eBay Tips and Auction Tools
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eBay auctions are fun and represent a HUGE opportunity for profit.
Auctions are easy to do. There is no financial risk. And they generate great income -- you know, the enough-to- save-for-kids-college-education type of income.
Welcome! My name is Doug and I'll be your guide throughout this site. I've been selling and bidding on eBay & online auctions for a number of years now. When I started, there were no sites like this to help either beginners or experienced auction users. So I decided to create one. Since 1999, it has been my goal to provide sane, free eBay secrets and unique tools for eBay and other online auction sites. I sincerely hope you find it useful.
Bottom line?
AuctionInsights provides you the tips and tools you need to make eBay work for you!
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Apr
16
Reader Mailbag: Best Match and Original Art
Filed Under Best Match | 1 Comment
I ask readers who download my eBook for their feedback. A reader who sells original art on eBay provided this thought provoking note:
Hello Doug.
You asked for it, so here it goes!!!Thanks for the free e-book. I found it to be very informative.
A few years back, I think it was in 2006, someone mentioned that I should add things like “WOW!” and “Spectacular,” and “dazzling”, and all sorts of adjectives like this to my listings to improve hits and so forth. Of course, some of these words were fairly silly, but I began to look for insights in to the whole keyword thing. I actually, got some online keyword and hit tracker help, and applied it to my eBay listings. Interestingly, as soon as I applied what I had learned, the number of hits literally dropped to zero!
The one thing I did learn was that tinkering with keywords does make a difference. I did eventually work out some better keywords and improved hits and sales.
That was pre-Best Match.
I picked up on your book quite by accident. I was looking for the definition of the acronym ACEO, as it’s used on eBay, in the art listings. That’s when I found the eBay forums. I started reading through the postings. What I was reading was how everyone who listed art work on eBay was complaining about “Best Match” and how their hits, and sales have all dropped off significantly.
Some blamed the economy, but many were blaming Best Match, as the source of their problems.
So, I started Googling “Best Match” on eBay and that’s how I found your site.
I didn’t realized that eBay implemented the change (I’m sure I was told, but I hadn’t a clue what it really meant).I’m sure that everyone tell experts such as yourself things like, “yeah, but the category I list in is different,” or things of that nature. But, as an artist, I really do think it’s an odd product to sell on eBay.
Here’s why I think it is, and the issues I’ve run into:
There are 10’s of 1000’s of artists listing tons of stuff at any given time, and everyone of the is unique. Talk about being up to your elbows and eyeballs, of stuff to wade through..
With IPods and MP3 players, as you mentioned in your examples, it’s a matter of tweeking the keywords, shipping, and such.If there were a 1000 IPods to look at, it seems that Best Match really would be a help to find the best price, and shipping to go with. All things equal, who’s got the best feedback?
Again, with the IPod or MP3 players, people pretty much know what they’re going to get.
Imagine if each IPod was designed, made, signed and looked different then every other one!
Once you get past the shear number of items, you come to the next major issue, subjectivity. Even if you have the best prices, the best shipping, and the best writeup, the best feedback, it all comes down to this, is it something someone is going to like.You can take a quick look, but I got to tell you, there are folks making some pretty good cash sell some pretty trashy items. And I’m sure that there are some pretty high quality items, nobody’s looking at, because Best Match sends their listings into the netherworld!
For myself, I’m probably closer to the bottom, then the top. A small handful of folks found and bought some of my work in the past few months. It’s small potatoes, but it’s something.The problem with that, is if that small group decides to not buy, nothing is sold, and it’s potato soup without the potatoes!.I know, why do art then?
Well, I’m an artist, it’s what I do.
If you could find a way to get eBay to really work for the art segment of eBay, well you’d get my vote for man of the year!
I have a website, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get that to work, as well.
Anyway…I hope this doesn’t sound whiny…I truly appreciate the book, I do realize that it’s a overview guide and I really don’t expect you or anyone else to become a coach for starving artists!
Thank you for the insights.(By the way, the BayEstimator page is a pretty good little tool).
Ed McCarthy
Ed, I wish I had some answers for you. In my opinion, the problem stems from eBay losing its roots as a marketplace where lots of sellers could be successful selling a tremendous variety of goods in their efforts to remake themselves into a marketplace where a few sellers are successful selling consumer commodities with mass market appeal.
Now that I’m off of my soapbox, is there anybody out there that has some ideas on how to sell original art successfully in a Best Match world?
Leave your ideas in the comments below
Here’s a little link love for Ed: www.EdwardMcCarthy.com
Mar
13
I noticed something new yesterday when I was leaving feedback for a couple of items I bought recently on eBay. On the listing that provided free shipping, eBay posted a small notice reminding me of that fact.
A Positive Step
Maybe this isn’t new and I’ve just never noticed it before (see suggestions below), but I thought this was a positive step towards fixing the problems with eBay’s DSR’s. Perhaps eBay felt obligated to include this note because they couldn’t explain why the average S&H DSR for sellers that exclusively offer free shipping is less than 5.0.
Suggestions for Improving the DSR System
Now that eBay has a little momentum towards fixing the DSR problem, might I offer a couple of suggestions for continued improvement?
