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Auction and its benefits
An auction is basically a public sale wherein any object is sold to the highest bidder. It can be defined as a process of purchasing and selling things by offering them up for bid, taking bids and selling the things out to the highest bidder. This...
How To Stop Ebay Auction Sniping.
Every day, hapless bidders get beaten to the punch by auction snipers who jump in at the last minute. I know how annoying it can be, as I once had it happen to me three times in a row on the same item! The thing is that the only people who can help...
Selling through Auction Marketplaces
Consumers are increasingly feeling more comfortable in buying products through the Internet. According to a report released recently by the Department of Commerce first-quarter retail sales rose 23.8 percent to US$ 19.8 billion in the United...
Service Simplifies Ebay Online Auctions
Used to be that when you wanted to sell something you had a garage sale, put an ad in the For Sale section of the local classifieds or posted a sign on the neighborhood bulletin board. The Internet has changed all that. While you can still use the...
The top 10 reasons why auctions fail on eBay
Are you finding that auction after auction fails to attract any bidders or buyers? It happens to the best of us sometimes - take a good look at these things to see if any of them could be making your bidders avoid you.
The starting price was too...
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What You Can Learn From Competing Ebay Auctions.
If you've a savvy businessperson, the chances are you've already
taken a look at your competitors' auctions. What you might not
have realised is just how much you can learn if you know what
you're looking for.
To begin with, don't bother looking at listings that haven't
ended yet - you don't know what's going to happen with them.
Instead, use the advanced search page to search for listings
that sold. Just go to the advanced search page, type in the
keywords that you know will find your competitors' items, tick
'Completed listings only' and set the minimum number of bids to
1. Set it to sort by 'Price: highest first'.
This will show you auctions competing with yours that have
recently finished, starting with the ones that sold for the most
(ignore any with prices in red - they didn't sell). Go through
and take a look, paying special attention to the following
points:
Titles. What information do the top sellers of your item put in
their titles, and what do they leave out? If your titles are
very different to theirs, it might be time for a rethink.
Descriptions. You'll probably notice that the highest sellers
haven't just copied text from the company's website or an
Amazon.com review - they've gone to the trouble of writing a
little about the item, and about themselves. Learn from their
example.
Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the listing will have
very nice pictures - not catalogue quality, but good enough to
see what you're getting. With items of any significant cost,
you'll probably find more than one photo from different
angles.
Style. Is it written conversationally, or in terse businesslike
language? The way you should write entirely depends on what the
market seems to like - and the market seems to like what the top
sellers wrote.
Time. It's pretty easy to ignore this as a factor without
meaning to, but pay attention to when the top selling items'
auctions began and ended. This might give you a few clues about
the best to catch buyers who will bid highly on your item, and
then you can schedule your items accordingly.
Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now, you can
see what the maximum is that they've managed to sell for
recently, and set your own Buy it Now price slightly below that.
Shipping. Look around to see the sweet spot for shipping. If you
can figure out a way to get your shipping costs lower than the
highest sellers, then this is a great opportunity to
differentiate yourself in the market.
Once you see what works, you can start to emulate your
competitors - of course you can't just copy them completely, but
you can structure your auction similarly and make sure it
includes the same information.
If you want your items to do even better, then start stocking
the items in your category that are the most in-demand. We'll
show you how to tell what's selling and what's not in our next
email.
About the author:
Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from
Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more
great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online
auctions.
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