Selling on Ebay Series – Part 2

When it comes to pricing an item, I like to go to Ebay, and do an “advanced search”. In order to do an advanced search you will need to enter your Ebay ID, so if you haven’t registered yet, make sure to do it now.

When I do the advanced search, I check the “completed listings”, so I can see what identical items sold for. I will use an example for you: I have a Playmobil Pirate Ship set to sell, the Playmobil item number is 5810. So, the advanced search of “Playmobil 5810” brings up 3 new items that sold for the following prices $16.50, $20.50, and $24.95.

I bought my item for $7.48, so I can see I should make a profit. I look at the sold items and get an idea of what I would like to price my items at. I like to start my item in middle of the completed prices or slightly below, and then do a Buy It Now $2 – $5 more than my starting price. In this case I would start my item at $19.95, with a Buy It Now at $22.95. The majority of my auctions end with the Buy It Now option.

To make things easy on myself when it comes to figuring out my profit, I know that the Ebay/Pay Pal fees will roughly be 10% off the selling price (they are actually a little more, but since I am not running a business, I don’t make it an exact science, I just like to figure things out in my head).

There is another quick and easy way to get an idea of what your item will go for, you would go to Ebay and click on the “sell” link. You will see a box that says “What’s it Worth?” Just type your item into the box and click “look it up”. When I searched Playmobil 5810, this time is tells me that the average selling price was $28.25. When I typed in Playmobil 5810 NIB, it said the average was $18.50. I don’t like to use this way as much as the itemized search, because the other one gives you greater details on which item is more like yours. If you have a new item, you can add NIB (New in box) or NWT (new with tags) into your search to help you find items identical to yours.

From my personal experience, I cannot recommend starting an auction low. Some people like to start their auctions at $1.00 with the hopes that people will fight over it and it will get bid up high. I have tried selling this way, and the ONLY times it has benefited me is when it is a collectors item that I know will sell for MORE than the retail price. I have found that in most cases it is good to start at a price that you would be happy to get for the item, not the minimum you want to get for the item, but a reasonable price. Like in the example above with the Playmobil set, the person that had their auction end at $24.95 started their auction at $24.95. The other two people that had their auctions end at $16.50, and $20.50 both started their auction at $9.99. In most cases you will find at least one person that is willing to pay your opening bid as long as it isn’t too high. I believe that starting my Playmobil auction at $19.95, I will find one person that is willing to pay that price, and one person is all it takes for an auction to end.

I mentioned above that I would start my Playmobil auction at $19.95, and have a Buy It Now of $22.95. I love using Buy It Now, because it usually gets my auction sold before the week is up. People don’t usually mind paying and extra $2.00 ore $3.00 to make sure that they win the item. In the past the Buy It Now option was only available to sellers that had a certain amount of feedback (10 I think), I am not sure it that is still the case though.

Before listing your item, you will also need to decide on the shipping costs you will charge the seller. You want to make sure you charge a fair shipping price. I personally won’t bid on an item if the shipping charges are way overpriced.

One of the easy ways to decide on shipping is to look at the shipping costs on the completed auctions you looked at previously. Two of the auctions charged a $10.00 shipping rate, and one of the auctions charged $15.00. I figure $12.00 should be a fair price for shipping.

You can also weigh your item, measure the box you will ship it in and enter that amount int0 the automated shipping calculator that you can insert into your auction . When you use this tool, the buyer will get an exact cost of what the item would cost them to ship, and it would give them various shipping options to choose (UPS, USPS, ect) If you do not have a scale, and yo have a new item, you can usually go to a website that sells the same item (amazon.com, toysrus.com, etc) and see what the item weighs. Almost all online sites will list the shipping weight of an item.

Here are a couple of tips:

1. If something is 13 oz or under, it can be shipped via first class in an manilla envelope. When I am shipping something light weight, I usually charge a flat fee, like $1.75. If it ends up costing $1.25 to ship I have also made .50 on the shipping costs to off set me fees.

2. The USPS website is a great tool, you can go HERE to find out how much your item will cost to ship with all of their options (first class, media mail, flat rate box, priority mail etc). You can also order priority mail and flat rate boxes for FREE and have them sent to your home, you can do that HERE.

3. Decide ahead of time if you want to ship internationally. I choose not to, because of the extra time and expense involved. Even if you state you do not ship internationally, you will get emails asking if you will. It is OK, to tell them that you do not ship internationally at this time.

4. You can provide insurance to your customers, and you can pass that cost onto them. When shipping via UPS, the first $100 of insurance is included in the shipping cost. When shipping via USPS, they will charge you for how much insurance you need.

5. It is cheaper to send lighter packages via USPS, and larger/heavier packages via UPS. It is helpfu to go to both websites to get an idea of what it will cost.

6. If you are shipping clothing via priority mail, they can be mailed in a Tyvek envelope and it will weigh less than when you put it in a box.

7. If you are mailing books, CD or DVD media mail is a much cheaper option, it will take longer, but saves lots of money.

Next up, showing you how to get your item listed. Ebay has made listing items so much easier than when I first started selling, they really walk you through the entire process. You will be able to see how easy it is to get your item listed.