will most likely pay a
good price already know how rare an item is and what they
should bid for it.
Some of these words make sense (not the variations on LOOK - this I do
not understand). Sure, all the jaded Ebay buyers ignore or filter out
such words, but the new potential buyers often do not. Capturing the
attention to these new buyers, often people just getting into
collecting, is very important for the long term health of a seller.
They often become very loyal customers.
I doubt anyone
bids on an iten because someone said it was rare.
People do indeed search for some of these common words if they are new
to Ebay or a specific field of collecting.
There is a point to many of the apparently wasteful or silly things
that Ebay sellers do. Those things get positive results. If the
results were insignificant or negative, then experienced sellers would
not do them.
--
Will