@keziak wrote:
Since what you are suggesting is nothing more than BIN with more work (and potential ebay repurcussions ) for you, just list everything else sell as a cheap BIN and quit trying o squeeze extra bucks out of them.
What repurcussions?
I run hundreds of FP listings so I am not unaware of that option. I like to run book lots through auctions first. I have a theory that people see an auction is going to end soon and may bid to get it. There is no urgency for buying FP stuff, it can sit there for months. Often I have moved lots from the store to auction format and then they sell.
Right now not much, but ebay has the place set up so that you can get dings on your account if you don't sell to the first bidder just right. The paranoia leads ebay to believe that you might be doing an off ebay tansaction that is cutting ebay out of fees. And considering that sellers that are getting their postage off ebay are finding that ebay can not get the numbers right when it comes to their dashboard- I would not do anything that would force ebay to do math, and/or look at my account with suspicion.
Then there is the fact that often when ebay makes policy changes for their latest money grab, they will make those changes retroactive. I can see ebay installing a fee for ending the listing early. Those potential repercussions, I am sure that there could be more.
I would not run lots of anything on ebay because of the potential for a buyer to cherrypick, but can understand what you are doing. You acknowledge that people will bid on listings when they are about to end, but they usually will watch them first, so you should be able to tell if there is going to be interest at the end.
The way ebay is set up now is that if you set up a fixed price listing and leave it sit, ebay will gradually drop it in search results, but if you edit/change the listing, ebay will boost it giving it a much better chance of selling. Auctions are incapable of sitting so they get auto boosts.
But for the past 10+ years, ebay has been doing everything to lure mall shoppers to the site as buyers and in doing so phasing out the merchandise/sellers that bring the collectors. Right now the majority of merchandise on ebay is new merchandise that can be found at the mall, being sold BIN. Mall shoppers do not understand auction listings, hence the option to place a BIN on them.
Auctions, especially true auctions imply that the buyer can get the item cheap if no one else bids. Which is why a bid appears toward the end of the auction, buyer sees it's cheap and goes for it. But most mall shoppers see the cheap price and bid and then abandon the listing once they see they have to wait to see if they won, so they use BIN on another one and ditch the bid. If your item is collectable, they might stick around but will bail if someone else bids.
So you can sell the listing just as fast with less work for you if you skip the auction and just set up your BIN at the chap price you were going to start the listing at and about halfway into it change the price a tiny bit to reindex it in ebay's search.
(*Bleep*)
