How do you get a lot of bids on Ebay?

If you get on the first page of Ebay for a particular keyword, does that mean you will get a lot of bids?


How come I am seeing a lot of sellers having 0 bids, even when on the first page?

I really think many other factors affect your getting bids such as good descriptions, good pictures, and a good seller reputation. Listing for a fair price or even at a bargain price also increases the chance of a bid.

I don't have the philosophy of needing many bids on an item, most of mine sell with one bid.

The sellers with 0 bids may have items that are very common without doing anything to make their auction stand out from the crowd. There is also another factor in getting a bid, there has to be someone out there who actually wants to buy your item and who sees it while you have it at auction.

Always list your item at .99 cents no reserve . Half the sellers on ebay have turned their accounts into glorified flea markets asking retail or close to retail prices . When I have a item and I see others listed that don't have bids I list at 99 cents . Try it . Works great. Most people search by lowest price or ending soonest in the event they have to have it. I charge for shipping and only ship in the us with priority mail. I typically list Thursday nights and use the 10 day auction. So your listing lasts 2full weekends and the auction will end on a Sunday evening.if you require immediate payment and you have ninja speed you can take it to the post office mon morning. I usually just lurk around reading everything I can , but I saw your post and felt I could share some info. Hope some or all of this helps . Good luck

Originally Posted by BurlyGuys

While that is one way of getting a lot of bids, I have been burned that way. Sold a $50 item for 99 cents. Never again! I list an item at the rock bottom I am willing to sell it for. If it doesn't sell I am okay with that.

Most likely it wasn't worth $50.

If you are just listing a couple items a month then you need to list at the minimum you are happy getting. The .99 cent listings are a good idea when you are listing a few hundred items you put little time in researching and want to make money on the average selling price not on any particular item. You also need to know what is collectable (highly volatile pricing) compared to a commodity where pricing is somewhat stable.

Easy answer - list a rare item that has super high demand and start it at .99 - find a copy of Action comics #1 and start that at .99 and you're guaranteed to get hundreds of bids! LOL

There's been some good advice so far and as said it really does come down to supply an demand. here's my .02, and it all depends on the item. Starting everything at .99 is good for some items, but I've been burned doing this so now I vary things up. The problem is when you get an expensive item but not a very big market, this is where that .99 cent auction will be a great deal for the buyer but not you. For example I might have a decorative wall plaque featuring a fat french chef. If I put that up for auction starting at .99 I guarantee you it might at best get 1 bid in a week and you've just lost money. However, start that auction at say $15 (or put it in your ebay store if you have one setup) and that same single person may be the only bid again but now you've made another $14.

I just recently went through a lot of old video games (super nintendo, genesis) that I just wanted to turn around really quick. I had over a hundred of these games and started each one at $5 and $10 (depending on if it was still in the box or not). Most of my listings have free shipping too which is why I can't always do .99 (unless I know it'll get a lot of bids). Some of my games didn't sell, some only got one bid, then others (obviously the more rare games) got a bunch of bids and went for as much as $85.00. Another random tip - if you come across empty video game boxes don't just disregard them - I just sold one super nintendo empty box for $71.00!

Here's some other general tips I found help. First is take alot of QUALITY PICTURES! Not blurry or so far away that you can barely see the item, and take ALOT of them. ebay lets you add 12 pictures for free so use them. I always try to take as many pictures as I can and I'd bet on the fact that I will get a higher price than someone else that only has one pic. For example take one of those video games, I took a picture of the front, back, each corner, the fingers on the cartridge, different angles of the box and even a screen shot from when I tested it. Some people say that might be overkill, but I've had alot of people straight up tell me they bought my item because I had so many pictures they could see. Helps with feedback too, I recently saw one person got a bad feedback because there was marker writing on the back side of a game cartridge, if he just took one extra picture of the back that could have been avoided.

It also helps to fully disclose anything you know about the item. Have a good description while keeping it simple. Write too much and people just won't read anything (although sometimes it doesn't matter if all you write is "BROKEN" in all caps, underlined, highlighted, bold in a gigantic font in some crazy bright colors and then make it flash while shooting fireworks they still won't notice it and complain later that the item was broken, lol).

I agree that if you do a 10 day auction Thursday is the absolutely best day to start those, and if you just stick with a 7 day auction I've found Sundays are usually the best with Mondays being second (for all those people that hate going back to work on monday and would rather waste time on the internet).

Regardless of all that though, and not to sound like a broken record but it mostly just comes down to supply and demand. Doesn't matter what you do, if you don't have an item in demand you won't get any bids.

i will list high demand items at .99 starting price...i only do this with high demand things......if you are not careful you will end up loosing money ... as mentioned earlier i also sale a lot of things that end with only 1 bid...if you have something valuable that is old and maybe an odd item that is not real popular i would never list it lower than what i needed to cover fees, cost, shipping, and my profit...

i will gamble once and a while but even then i set it where ill break even or only lose a dollar or so if the item only gets one bid

I sell on ebay , I don't list and hope to sell. I didn't realize that you had a monetary amount invested in your item . I was assuming it was acquired via scrapping . I hope you find the best way to suite your needs . A lot of very good advice in this thread. I usually don't have any money invested in my items hence my selling strategy .

Side note. Locate some local auction houses that's where I unload my items that won't sell online,. I bought some 2014 leaf football card boxes at a thrift store . They were 20 pack boxes with 2autos per box . Over flow stock from target I believe ,I bought everyone they had for a dollar fifty a piece . They sold for over $20 a piece . Don't be afraid to take some gambles , I rarely ever pay for anything I sell online but when I seldom do it's usually less than $5 . Hard to lose money that way. . Good luck !

