Hello All,
I am a 20 year seller on ebay and have done quite well without ebay telling me how to sell my items. I have kept great records on the cycles of selling an item listed as a Buy It Now, which is all I use. A typical item I list with a 5-7 day Buy It Now will sell 75% of the time within the first 24 hours of listing it or the last 12 hours before the listing ends. The days in between start and end of the Buy It Now account for only 25% of my sales. Most buyers search new listings or watch ones that are about to end. Everything in the middle seems to get "lost" unless it is a very unique item folks are hunting down and those are the ones I sell during the "lost" period. I have no use for 30 Day or Until Cancelled listings - to me they just do not work. I utilize my 50 free listings during each month to maximize my main items and use the Freebies for my less profitable or less desirable items.
I am going to use my 50 free listings now each month in a 5-7 day auction format with a starting bid of what I would have asked in a Buy It Now format with a HUGE tag line in the auction stating that the first bidder that places a bid will have the opportunity to purchase it at the starting bid price by sending me an email. Then I will just respond thier email with an offer at that price and that will be that.
ebay has totally lost sight on what has made this site work - it's the seller. If the sellers scale back so will their final value fees. I will never pay a listing fee as I pay hundreds of dollars in final value fees now. Big mistake ebay, this post comes to you from a very successful professional outside sales person that uses ebay as a hobby. I know what I'm talking about.
