People use ebay to buy and sell things. Ebay had became a comparison site, meaning when people are looking to buy or sell something they go to ebay to see how much is it going for.
Ebay is nothing else but a corner store. Many people think if they don’t adhere to ebay’s rules they’ll get in trouble. NO. Ebay is nothing but another store. So if you don’t want to buy what you’ve bid on. Don’t buy it. You don’t have to. There are no consequences. It’s your money, you buy whatever you want with it even if you’ve won the bid.
Ebay is nothing else but a store. Can’t force you to buy it, can’t file a suit, can’t do anything, but sucking their teeth in if a transaction don’t complete.
If you want to sell something you most likely will sell it, although most of the time for a pissoff price and not for the item’s true value. Ebay is the cheapest place to buy good stuff after flea markets. Flea markets are the cheapest but ebay is right behind them second in line. Meaning, you might see an LCD TV in the store for say £400 pounds but on ebay that same new tv might only cost you £240.
I have no idea how can people afford to sell it for those pissi little prices for a brand new unit. As a seller on ebay you have to decide how much do you want to sell your item for and set it’s starting price accordingly. Up to £0.99 pence listing an item for sale is free. As soon as you start with £1.00 the cost will be about £0.15 pence. These figures are the same in the USA too but in dollars. In Europe the prices are in Euros.
Many sellers start the auction off with 0.99 because they want to save money. (Ebay is a Robin Hood company, meaning they’ll rob you of every penny you’ve got. Their fees are exorbitantly high.)
Starting with a penny is alright for an item that is a popular item. Otherwise don’t start that cheap because it’s guaranteed your item will go for piss poor money. Start it off for a value you think you want to get for it. Say you buy a mobile phone on the flea market for £40 but even on ebay they go for £150, start it off somewhere around a £100 pounds. That way you are guaranteed a profit and someone will bid it up anyway. If you start it off at the low £0.99 you might give it away for say £50 pounds at the end. Why?
Because people will bid as little as they can. Say you have the phone started off at £0.99 one guy bids that amount. The next one bids £1.02 just to see if it’s higher and bamm he is the highest.
You’ve just set yourself up for some low bidding continuation. The next guy comes and bids £2.39 to be on the safe side and here you are, 3 bids and still only at a couple of pounds. You have two days left of the auction and you have 3 bids and a couple of pounds. A few last minute bidders will bid it up a bit, but will never reach your £150 goal.
As a buyer of using ebay you always want to offer as little as possible. Say a bid is at £21.00 you might want to offer £20.05 and you might be the highest bidder. The bid amount don’t have to be a full number. It can be pennies or cents.
Say that phone worth £150.00 but because it’s seller was trying to save the £0.15 pence listing fee as the result of cheapness, now is at £38 pounds and only 1 hour is left of the auction. Now you decide how much is that phone worth for you and you bid accordingly. Say £46 pounds.
Others will also bid low because they know the bid amounts are at the very low end and they also bid low. Hoping to win it for cheap. They’ll place the bid in the last few seconds thus not giving them enough time to place another bid if someone out bids them. Your £46 pounds might not be the winner because there is not enough margin but if you go say £86 pounds, your chances are very good to win an expensive phone for piss off money.
The seller saved pennies up front but lost dollars in the end. Bad practice.
As a seller, You can stop the bidding at anytime if you think your item didn’t reach the the value it’s worth, by just taking it off of the market. Click on the “more actions” line in your selling items page and “end item” line.
You can raise the price by revising your listing if you think you’ve made a mistake. I use both of these as a seller, if I think the price is not satisfactory. Don’t forget Ebay is = Robin Hood and you are just as much entitled to use dirty techniques to make more money. They do it, you do it. Works both ways.
They’ll take anything you are willing to give up. If it’s a penny it’s a penny, if it’s a dollar it’s a dollar. They don’t care. They just want your money.
As a buyer you can also time your bid. Many buyers place their bid during the last few seconds. (According to ebay a very fast person needs a minimum of 5 seconds to put a bid trough ) If there is less than 5 seconds left of the auction there is not enough time to put a bid in manually. Many buyers that make their living off of ebay are using bid management software where they can instruct the software to place the bid in the last few second or whatever time they want to set it for. Anything below 5 seconds is too short.
That is chancing it because if your internet connection is a bit slow it might not go in. I have mine set at 5 seconds and rarely miss the bidding deadline.
The key to buying on ebay is you have to decide how much is that item is worth for you and stick with it. Even if you have enough time to change your bid, DON@T. The next item will come and you’ll get another chance to win it. Think of running after the bus and the driver closes the door just before you get there. The next bus will come and you’ll be on it.
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