|
|
|
||||||||
|
Tip #11
Viva' Las Vegas, Baby!
Roll the dice and see what happens!
This particular section was tip #6 of the original “13 Ebay Tips”. After a period of time, I realized that was the wrong order! It should have been moved further back, to like #11 or even #12!
What I did now was try to put everything into a working order. I devoted the first 10 sections of this article into strategies that would help you make wise decisions BEFORE listing an item on Ebay! Now, the following sections will give you strategies on actually running real auctions.
By now, you should have some good thoughts as to the following topics:
A.) What type of seller are you? Auction, or Retail? (Tip #2)
B.) You should have an idea of what you want to sell. (Tips #3 and #4)
C.) You should have an idea of what NOT to sell. (Tips #4 and #6)
D.) You know how to properly research items to determine value. (Tip #5)
E.) You know how to avoid the Ebay “Traps” that will cost you money. (Tip #7)
F.) You know who you want to sell to, and how to entice them to bid your auctions (Tips #9 and #10)
Up to this point, we have covered a lot of pre-auction material. Now we are going to start learning different ways to put it together to make sales and most importantly, a profit!
Over the course of months, I have had many, many sellers email me to say how this section has helped their sales. Not only have they reported an increase in the number of viewers, but also an increase in their average sales. But before I begin this important section, I am going to stress this important fact! And this is something you need to drill into your head before continuing.
If the item you are selling has any value whatsoever, it will do good money!
If the item you are selling has no interest to anybody, it will die in its tracks!
Again, only the research you have completed will give you that answer! And again, I stress that 50% of your pre-auction work has to be research! No major corporation builds a new building without doing a demographics report. And you shouldn’t either!
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
"Kundo Electromagnetic Clock-Please Fix me!"
This is a perfect example of how Las Vegas style auctions work! I purchased this clock for ten-dollars, not working. My hopes were to get it operating and sell it for $65 to $75 on Ebay. I couldn't get it to work. So I listed it just hoping to get my money back. I started the auction at $9.95 and used the title shown above. A week later, it closed at $81.
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Online auctions are exciting. You can watch the value of your listing change not just daily, but sometimes hourly! Almost like the stock market, except the only direction you go is up!
Remember before, I told you people want to bid an auction when they know that their bid may be the possible winner! When you have an item worth $60, and your opening bid is $55…….BORING! And for some reason, people just hesitate to place that initial bid of $55 when they feel it’s somewhere else on Ebay for cheaper!
In the long run, I feel the best approach to selling on Ebay is an aggressive one! That means you need to offer auctions that buyers signed on to find in the first place! I am talking about NO RESERVE auctions starting UNDER a $10 opening bid regardless of the VALUE, and regardless of what you PAID!
If you are sitting there thinking to yourself “I just paid $90 for this widget. Does he mean to start the auction out at $5.00?” The answer to that question is YES!
This particular style of auction selling is what I call the Las Vegas Style! What you are actually doing is rolling the dice hoping to hit a bigger jackpot than just trying to fish and hopefully snag a retail buyer. And once again, this entire method goes back to what I stated above; If the item you are selling has any value whatsoever, it will do good money! And of course it has to do with CONFIDENCE in your pre-listing RESEARCH! If you take your time, and do things correctly, you will succeed!
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
The Grand Experiment! I put my techniques and reputation on the line in Oct. 2003 using this 100 year old vintage punch bowl set as the example. I took this set, and found 2 others very similar selling on Ebay. I posted this experiment on the AOL Online Auction Board, and called it Roy's Big Mouth!
I paid $25 for this set, but started the auction at $4.95 with NO RESERVE! Each night, I made a new post on the board showing current bidding on all 3 sets. At one point, my set was in last place!
As I progressed through the week, we discovered errors the other sellers made. All the errors could have been avoided had the sellers just read this entire Tip #11! And the best part of this is that other Ebay sellers or viewers were able to post their own comments and thoughts on the thread, so we were able to discover many things!
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
At the end of the week, my set closed at $202! This was about $45 higher than the next set. Again, it is interesting to note that all 3 sets were unique. I personally felt that the set that finished second was much more interesting than mine. But that seller made the mistake of closing the auction at 2:30 AM EST and received NO additional bids at all! My auction closed right around 9:00 PM EST, and received about $65 of additional bids within the last 60 minutes. I figured that the simple oversight the second seller made cost him or her around $50 in lost profits.
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
What kind of results can you expect? Like anything else, Ebay is an up and down world. Some weeks you wonder if people are even looking. Other weeks you check your descriptions to make sure you didn’t say the item was made of 24K gold! You just don’t know from day to day, or week to week how things will go. But I can tell you this. This Las Vegas Style auction, over the course of just a few months, will produce higher averages than by taking more conservative, expensive approaches.
Look at it like the stock market! Conservative people buy bonds. Aggressive investors by stocks! And any investment advisor will tell you that over the course of time STOCKS have out-performed all other types of investments! Which means if you hold out, you will realize a larger return on your Ebay investments! But like the stock market, you have to learn to ride out the low periods.
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
Starting your listings at dirt money usually will cause quite a stir as well as really standing out in the listings. People love to bid when they know that their bid may be the winner! Can you guess which listing to the left is mine?
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Warning: This is a free publication open to all people wishing to view it. The rights of
this publication belong to me. No duplication by written or electronic means is allowed
without my approval. No links are permitted without my approval. In the event you
were spammed and paid for this site, you were conned! Please forward as much
information as possible concerning any advertisement to sell this material.
|
||||||||||||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |