Another newbie hoping for Ebay success

Hello
I just purchased a pallet from Jimmy Huber and am grateful for all he is doing for us. It does seem like everyone here is trying to lend a helping hand where they can (I have read a lot of your posts). Earlier, I had read a book about Ebay selling and one of the topics was a discussion about how to get a lot of action on your auctions was to start all of your listings at $1.00 (especially for the good sellers). My questions stem from this- how do I know it is a good selling item? What makes me uneasy about starting something like a swimsuit top out at $1.00 is that is where I hope to get my most profit, (parenthetical question-do ladies just buy swimsuit tops without matching bottoms?) I remember a post from Jimmy saying Ebay has turned into everybody only willing to pay rock bottom prices (or at least that is how I interpreted it). I have Auction Inspector & have went through the tutorial a couple of times, is that where I do my research about what is a hot selling item and what size of numbers am I looking for?
Also my wife doesn't think now is a good time to sell winter items and I would tend to agree with her which is about 25% of the pallet, is it better to wait and list those in the fall?
Finally (for now anyway) is there any advantage to the idea that your Ebay user name (or eventual store) should be something that is similar to what you are selling?
Thanks in advance for your time:
D. Wayne Lee

I have to seriously object to the $1.00 starting bid. Trust me Dont Do it. I lost about $20,000 in money I could have made over the holidays by running these auctions at 99Cent starting bids. Yes you can generate alot of bids on many items but you have a major drawback. I was selling $300 $400 and $500 Brand new items for 99Cents because I was lax and Ran all of them too low. But I had thousands of items to sell. YOU DONT!

What sells high today might not have a buyer tomorrow. Remember that when your selling these packs. I currently am running large items that wont fit into a Pack. And I set all of them at my price and sit back patiently. I have only listed about 30 items and sold around 17 but have made over $1,000 in the last 2 weeks by being patient. Creating a Good listing and setting my own starting bid.

Some items I had a $49.99 to $69.99 Starting bid. They didnt sell the first time but they sold for over $100 the next week when more bidders were around to see it and fight for it.

You paid for these items, Dont take anything less then what you Want to get for them. If your items dont sell fast enough. Get more product to sell and put them in your store. They will sell, You just cant be anxious and expect everything to sell immediately. Thats just not how business works. Im sitting on about 8 pallets worth of items. Eventually they will sell. But that takes time. But when they do sell they will sell at my price. :D

As far as winter type clothing you can sell them anytime of the year. Its not warm everywhere. I am currently selling a Pallet of Electric blankets for Top Dollar on amazon and A couple on eBay. A couple people actually complained about the electric blankets they got in the old profit packs. So i stopped putting them into the packs. There was a whole pallet of them. I took the same electric blanket and listed it on ebay and sold it for $76 Dollars. On amazon were dropping them for around $95 (Oh yeah did I forget to mention the Retail Sticker on the Blankets is $59.99 :mrgreen: ) This also goes with the statement I made earlier that there can be items in your packs that may buy most of your pack value in that 1 sale. People didnt want the electric blankets so they lost out on an item im now selling for above retail value consistently. There is a market for any product. Just start the bid at your price and let it sell itself.

Thanks Jimmy for your advice!

D. Wayne Lee

I completely agree with Jimmy. Never start your auctions at .99 just for the sake of low listing fees and fast bids..

There are people who search by 'cheapest item first' just looking for the cheap deals. I always start my bid to at the very least cover the cost of my listing fees and a small profit for myself. If it goes higher, then that's great, if it dosent then I've still made a profit.. If it dosen't sell then vamp up your discription and list it again. But don't cut yourself short by falling for the .99 listing...

To find out if something is a good selling item, type the name of the item into the eBay advanced search box, then check the box marked 'completed listings'. You will get a list of similar products that have sold in the past few weeks along with the average selling price of those items. Never base your research on the 'current bids' an item is receiving because most of the bidding on eBay is done in the last five minutes before the auction ends.

I disagree with Jimmy but that's because I'm a risk taker too.

If you can get away with starting an item at one dollar, I say do it. Even if its a high priced item.

Because all that counts in the end is that it gets sold and the customer is happy and what creates anything is traffic.

If you have something to sell starting at one dollar only, its a good advantage because if one knows what they are doing they can drive an avalanche of traffic to their items and to their store.

Eventually the price will hit peak ceiling or go above it. If you have lots and lots of traffic, its not even necessary to start it at $1 as you could do it basically full price.

I mean realistically, Amazon is doing pretty well especially in my own business. And they are doing that big sale for nearly 2 weeks where you can list items at full price for basically nothing. Not more than .50 cents per item.

I see many ways to generate monumental volumes of traffic but I found the best way, is through basic traffic exchanges and also high volume safelists. Combining these tools with your own knowledge, can create unpredictable results and explosive sales.

Just don't tell anyone else exactly how to do it, and you're going to be rolling in sales no matter what time of the year it is. Maybe not just your store either, maybe in all your business and affiliate businesses. That's what I have discovered. And it takes a risk, because everything in life does involve risk.

I have to admit . I'm not much of a risk taker anymore with ebay. It flows one of 2 ways . Good or bad. Ive just seen way too many auctions with high valued items go for pocket change. Our very first truckload we listed the first 180 items in 1 week. That week 169 Sold. Every single item was listed at 99 Cents and every item was Macys housewares. We made about $6700 on those items. All very nice. 98 sold for a decent price some could have been better. But the remaining Sold for 99 Cents to 2 or 3 dollars. And many were worth over $200 and Up to $500. If I had been more patient and listed the items with a better starting bid then that could have been an additional $5,000 or $7,000 more in profit.

We actually did this a couple times before we decided enough was enough.

Now if you have nothing but High demand items like electronics or so. Yeah go for it. But if your doing basic hard goods I don't think its a great idea untill you research the item and see how high the demand is.

On the flip-side, we can always take advantage of those sellers who list at 99 Cents. Get it for a great bargain and then resell for a huge profit. If you market well you can make some good profit.

I agree with Jimmy in the sense that starting items at 99 cents can set you back - IF You haven't Researched what prices others have sold.

It's all about Researching and Marketing.

Wayne Larimore
Link hidden: Login to view
Link hidden: Login to view

Heres a good example of how it can and cant work. Of course it depends on the product for one thing. If you selling underwear 99 cents is no big deal...if your selling a $500 electronics item ok then it is. It also depends how many items you sell and if your a really established and have a loyal fan base.

There is a clothing seller...high designer labels...suits VS and such. They have 10,000 auctions run a week. Everything starts at 99 cents. They are a titanum powerseller (gross at least 150k a month) People go crazy buying from them. Its not uncommon to see the same person buy 50 items in one shot. The bigger sellers like designer suits can easily rake in $120 and up. Mind you wholesale cost ranges from $14-24 depending where you buy and if they are buying truckload of mixed items from where I think they could be paying as little as $5. Mind while these retail for 280-320 they usually on sale in the store for 69-79 bucks. Not a bad profit. On the other hand youll see hundreds of there items go for pennies even with that massive traffic and loyal customer base.

Its a crap shoot..if your a risk taker and really dont need to recoop your money go for it. If you know people know u and theyll go nuts and you have proven success go for it. I usualy do 2 or 3 a week to gain some interest..it goes both ways for me. The rest I set at a min of $10 profit after fees and such. If it doesnt sell after a month in the store or on auction I send off a batch to liquidation.com were i still usually make about 5 a piece after there commission