Excess Inventory - Selling On Ebay!

[olimits7]

Hi,

I want to try selling my excess inventory on ebay but I'm torn between how I should list my products: "auction" or "buy it now"?

What listing methods do you use when selling on ebay (auction or buy it now)? Why do you prefer this method over the other?

Thank you for your help!

olimits7

[tangor]

An auction without a reserve can hurt you (and costs more) and buy it now might price you out of eBay's notorious cheap mentality. But if you have inventory that is doing nothing, best to recoup some of that inactive money and put it to better work elsewhere.

[onepointone]

If it's stuff that people can find anywhere, list buy it now (at a good price)

If it's stuff that's rare or hard to find, test the waters with auction or reserve.

Auctions without a reserve don't "cost more". Actually there's a reserve 'fee'.

[votrechien]

Yes, the big question comes down to what you're selling. If it's name brand product that has demand, search the 'completed listings' and see what other items are selling for.

If it's stuff that has no recorded past sales, you almost have to test the waters and run a few $1 NR auctions and see what the prices get up to. I personally find $1 NR auctions normally end 20% lower than 'Starting priced' auctions or 20% higher.

Your auction price starting price should be pretty close to your BIN (in a lot of cases, identical). Auctions tend to get a lot more exposure, both because of eBay's algorithms and because of people's personal buying preferences.

[tangor]

Auctions without a reserve don't "cost more". Actually there's a reserve 'fee'.

Correct... misstatement (but not by much) a $500 item listed without reserve sells for $1.50. That hurts. With a reserve eBays gets a bigger bite off the backend. Either way, auctions cost more. Been there, done that.