The current state of auctions?

[sakic92710]

**IF** (& it's a big IF) I wanted to change several of my 'buy it now' listings to auctions, what do you think the chances of increased sales are?  I wonder because (another if) - IF the view counts are correct, who wants to start auctions on items generating 1-3 views over the course of several days?  Currently, I have 0 auctions running.  How is your situation regarding auctions?  Cheers!   🙂   BTW - no comments on whether my items are 'in demand.'   12 sales in June then 37 in July.  Nothing was 'in demand' but my sales went up over 300%  from month to month, suddenly.  Now this month, like Mar, Apr, May, June, is starting out pathetic again.  In NEED of a much higher rate of sales.

[selsa84]

I ran 207 auctions starting on Sunday and when I searched for them by going thru categories only 48 were showing. I ended them and relisted as buy it now. Alot of sellers say auctions are dead unless it's a very rare item and I definitely agree now. Auctions just don't get the exposure they used to. 

[albertabrightalberta]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

**IF** (& it's a big IF) I wanted to change several of my 'buy it now' listings to auctions, what do you think the chances of increased sales are

  BTW - no comments on whether my items are 'in demand.'   12 sales in June then 37 in July.  Nothing was 'in demand' but my sales went up over 300%  from month to month, suddenly.  

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Why ask for advice but limit people to the kind of advice you want? 

[Anonymous]

Depends on the item. Only highly in demand items do well at auction because you need at least two people who want it bad enough.

NVM - Just saw the demand comment

[12345jamesstamps]

I went from auctions to buy it now. Just the opposite. I had mostly International buyers on auctions. Now its all domestic buyers on buy it now. And I don't have to wait to get paid. I might do a few auctions later but now I am just going to list as many as buy it now items as I can. I have a bigger longer following base of buyers for buy it now items than auctions. I notice when my auctions were over the followers were gone too. Buy as I keep adding more buy it now items my follower base increases. Have to say mailing from Canada with tracking is not cheap outside of Canada. Might get more International buyers but the shipping might go up due to tracking. I prefer to keep adding stuff and forgo the auctions for now. My shipping is cheaper and less problems with International buyers. 

[coolections]

If you do not intend to run an auction as it is intended to be run, then it would be useless to even attempt doing auctions. You can't just change an over-priced BIN item to an auction without lowering the price and allowing bidders to raise the price. Auction buyers expect to see a lower starting price than any other BIN listed.

[coolections]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Only highly in demand items do well at auction. 

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The OP does not allow for those types of comments.

[sakic92710]

Maybe you should not assume what I would be doing if I switched items over to auctions.  Especially since everything you just said about my intentions is completely wrong. There is a saying about the word 'assume.'  My advice to you is to look it up.   🙂

[sakic92710]

The same broken records come on here telling everyone only to sell items that are in demand.  No one knows what might sell.  Anything could sell at any time.  🙂

[aeparts1]

On my personal account, I switch items back & forth between auction & BIN fairly regularly.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I'll have something up for a BIN of $50 up for 2 months, no sale. Switch it to an auction at a start of $35, it sells for $75. An auction will get no bids at $30, I'll BIN at $50, sells in a day. Sometimes the stuff doesn't sell no matter what I try. But I do try different things, like raising the price, rather than lowering it. Generally though, I start new inventory items as an auction, maybe run them thru a couple of times if they don't sell, then go to BIN for a while.

I focus mainly on selling 30+ years old & older car parts & specialty tools. I do branch out when I find something interesting, beer items, cast iron cookware & the like. Maybe 125 items up now, usually 300-400 sales a year. Hard to do personal sales when a fair chunk of your work day is spent eBaying.

[stephenmorgan]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

The same broken records come on here telling everyone only to sell items that are in demand.  No one knows what might sell.  Anything could sell at any time.  🙂

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Of course people know what sales.

I have 1000's of items I know would be a hard sale because of the massive amount of competition and would list these as But it Now.

I have hundreds of items that are very difficult to find. I would only list these as a Auction. 

The draw back to Auctions is they have limited exposure time before they end where as Buy it Now automatically renews.

[Anonymous]

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@coolections wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Only highly in demand items do well at auction. 

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The OP does not allow for those types of comments.

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I know, I put a disclaimer at the end of my post.

[cards98765]

From what I've seen in sports cards BIN regularly gets at least 50% over auctions.  I ran a few auctions a while ago but unless something drastically changes, I don't plan on running more.  Also, with BIN you can require immediate payment with auctions ... payment was . . . s.l.o.w.e.r.  So I wouldn't recommend it.

[gibsonbk]

I only do auctions to use up my free listings.  I notice that I will have a auction with lots of views and watchers but no bids.  When it ends I relist it at Buy it Now at a higher price and it sell right away.  In general I sell far more BIN than auction

[mam98031]

I stopped running auctions a few years ago as they simply stopped working for me after about mid 2014.  Before that I did pretty good with auctions.  I've tested it a couple times each year since and still the auctions do not get me much in sales.  

Auctions are about 15% of Ebay's total listings.  It has dropped that far because they only seem to work well in certain categories and not so much in others.  

I just suggest you do some testing on your own and see what your results are.  When auctions were good for me I found that 7 day auctions had the best return and having them end Sunday early evening gave me the best return.

Good luck!!