- Make the little free shipping reminder turn red when the buyer’s mouse hovers over any star in the S&H evaluation block other than the “5″ star. Better yet — If the seller offers free shipping, make it so they automatically get “5″ stars for that particular metric. The only way the seller could do better would be to send the buyer money for the priveledge of shipping the item!
- Put up the same kind of note in the shipping time DSR if the buyer opted for Media Mail shipping (or the seller was forced to only offer Media Mail due to eBay’s ridiculous $4.00 shipping fee cap in the books category). Make that notice turn red if the mouse hovers over any star except the “5″ star.
Assuming we are stuck with them, what changes would you suggest to the DSR system?
Mar
11
Reader Peggy asks:
I’m new to eBay & was just frustratingly introduced to the process of “sniping” & then the discovery that there’s software to do this! I just read Doug Feiring’s article & wonder - what if 2 or more bidders are using snipe software? Who wins, how, & what is then the advantage??
Thanks for the question Peggy.
If two or more bidders are employing auctions sniping techniques in the closing moments of an eBay auction, the winner will be the individual who set their bid price at the highest amount. Let me explain…
eBay auctions are what is known as “second price auctions.” This basically means that the highest bid wins, but the bidder does not necessarily pay that amount. The winning bidder pays the highest bid of the second place bidder plus whatever the minimum bid increment is for that particular auction. Bid increments on eBay are determined by the current price of the item being auctioned. For example, the bid increment for an item for which the current bid is under a dollar is 5 cents. For items between one and five dollars, the bid increment is 25 cents.
Here’s a scenario that I hope explains the concept.
I’ve got my heart set on an iPod nano auction that has bids and current price of $28.00. I decide to bid using an auction sniping service like AuctionStealer and place a bid scheduled to occur in the final 10 seconds of the auction for $32.00 - the most I’m willing to pay for the item.
If no other bids are placed (and the current bid of $28.00 is also that bidder’s maximum bid), I will win the auction and only pay $29.00 — the amount of the next highest bidder’s maximum bid plus the $1.00 bid increment for items between $25.00 - $99.00. This is less than the $32.00 I was willing to pay and submitted as my maximum bid.
Now, if you also have your heart set on winning that same auction and schedule a $38.00 bid using auction sniping software for the final seconds of the auction, you will win and pay $33.00. That final price is determined by my (second best) maximum bid of $32.00 plus the $1.00 bid increment.
If, by coincidence, we both placed bids for the same amount, the winner would be the bid that was placed first.
The advantages of auction sniping software are reduced when multiple bidders are employing them for the same auction. You still have some protection from naive bidders who might be prone to engage emotional bidding wars and it offers you some protection against shill bidding - a type of eBay fraud where the seller employs multiple eBay ID’s to bid on their auctions in order to run up the closing bid price.
Have you got a question for AuctionInsights? Use the contact form to send it in.
Feb
26
Contrarian Thoughts On the Best Time to Close an Auction
Filed Under Sellers' Insights | Leave a Comment
The best time to close an auction on eBay might not be what most people think.
The chart below details a couple of interesting statistics about auction style listings on eBay.com.* The dark bars on the graph indicate the average volume of listings that start/end during a particular hour of the day from a sample of 10,000 auctions. The light bars indicate the average number of bids placed during a particular hour during the same period.
As you can discern from the chart below, the vast majority of bids occur in the closing moments of an auction. The vertical bars represent the number of bids. The bottom axis represents the time until the auction close - with time elapsing from the right side (auction just listed) to left (listing end time). If you look closely at the left side of the chart, there’s a huge spike of bids that occur in the last hours of auction style listings.
The conventional wisdom holds that auctions should close when the majority of shoppers are bidding which is around 7:00 pm Pacific time. After all, you want to fish when the majority of the fish are biting! As you can see in the first chart above, many sellers follow the conventional wisdom and close in the evening “when the fish are biting.”
But if you are fishing when and where everybody else is fishing, it would stand to reason that competition is limiting the number of fish (sales) you catch and probably the size of the fish (final sale price). To dispense with the fishing analogy for a while, sellers face stiff competition during the evening time frame. Although the demand is high during this period (measured in bidding activity), the supply of auctions closing more than keeps up.
Therefore, if bidding activity increases for a particular auction listing closing in the evening, bidders have plenty of other options closing during same time frame to keep their prices down.
Look at the first chart again. During the 9:00 am and 10:00 am hours the bidding activity is healthy. The number of auctions closing during that time frame is small relative to the bidding activity. Returning to the fishing analogy, there are fish biting during this period, but not many fishermen competing for the catch.
So, you might want to consider closing your auctions when there is less competition. Not matter what time of day the auction is closing, the vast majority of the bids occur in the final hour. If you time your auctions to close when competition is low yet demand is sufficient, you might improve your bottom line.
*Source: “The Timing of Bid Placement and Extent of Multiple Bidding: An Empirical Investigation Using eBay Online Auctions”
Authors: Borle, Sharad; Boatwright, Peter; Kadane, Joseph B.
Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000123 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)