My best advice, and you may be doing this already, is to do a search for completed auctions on the items you want to sell, so you can see what prices they're going for. That can give you an idea of whether it's even worth listing, and whether you want to set a Buy it Now price.
Yep, I've done that. I know a number of the things I would want to sell go routinely for around $10, plus s/h. I haven't figured out if that's enough money to bother. Others routinely go for say $30-40 . . . **when they sell.** For some things there's a big enough swing in the completed-sale price that I think it's a matter of who happens to be shopping under what kind of gift (or other) deadline when you offer the item.
I'd be interested in finding out some of this info, too... since I have a number of things I'm sure someone, somewhere would want enough to pay for. In particular, I came into possession of a friend's upgrade path from Apple II through some of the later Mac-in-a-Box models, almost everything still in the original packaging. They've been taking up a lot of room in our garage for about eight years and I'm pretty convinced now that we're never going to do anything with them. :-p
Sheryl -- who sells a lot on ebay and has read the econ research on it -- says the best time to end an auction is Sunday night. Holiday weekends are generally NOT the best time, people are busy doing other things.
I never use a buy it now. It costs more to do that, for one thing. I'm pretty barebones with my own ebay listings.
Check paypal's rules -- if you're pulling in enough money for sales you have to switch to a commercial account. Also, figure out in advance how you're going to ship and what your shipping costs will be; it's worth taking things like books to the post office to weigh them. Once you have the weight it's easy enough to calculate shipping.
And expected price below which it's not worth it? Well, how much of a hassle is it to get to the post office vs dropping it off at Goodwill? I usually ebay things that are fairly easy to ship that will sell for more than $10 - $15.
I, too, have found Sunday night to be a good end time. I only use Buy It Now when it's something expensive and with a designer name attached. If the money's not the primary objective I'd look into the places that do it all for you, because listing things, taking pictures, etc. can be much more time consuming than you realize ex ante.
Comments 5
Reply
Reply
Reply
I never use a buy it now. It costs more to do that, for one thing. I'm pretty barebones with my own ebay listings.
Check paypal's rules -- if you're pulling in enough money for sales you have to switch to a commercial account. Also, figure out in advance how you're going to ship and what your shipping costs will be; it's worth taking things like books to the post office to weigh them. Once you have the weight it's easy enough to calculate shipping.
And expected price below which it's not worth it? Well, how much of a hassle is it to get to the post office vs dropping it off at Goodwill? I usually ebay things that are fairly easy to ship that will sell for more than $10 - $15.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment