Three Different eBay Bidding Mentalities

There are different types mentalities when it comes to bidders on eBay. Some people simply want to get the lowest price possible and are not going to bid if a lot of people jump in on the bidding.  Some people are willing to get into bidding at higher dollar values because they have that need for instant gratification.  Others are on a budget and just want to get a good deal on something that they want to snag at a good price.

Someone who knows which type of bidder he or she is can develop a sound strategy and stick with a plan. For those who want to lowest price possible waiting until close to the end of the auction is the best strategy.

Do Not Bid Aggressively Early on in the Bidding

By placing bids early the individual is likely to create a sense of urgency in other bidders. They will then respond by placing new bids and increasing the price. Waiting is a good move if an individual wants a chance at getting an item at a low price.

The Number One eBay Bidding Tip I can Give You

Someone who is willing to pay more to get a their item will usually bid early.  By increasing the price early, those who have a limited budget or who want to get the best price will be eliminated.  Any early and aggressive bidding just drive the price up and in the end, these deals end up not being great deals at all.  What you really need to watch out for is getting stuck with a “refuse to lose attitude during an auction.  It never fails, as soon as a few people engage in a bidding you are dealing with people that REALLY want the item or just cannot pass on the competition and have to win.  This is your worst case scenario and you need to look out for these situations in particular

Limited Budget?  Checkout These eBay Bidding Tips

Those who have a limited budget can consider a couple of these tips on eBay bidding. Submitting an occasional bid while sticking with the maximum dollar amount that you are willing to pay is a must.  eBay site allows you to enter a maximum price that you are willing to pay.  As others place bids that are below your max value, you will consistently be shown as the winner until someone outbids your maximum bid.  This can sometimes work to your advantage because the bidders that you are up against are consistently outbid with every bid that they place.  They do not know you maximum limit and hopefully they will assume that you are in it for the long hall and will go to great lengths to win the auction.

Another approach for someone who has a set spending limit is to watch the desired items until they are near the end of the auction and eliminate those that have reached or exceeded the limit that you have set for yourself.  This can save you from contributing to inflating the price earlier on in the auction as we discussed above.

In summary, the best eBay bidding strategies all involve knowing your limits and having some self control.  Don’t jump in the eBay bidding game too early and DO NOT bid past a predetermined value that you have placed on this item before you even begin bidding.

How much does eBay take from each sale in insertion fees?

Put simply, when answering how much does eBay take from each sale, you first have to consider that eBay charges a small sum for each listing (the Insertion Fee) and a further amount based on the final sale price of the item, less any sales tax (the Final Value Fee). Total costs are therefore the sum of these two fees. It is worth noting that separate cost structures apply for listings in Motors, Stores, Real Estate and Classified Ads.

The Insertion Fee is charged to the seller’s account when the item is listed, and is payable whether or not the item sells. It may however be possible to obtain a re-listing credit if the item doesn’t sell or the buyer doesn’t pay. For auction listings, Insertions are free for the first 50 items per month, and thereafter vary from 10 cents for a starting price or reserve price less than one dollar to $2 for an item listed above $200.

The Final Value Fee applies when an item is sold, and is 9% of the TOTAL cost to the buyer, including shipping but excluding sales tax.

How much does eBay take from each sale using ”Buy It Now”

For “Buy It Now” – that is, fixed price – items costing more than 99 cents, there is a fixed Insertion Fee of 50 cents. However, the Final Value Fee for Buy It Now listings is slightly more complicated, and depends on the type of product and the sale price. It varies from 7% of the first 50$ of the total cost to the buyer for Electronic products to 13% for books, DVDs and video games. In all cases, the Final Value Fee for fixed-price sales is applied on a sliding scale – for example, for electronics: 7% of the first $50 plus 5% of the next $950, plus 7% of any remaining balance above $1000.

Are There Any Additional Fees?

If you set a Reserve Price on an auction listing (ie you are not obliged to sell unless bidding reaches your pre-defined amount) then you will be charged $2 for reserve price up to $200 and 1% of the reserve price above that.

After you reach your 50 free listings per month, the Buy It Now feature attracts an additional fee ranging from 5 cents to 25 cents depending on the list price.

If you wish to include a photo with your listing there is no fee for one picture but each additional picture costs 15 cents (multi-pack savings are available).

It is worth making the point that Ebay never charges fees to buyers beyond the cost of the product; Ebay makes money by charging fees to people who want to sell items, never to those who want to buy them. So, I hope this helps you in answering How much does ebay take from each sale and good selling!

Learn more about How much does eBay take from each sale!

Now is the time to begin narrowing your focus for what to sell on eBay and finding your niche.

The best strategy is to find for determining what to sell on eBay is to choose one niche and become an expert in that area.

Finding a niche will help you streamline your supply chain and wholesale resources, increase your service levels to your customers, and ease your expansion efforts as you create multiple streams of income.

As you grow and are able to take advantage of discounted pricing from your suppliers because you are buying in such large volumes the specialization will really pay off.  And just a side note, when you sell things online, it is a good idea to look into utilizing drop shipping suppliers.  This has been a staple for many eBay home business owners and I recommend that you look up some dropship companies as one of your seller resources.

My niche was in sporting goods. I had never played the sport and never even really knew what the sport was until that fateful Christmas party. I am living proof that there is a process to this madness and that you do not need to be selling products that you know a lot about. You can sell things you never even heard of before – as long as there is a market.

Research, Research, Research, the key to determining what to sell on eBay

I was selling a few items on eBay and itching to get my hands on a steady stream of product to sell, dropship suppliers would have been a great option

By dealing directly with the manufacturers you are cutting out the middle man and putting a few more dollars in your pocket. Granted, you may be adding a bit of work for yourself, but you can decide over the next few minutes which option is best for you. Starting an account with a manufacturer isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but if you can get signed up, do it. If not, we’ll talk about your other options in a bit.

Through the course of my product research, I quickly learned the requirements for dealing direct with manufacturers. Some manufacturers have lax rules about who they will accept as distributors (I learned to stay away from those guys as you’ll soon see), but most require that you have a website up and running, a retail outlet, and/or references from other manufacturers or wholesalers in order to set up an account. After a long search for a supply source, the strict requirements really began to agitate me. I was a new retailer and nobody was willing to work with me because I did not meet any of the requirements that I just mentioned.

Dropship Suppliers Can Help You Find the Right Product at the Right Price at the Right Time

Now is as good a time as ever to warn you that you have to make sure that you are contacting reputable dropship suppliers that are going to provide you with products when you need them. If you do not offer the right product at the right time and at the right price, you will never make a sale. Your distributor is the key to your success in these three areas. Not only do distributors need to have the products in stock and available to you when you are in the most critical of inventory situations, but they have to be offering you prices that allow you to run a profitable business. The distributors also need to act as advisors that make sure that you are getting product that is going to sell and not just make a nice decoration for your storage shelves!

I tried the popular online distribution sources and came up empty. I am not saying that these distributors are not good sources (in fact, I’ll recommend the best of these distributors later), but they did not offer me products in my new niche. After days of searching and dozens of phone calls, I stumbled upon a retailer that had their own line of products and offered wholesale accounts. In a matter of hours, my account with this company was up and running.

Warning, if something seems too good to be true, you’re probably right!  Just Another Reason to Stick with Tried and True Dropship Suppliers.

I placed an initial order and got a few hundred dollars worth of products. This amounted to about forty items. I began researching and pricing out my items and just did everything wrong. I based my pricing on the few brand name, higher priced auctions (the profit dollars were too appealing to imagine anything less) and ignored the mass amounts of lower priced auctions of similar items that were selling every day. Needless to say, I did not sell many of the items that I bought wholesale from this retailer. The few that did sell reaped no profits.

I quickly learned that buying from a retail competitor on a wholesale account, was not much different than buying the best priced auction items on eBay and trying to resell the products on eBay! Little did I realize that the retail company was not offering me much of a discount since they also were a retailer and were merely acting as a middle man (while slapping their name on the items) to boost their sales.

I was not getting the best price and was not able to compete on eBay using this supplier. I realized this within a week and began contacting more manufacturers and other distributors. So, I blew a few hundred dollars and now you can reap the benefits and learn a little lesson from my mistake.

The takeaway here is to be careful of who you are dealing with. This is why I recommend sticking with the top manufacturers and dropship suppliers within your industry. You can normally hunt down some referrals and find out quickly about the reputation of these guys. Dealing with other retailers (for a source of product) or small, unknown manufacturers and not reputable eBay dropship suppliers, can just get you into a situation that will come back to bite you in the future.  So find a good drop ship suppliers list or drop ship suppliers directory like the one you can find at Worldwide Brands and it can be smooth sailing for you!

The Downside to eBay

The reason Internet marketing information is so essential is because eBay has a lot costs and regulations. You are going to ring up charges on eBay whether you sell anything or not. eBay’s structure could change (as just seen with the implosion of digitally delivered goods and the new Feedback policy changes), their fees could jump significantly (robbing you of what used to be profits,) or the site could go away all together (unlikely, but do you want to have all your eggs in one basket?). Do you like the fact that every repeat sale on eBay costs you the same amount of money in fees as the first? Capturing the first sale from a customer is always the most expensive part of dealing with that customer. Not on eBay. On eBay, you will spend the same amount to deal with that customer in every transaction, no matter how many times that same customer buys from you. So, the goal here is to diversify your sources of income and use vehicles other than eBay to drive your repeat business with current customers.

Using eBay to Jumpstart your Success

First and foremost, you have to understand that eBay is a sales vehicle. I know you already know that eBay is used to sell stuff, but I want you to think deeper than the product that you are selling today. Not only is eBay is a great way to sell some products and make a few bucks, but eBay is also a tool that can be used to fuel an entire enterprise. If you want to find true success on eBay and in other online ventures, you need to think of the site as a place to sell three things:

1. Yourself

2. Your staff

3. Your company.

Anyone can sell a product. There are thousands of sellers selling everyday on eBay. What will make customers want to buy from YOU – and I do not mean just buy from you one time either! What will encourage customers to make repeat purchases and buy from you over and over again?

The cheapest sales to capture are those from your loyal customers – outside of the confines of eBay!

Achieving success online means that you need to be driving repeat sales. Not just sales acquired through eBay but sales generated via multiple vehicles online or in your brick and mortar store.

I want you to think about using eBay as marketing tool! How cool is that? You can sell product on eBay, make a few dollars and use this money to market your company, other products, other sites, and even other people’s products that you earn commissions on! eBay can help you achieve ALL OF THIS! Now don’t get caught up in all of this right now. I just want you to get those wheels turning. Understand the potential of where this can go. See the big picture and have it in the back of your mind as you build your business. Have a vision of what you want your business to look like one day. Write it down now and adjust it as you grow. The more you learn about the BIG opportunity that the internet provides the more you will want to go after it! Once you have a source (or many sources) for products, a customer base and some knowledge of selling to and servicing those customers via the internet, your opportunities can become endless.