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Hack 33 What's It Worth?
Determine an item's currentmarket value using eBay's Completed Items search and
set your price accordingly.On eBay, research is money. A
seller who knows how much an item is worth will be able to choose the
selling options more appropriately, and as a result, get more money
for it. And a buyer who knows the worth of an item will more readily
recognize a good deal, and as a result, spend less money.
Fortunately, there are tools at your disposal to help determine an
item's worth in about 20 seconds.
4.2.1 Investigate the Market
Any item on eBay is worth only
what someone is willing to pay for it. Fortunately, for almost every
item sold on eBay, an identical or similar item will have been sold
within the last month or two. And given the public nature of
eBay's past auctions, it's easy to
find out the health of the current market for your item before you
list it.Start with a standard search (see Chapter 2), and
locate any auctions for items similar to the one
you're selling. Click "Completed
items" in the Display box as shown in Figure 4-1, and then click "highest
priced" to sort the listing by final price in
descending order. Note that eBay's
Completed Items search is a title-only
search (descriptions of closed auctions aren't
indexed), so you'll typically want to use simpler
(broader) search queries than you'd use for active
items.
Figure 4-1. A quick search through recently completed auctions, sorted by price, will give you a good idea of what your item is worth
Only the closing price of a
successfully completed auction matters, so pay attention only to
auctions that have received at least one bid. Even if the seller had
a reserve that wasn't met (see [Hack #35]), the closing price will give you
a picture of what buyers might be willing to bid for your item.
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more stable than others. For example, there's always
an extremely healthy interest in laptops, PDAs, digital cameras, and
other popular consumer electronics, especially since there are retail
stores to help set prices. But markets for collectibles are typically
more volatile, since the value of a given item is influenced more by
its rarity and the people who happen to be visiting eBay that week
than the item's original price or its quoted value
in some collector's handbook.An item's perceived
value is the most important factor of its
market value. If you're selling a rare antique toy,
and yours is the only one like it on eBay, then it will likely fetch
a fortune. But during a week in which several examples of a
supposedly rare item are being sold, its perceived value will be
lower. If your research shows that the market for your item appears
to have bottomed out, it usually pays to wait two or three weeks
until those items currently on eBay have been sold off, and a new
batch of hungry buyers makes their way to the auction block.
4.2.2 The Empty Restaurant
Inexperienced
sellers
often make the mistake of setting the starting bid of an auction
equal to the amount they expect or hope to get for
their item. Other sellers forgo research and set the starting bid at
a single dollar, relying on the market to set the price. Of the two,
the second approach is the better choice for the lazy seller, because
you're virtually guaranteed to sell your item.The key is to remember the empty-restaurant syndrome. When
strolling down the street looking for a good restaurant, are you more
likely to enter an empty restaurant or a crowded one? If
you're like most people, you'll go
for the crowded restaurant, even if there's a wait.Bidders on eBay think the same way. Consider two auctions for the
same item, one starting at $20 and other starting at $300. Assuming
the market value of the item is at least $300, the first auction may
receive 20 bids and close at $330 while the second may get only two
bids and close at a measly $305. Why? Not only will the lower-priced
auction attract more bidders early on and appear higher in search
results sorted by price, its perceived popularity will buoy its
perceived value toward the end of the auction.So, by that logic, should you start all your auctions at a single
penny? Of course not. Instead, you'll want to temper
this approach with the following concepts:When selling an item of limited appeal when you might expect
only one or two bidders to be interested
you'll want to set your opening bid much higher.
Remember, if your starting bid is $5 and you get only a single
bidder, the closing price will be $5, even if the buyer entered a
maximum bid of $150.If you don't know how much your item will sell for,
but you don't want it to sell for too little, you
can use a reserve price auction. See [Hack #35] for details.Use the Buy-It-Now option to set two prices for
your auction: the artificially low starting bid price, and the full
amount you'd like to get for your item. Hint: an
especially eager bidder might be willing to pay a few extra dollars
to get the item sooner. See [Hack #36]
for more information on the Buy-It-Now option.The Buy-It-Now price disappears once the first bid is placed, but
there are ways to get around this. The most common method is to use a
reserve price, which will keep the Buy-It-Now price visible until the
reserve has been met. The problem with this is that your bidders may
mistake the Buy-It-Now price for your reserve price, and as a result
may simply be scared off.Another workaround which is not
recommended is to simply state your Buy-It-Now price in the
auction description, instructing bidders to contact you directly if
they're interested. Not only does this violate eBay
policy, but it may also appear to bidders as though
you're trying to scam them (see [Hack #20]).
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around longer won't be much of an issue.eBay's listing fees are based on the starting bid
you choose: the lower the starting bid, the lower the cost to list.
Fees are not calculated proportionally, however, but rather according
to a tiered pricing structure. For example, a fixed fee of 30 cents
is charged for all auctions under $10, which is why you see so many
auctions starting at $9.99. The next cut-off is at $25, so $24.99 is
also a common starting price. Note that it rarely pays to use a lower
starting bid just to save a few cents on eBay fees, however. Go to
pages.ebay.com/help/sell/feesl for
descriptions of all current fees.Setting a
starting bid of $1.00 or even $0.01 is a
clear sign to the more experienced bidders that you expect heavy
bidding for your item, and some bidders might pass it up as a result.
Instead, a slightly higher, arbitrary starting bid like $20 might be
a better choice. This is low enough to encourage healthy bidding, but
looks like a starting bid entered by someone who
doesn't know what they're selling.
Auctions like these tend to especially catch the attention of
advanced eBay members who will wait until the end of the auction to
bid (see [Hack #21]).
If nothing else, these examples should illustrate why
it's so important to know the market value of your
item before you sell.
