99p start eBay Auctions

Whitecat

steveledzep said:

roberty said:

Wazmeister said:

I always sell on eBay, and the secret is as follows, imho...

1. Offer a Buy It Now price
2. No auction
3. Give them the option to ‘make an offer’
4. I often include free Special Delivery postage

Never fails.

This

This for me too.  Except, I always itemise delivery as an extra.

Me too - charging extra for delivery incentivises cash on collection, which takes PayPal fees out of the equation. 

fretfinder

Wazmeister said:

I always sell on eBay, and the secret is as follows, imho...

1. Offer a Buy It Now price
2. No auction
3. Give them the option to ‘make an offer’
4. I often include free Special Delivery postage

Never fails.

Never fails... until some muppet buyer decides that you should have mentioned that tiny scratch on the base of the pedal and wants to return it - but keeps you waiting and waiting because they know they’ve got six months with PayPal to decide, and PayPal will always decide in favour of the buyer. 

No doubt you’ll say this hasn’t happened to you, but it does happen to a lot of people. Including someone I know who sold a Fender Custom Shop guitar and the buyer wanted to return it because it had a scratch on the case and a small piece of masking tape on the case, but they're still thinking about it a couple of months later, leaving the seller in limbo because they don’t know if they’ve got that money to spend or if they’re going to have to refund it some time before the six months is up. It happened to me as well with a leather messenger bag I ‘sold’ on eBay because apparently I hadn’t mentioned some tiny defect. There’s no point arguing so I just refunded straight away. And decided that I wouldn’t use eBay to sell anything of value ever again.  

Strangefan said:

fretfinder said:

jaymenon said: Am I likely to end up selling it well below its value?

If you sell it on eBay to the highest bidder, that will be its value surely? The market will have decided. 

It doesn't really work like that unfortunately, time of the month, (pay days) time of year, holidays and traditional festivals all make a Huge difference on eBay, try selling a guitar in the summer holidays...... this is mainly because you only have a 7 day window to sell it, where as in a shop it can be there for years, so the variables are not as important, if I ever sell on ebay its always buy it now, as you can keep it on as long as you like and it will eventually sell. 

I should perhaps have said that I assumed the OP would realise that if your listing ends at 1am on New Year’s Day morning, you probably won’t get the best price! Compared with, say, the auction ending on a Sunday early to mid-evening. (So long as that Sunday isn’t Christmas Day, summer hols etc etc...)