There's a fair amount that I list from scrapping or picking up items for free. Whether it be from CL or elsewhere. Heck, my wife just picked up a epson picture printer a few weeks back for free (used, but in the box and functional). I just got around to listing it last week and it sold Monday for 106 + 15 shipping. However, there are items that I will buy if I'm 90% confident I can turn it.....my main goal is to double, but I'll accept a 50-60% ROI.
The old saying "it takes money to make money applies with me. I could tell countless sales where we paid for an item and flipped it for stupid profit. ($10 on a new/in the package tempur pedic pillow that went for $110....wife thought I'd like it.....I slept well with a 10 fold investment....Some people really like their pillows). Don't get me wrong, we don't just buy anything and everything....if you own a smart phone, make it pay and use it for knowledge. A 20 second search can tell you whether or not to buy.

I have been selling on ebay for years, and the best advice I have read here is to NOT list anything for less than you are willing to sell it for. Ebay is not the free flowing river of money that it was before the recession.

Harold

I'll give some buy-side perspective here too. I'm not a big eBay buyer, but I have to look at current listings every day (mostly in the "vintage computing" market) to see what's selling and at what prices. I also use Terapeak a lot because I do appraisals of collectible computers. For the first part of that process, I basically have to look at every listing over the past year for a particular item, and for each one that sold, I assign a score of 1 thru 5 based on things like the condition and quality of the item. So these are not commodity goods; in fact, they're pretty much the opposite. Two sellers might be offering the "same" 1984 computer, but there will be subtle -- and sometimes not-so-subtle -- differences in the product AND the presentation that lead to price differentiation. I also get to see all the listings that don't sell. There are a lot of them, and since I'm looking at a full year of data, I can see that some sellers just keep listing the same thing over and over, often at the same price, and it never gets sold.

Based on what I've observed not only in this niche market but also on eBay in general, I think the two most important factors that are under the seller's control in making a sale are presentation and realistic pricing. When someone is trying to sell something, putting some effort into making it look appealing really does pay off. I've seen two virtually identical computers sell with a 100% price difference because one seller cleaned his, took lots of good pictures, and at least tried to give an accurate description, whereas the other guy left his covered in dust with the sticker from the Goodwill store still on it, took a couple of blurry photos, and basically said "Rare!! Vintage!! As is" in his description. As a general rule, the more information the seller gives, the more likely he is not only to make a sale but also to get a better price. Even if that information includes the fact that the item he's offering has some minor flaw, disclosing it helps get him a sale, because buyers like honest sellers -- and of course it helps protect him from getting lousy feedback later on, because the buyer doesn't get any unpleasant surprises when he pulls his new prize out of the bubble wrap. Some professionalism on the part of the seller is a great asset too, because it's reassuring to the buyer. People are being asked to give their money to someone they don't know and can't see in exchange for some object they can't touch or see. So if they at least get the impression that the invisible person selling this stuff is not just some lazy bum trying to rip them off, it will be easier for them to place a bid.

As for pricing, I honestly think the majority of prices on eBay are unrealistic -- and that includes the ridiculous inflated shipping rates. Do most buyers really not notice when someone lists shipping fees higher than the value of the item they're selling? I don't know. But when I occasionally do look at eBay with the thought of making a purchase for myself, I usually get so fed up with the grotesque shipping costs that I end up selecting that little checkbox so that my search results only show listings with "free" shipping (which really just means the shipping cost is included in the bid or BIN price). However, I rarely actually buy anything on eBay, because no matter what I'm after, I can almost always easily find it at a much better price somewhere else. Considering that all I have to do is go over to Amazon.com to beat the eBay price for anything from a used book to new electronics, I really wonder how so many of these sellers manage to stay in business. When I'm analyzing the Terapeak data I collect, I ask myself the same question, because for any particular item I look at, whether it's a generic hard drive or an unusual computer, usually only about 30% of the items listed each quarter (some of them multiple times) actually get sold. A big percentage of eBay sellers apparently don't understand how markets work, so they sit there month after month with their $295 BIN price on something the market values at $50. In the end, they're not doing themselves any favors, but they are helping other sellers by keeping some of the supply out of the market.

Thanks Flimits for a great perspective on ebay. I agree with much of what you have said, especially when it comes to presentation. You do not have to be an accomplished wordsmith to write a good ad. All you need to have is a clear, concise and detailed description that is an accurate depiction of the item you are selling. you should also have as many "good" photographs as possible so the buyer can get a good look at what they are buying. Yes, the bottom is important too. I also dislike the ads that basically say "here it is, buy it". That tells me that they either do not care or do not know.

Item pricing is a great way to know who you are buying from. On category I sell in often is a niche hobby category and at least half of the sellers price their items at full retail or more (plus shipping) on items that are flooded on the market. Why would I pay you $25 when I can look two ads down and find it for $18? Amazon is also a great buying resource. I shop both when I am buying and about 60-70% of the time I buy on Amazon for a better price. Not always though, so I shop both.

As for shipping, well that is a bit more tricky. Sure there are guys charging $15 for shipping on an item I know they will ship for $6, but I also sell a lot of $2-3 items that will cost $$ to ship first class. And don't forget the cost of packaging materials. You can't really charge a handling charge for materials as it turns buyers away. Many buyers really thing shipping is free! The cost of shipping from the post office (my primary shipper) has jumped over the past couple of years and we are stuck with it. Shipping a priority box to CA routinely costs me $10 plus. Flat rate helps on heavy items, but not for lighter ones. And, unless it is really heavy, parcel post actually costs more.

Don't worry too much about the ebay seller though. The bad ones will not last and the good ones are not going anywhere. It is still a thriving market. Thanks again for the great post.

Mike, where did you get those NEC chips? Those are MIPS CPUs -- they were used in Silicon Graphics machines. Have you been tearing about Silicon Graphics machines???

What's their gold value?