Crazy low shipping costs

Hi there,
Does anyone knows how someone can sell an item on ebay just for 0.99$ and ship international free from china ??? I saw someone sold item on ebay. how??? Do u guys know how???how I can sale item like that. I saw wondering how much to parcel and cost ? On top she did make some profit so how it could be ..or wat r the possibility ??? I really wana know .please help .
Thank you
Norphel

Hi Norphel,

There is a marketing strategy called "loss leading' or "loss leaders" The strategy works like this, you list cheap items with free shipping, essentially trying to make the deal look too good to be true, offering a crazy cheap bargain so someone will buy it. On the sale, you then have their contact details which you can now market to them direct outside of eBay and promote your own website where you in turn hope to then convert that customer into regular customer, which you can then make money from in the end game.

It's also called "setting the hook" You have to be prepared to take the loss in the hope that you get a longer term payoff. So anyone can certainly do it, but you can never make short term money from it lol, it's all about running at a loss. Think of it this way, when you have a marketing budget, you may have $5,000 allocated for newspaper advertising. Well, that's 5K you have accounted for to lose, so loss leading works the same way. You allocate x amount that you are prepared to lose to market your business in this way and away you go.

So what you are seeing is just good old fashioned smoke and mirrors marketing in action. Either that or the person has just decided to lose money for no reason at all, either is possible of course lol

Hello Norphel,

To add to Marc's point, these types of sales would most probably be bait to something bigger.

These items would usually be connected to another product that you very well will need with the cheaper item, however, the rate is not at all close to $0.99. But because people think that they had a great steal with the first item costing $0.99, they go ahead and buy it anyway. Well this is just one other scenario that may explain how they can away with having low prices on eBay.

I also had an experience as a buyer from eBay-- Rachel mentioned another item needed for the super sale item, and the item connected to it is sold at a cost that some profit would cover the loss for the cheap item, I am not saying it is scam, just that when I learned the ropes more, I think it is in practice than more people realize.

1. There is a difference in economies. You have to earn five times as much here to get by financially.

2. The Chinese government subsidizes shipping.

3. eBay and USPS brokered a trilateral ePacket agreement with China Post that gives China bulk shipping rates (which apply to individual packages as well) at a rate far below what we have to pay and which INCLUDES tracking to the U.S. destination and which does NOT require China to offer reciprocal tracking.

ePacket is quite fast and extremely economical and enables Chinese sellers selling small items to retain their TRS status

Domestic shippers sending small items by First Class Letter or Flat do not get similar tracking and thus cannot be TRS without charging USPS shipping rates that are 10 times what Chinese sellers pay. In other words, we can't compete pricewise.