Renegade Ebay Sellers

RES #5 – The Secret of Attracting MORE Bids!

6 Responses to “RES #5 – The Secret of Attracting MORE Bids!”

1. Fred, on August 14th, 2007 at 12:38 pm Said:

   This tip is just plain wrong. At least, it’s not right for every seller. Maybe in selling information products it works well, but starting at 99 cents no reserve is a tired strategy that just doesn’t work a lot on ebay anymore.

   I had discovered this a long time ago, but after listening to your podcast I thought I’d see if things had changed. Over the course of a week I listed a handful of items at 99 cents. In not one case did I recover my cost of the item.

   Cheers,

   ~Fred

2. admin, on August 14th, 2007 at 1:31 pm Said:

   To say that the tip is wrong, is, well, wrong. It works for many people who know how to use it. You also have to know how to drive traffic to your auction other then just hoping that they come via eBay search. If all you did was simply put up a .99 auction and hope, well, no wonder…

   We also talked about it being worth testing. No, not every market has enough traffic for this to work every time. Some markets have very little traffic and some just want to buy it now. The key to any tip is to test and see if it works for you. If you drive traffic to your auctions and then test the .99 cent auction you may be pleasantly surprised!

   There are may different ways to send traffic to your auctions. A couple that I do is emailing my customer list and Google adwords. You have to get creative and learn to market. In fact, I’m going to put that on the show list. We’ll talk about some ways to draw traffic to your auctions!

   Jeremy

3. Fred, on August 15th, 2007 at 7:56 am Said:

   Jeremy,

   I have a lot of respect for you guys but I still think you’re wrong in the general case.

   Obviously 99 cent auctions only work if you have more than one person bidding on the auction. Consequently, the implication of your theory is that you can drive multiple people to each of your auctions. In many, maybe most, ebay categories this simply is not the case. For example, one of the things I sell is neckties. There are not going to be multiple people bidding on each of the ties I list.

   Now, if what you’re saying is that I’m wrong about that, and that multiple buyers can be driven to each and every auction, then that’s interesting and you haven’t told people the most important “secret”, i.e., how. Also, you could be saying that if a seller can’t drive multiple buyers to the majority of his auctions then they’re in the wrong niche. That would be a possibly valid statement, but you haven’t said that.

   What you have said is that 99 cent auctions are the way to go, and I believe you’ve presented no evidence that that is true in anywhere but your particular niche.

   Cheers,

   ~Fred

4. Clayton Roche, on October 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm Said:

   Actually there is a mathematical basis to this theory–not just empirical.

   Basically, insofar as an item has an objective value (i.e. brand name clothes, electronics, or anything else that people on a larger scale desire), and insofar as the market is big enough, the price of the item will stabilize at its ideal value.

   Granted, doing this for a poorly listed item will not work. Nor for a quirky item that is unlikely to pop up for most searches. The basic idea is that an item whose value is easily recognized by even a small sector of Ebay users will never sell for drastically less than it ought. This is a fundamental economic theory which predicts that in the least, others would recognize that the price is too low and buy it to re-sell. Given that re-selling it on Ebay would be the same market, that’d be silly, which is why it doesn’t happen.

   It’s an economic market theory, which like all economics, is less so about true or false and more so about the circumstances and knowing which theory to apply.

5. Oscar, on October 14th, 2007 at 9:47 pm Said:

   Hey guys,
   Too bad that you guys are not coming out with a podcast in a while please come back soon.

   My question is about informational products. Where is the real earning? on buliding an e-mail list? then selling another informational product of higher value?
   Or make many small sales on a viral type of sell strategy.

   I’m interested on informational products but i need to know more.

   Thanks,

   Oscar S. Florida

6. admin, on October 29th, 2007 at 1:57 am Said:

   @Oscar,

   The real earning is all over the model. If it costs you $25 to print a manual and 6 CDs and you can sell them for $200 or more, that is a good profit, don’t you think? Also, there is even bigger money in the lifetime value of the customer by sending them emails with affiliate products and other products you produce.

   As I have said in the podcast, I make around half of my profit from backend sales!

   Thanks,
   Jeremy

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