A Discussion about Ebay marketing

Help me understand how a big time operator works

[SlimKim]

I'm trying to get a clue into the mo of some ebay sellers. Can I describe a scenario and you tell me how it works?

I'm looking at a ebay seller who sells cars.

* They have dozens of late models listed.
* They always have no reserve listings.
* They always have low beginning bids (like $100).
* They always have lots of bidders on every item.

Maybe I'm missing something here. My first thought is they have a partner with a ebay account that buys all vehicles that don't reach a profitable amount.

Could there be another conclusion or am I probably right?

Thanks for your input

[vincevincevince]

* They always have lots of bidders on every item.

Why would they need a partner to bid if they always have lots of bidders? Looking through their sales, and picking out those which went for lower prices, is there any pattern in the bidder's name?

It is possible they are engaged in this type of fraud, ebay would be delighted to hear about your suspicions and investigate them if you let them know the details (search for shill bidding in ebay's help).

[SlimKim]

regardless of how many bidders you have --- if the winning bid is below your item cost --- you will soon go out of business

unless of course, your partner rescues you if the final price is less than profit

i will monitor the winning bidders on this seller for a time --- that should reveal if winning bidders are making multiple buys

[SlimKim]

bidders identities are kept secret on these private listings - maybe they are just good at what they do :)

[Gmorgan]

Do the auctions always finish? Lots of people sellng cars use eBay as a cheap advertising medium but don't actually sell the car through there, instead pulling the plug jsut before the end.

[TravelSite]

The other conclusion (like SlimKim said) is that they are experienced eBay sellers who know the eBay market for their particular item(s) inside out.

I just dabble in eBay from time to time. I have a listing just now with no reserve that is currently at £100 and should go for £150 or higher. I knew that it would definitely go for this because I watched other sellers sell this item - paying attention to what it went for, which categories they listed it in and how they worded the advert. Choose a niche and its easy to know what prices certain things will go for.

Another explanation is that it could be fraud - but I don't think it is in this case. You've seen the spam eBay emails asking you for your user details? If a spammer gets this then they pretend to be the seller and will list a high value item for sale without a reserve/low reserve. The sale will go through - then the spammer gets your money and you are left with nothing.

The other thing you have to be careful of is the feedback scores. A person may appear to have a score of 1000 - both buying and selling - and a 100% positive rating. However on closer inspection you may find that these 1000 items all went for 1p each. In other words they are false transactions between some nasty people (or 1 person with a lot of accounts!) - so very often you can't actually see what items were sold and for what cost.