hi all
i just have a quick question
if i am selling an item for 100$
should i start my auction with less than 10$ or any amount just to be close to the 100$ (the actual price i am trying to sell it with)
and does that affect on the Final value fees?
Your listing fee is what will be effected by choosing either strategy. A low start to the auction is the cheapest listing fee option, and it's also usually a good way to start generating interest from bidders.
What you will usually find is all the bargain hunters will see the possibility of stealing it for 10 or 20 dollars and will kick the bidding off. Of course what you are then hoping for is that there is enough interest in the item from the more serious buyers that will start to drive the price upwards, ultimately ending up with a tidy profit.
If you start high, of course you still have a chance of selling it, providing your asking value isn't too expensive for the the ebay market.
Just remember that you have up to 12 hours from the close of auction to pull your listing if you think you're in trouble, still going to pay your listing fee, can't get away from that, but if you did choose to start at 0.99 and you didn't have many watchers and even less bidders about 13 hours out from the auctions end, then you could pull it.
Of course the problem there is that most serious bidders won't usually enter the action too early, I myself only ever bid on an item that I want within the last 5 seconds.
So by pulling it 13 hours out, you could well be loosing a sale at a good price. You can't always judge the ultimate success of your item by the watchers. You can get a lot of rubber neckers just interested in seeing how much you get for it, could even be people thinking of selling the same and researching you.
So just because you have 27 watchers, doesn't mean you are going to get what you want for your item if the bidding is low 13 hours out. Of course on the flip side, just because you only have 3 watchers doesn't mean your item isn't going to go through the roof, those 3 could all be deadly serious about buying and willing to pay what ever it takes to own it.
Throw into the mix the fact that not everyone puts everything they want on a watch list, I wish they would lol, would make it a lot easier to work out the market, but for some reason they don't.
I've had items that I was going to pull early because of slow bidding and only a couple of watchers, but decided to stick it out because I trusted the market, and 15 minutes out, I still had only a couple of watchers, but a hand full of new bidders had entered the game and everything pretty much went as anticipated.
It's all about knowing how to read your market, and unfortunately that's something that only comes with experience.
More confusing than ever now, isn't it lol
Different strategies work for different products and at different times of the week and day. It's all about test marketing, trying out some different strategies until you find the most productive, and cost effective for what you are selling.
Good luck with it.