Dealing with the Ebay Fee Increase-II

[Silverdollar]

This thread was started in response to “HOW TO DEAL WITH THE OUTRAGEOUS EBAY FEE INCREASE” written by BURIED TREASURES March 14, 2005.

The reason why I am writing this is because I am one of those “IGITS” that somebody else referred to. Sorry! I meant the “IGIT” that starts his auctions off at 95-cents with no reserves. Apparently, I am one of the IGITS, that sells something for $29 when the market or book values clearly state $70.

John put a lot of in-depth insight into his article, and I enjoyed reading it start to finish. Anytime you can read somebody’s advice or opinion and just gain ONE piece of information from it, you come out much further ahead. John gave some really good advice on some tough topics. But unfortunately, I don’t feel but perhaps only a small percentage of us fill the million dollar a year sales category. And if you’re a part-time or full-time seller doing under $1,000 to $60K a year in sales, his advice on selling “Grand-ma’s Old Radio” may not be the best.

In spring of 2003, I wrote a small article called “13-Ebay Tips” which was nothing more than some off-the-wall, common sense strategies. This was posted to America Online’s Auction Board. Not long afterwards, I was contacted by AOL asking my permission to allow them to feature this on their business pages. After organizing it slightly more, they ran each section for 13-weeks, one section at a time. After finding out that some under-handed people were selling the link to my site, I closed it. I received emails from people telling me that they paid as much as $20 for the link, which I offered totally, free to anybody who wanted it. In fall of 2003, I re-wrote the tips and posted them under a new URL. Naturally, it’s still free.
http://hometown.aol.com/roy4ohio/index.html

John points out that an individual should “Retail” their items on Ebay, not “Wholesale”. Well, the last time I looked, it was called “Ebay Auction Site”. Now, I attend over 100 live auctions a year. And never have I attended an auction where items start at “Retail” and go up from there! So that means that there are really two businesses on Ebay. You can be a retailer, like John, or an auction, like me. But the problem with most retailers on Ebay is that they fear people like me, as I dig in and ruin a market by selling an item they have at $70, for $29! And somebody accused people like me for failing to research value before setting price. Hmmmmm!

John says “Any idiot can give away their product. I cannot tell you how often I have purchased something on Ebay only to turn around and sell it on Ebay for a significant profit.” GOOD POINT JOHN! This just goes to show you that sharp marketing skills and ad writing will set you above most sellers. And I hope that in the past you purchased one of my items for $29 and sold it for $70! Because the truth is, you paid me $29 for an item that I probably paid no more than $5 to $7 for. And I feel the profit I made was significant on an item I had for no more than 10 days! I probably took your money, bought something else, and sold it, too, within a few days of you receiving the item you bought from me. But this does substantiate one of your points. You don’t make your money when you sell the item, you make it when you BUY the item. And how true this is! So many people over-pay for something only to become disappointed when they can’t get out from under it.

But is that $70 price the true value? Granted, the book value might say $70, but I have never had a “Book” purchase anything off of me. Nor, have I ever had an author pay the amounts they wrote in their books! Also, the value in a book can change dramatically from the time the author wrote it, to the time it goes to print, to the time you eventually buy it. Use your books for research, not placing value. Used closed auctions on Ebay to help determine closing prices before determining if the item you have is even worth listing.

The true value of an item is only worth what people want to pay for it. Did I fail to research value before before listing my opening price? Don't bet on it! If 6 Ebay auctions for a widget all close between $25 and $40, that tells me that most people don’t feel it’s worth $70. TRUE! Eventually it will sell! But how many times will you have to re-list it at $2.75 (with gallery) before you find a fish that bites? In other words, the more money you want, the longer you sit on the item, and the more you’ll spend to sell it! Me? I like to buy it, list it, and turn the money quickly. That’s what auctioning is all about. Truthfully, not everything I sell is a winner. But in 2004, I maintained a 324% gross return before fees. That means, for every $1 I spent on merchandise, I got back $3.24 in sales. I don’t look at the profit or loss of an item on an individual basis. I look at it as a whole! Meaning, if I spend $150 for 10 items, how much can I expect back from that $150 investment.

John substantiates this point by stating his Sell-Through rate is 6% to 8%. (Meaning, he sells only 6 to 8 of 100 items he lists.) In this case John is using Ebay as an advertising venue only! He is trying to drive traffic to his other sites. For this he pays an average of $1700 per month! The problem here is that he is trying to make sooooo much profit on the items that does sell to help offset the HIGH insertion costs of the 92 items that didn’t sell! It’s a double edge sword, and the people getting cut are the ones who pay his apparently, extra high price! But to his defense, he is trying to run a top-notch, super-high quality service that appeals to the few that have the bigger checkbook to afford him. But the majority of us cannot afford that elite luxury. Unfortunately, we are average-Joes trying to appeal to other Average-Joes who work each week to get their bills paid and have a little left over for Ebay!

John should not be running 200 ads a week when his sales-through is 6%. That is totally ridiculous! No wonder why his fees are so high! He should take just a few of his best sellers, and strategically place them into different categories. You do not need 50 items in a single category! Two or Three of the right items is all it takes. If he’s pushing for high retail, those ads should be selling the fact he has a storefront where many different products can be found there. When owning an Ebay storefront, you can create as many different links to all your storefront categories on each ad! If you are able to drive people into your store, you should make the same 6% to 8% in sales. But the key here is that you save hundreds of lost dollars each week in auction insertion fees. And hey! If somebody buys that item you have up for auction, you come out that much further ahead!

Frankly, your sell- through rate should be no less than 60%. 70% is ideal, as the insertion fees on the other 30% do not dig as deep into your profits. My sell through rate in 2004 was 92%.

I agree with John on this point: I don’t jump up and down in glee over the rate increases. But, I will state that I believe we have received more value for the money. Just a simple example is online postage through Paypal. The fact that I don’t have to hand-write labels and make 2 or 3 trips a week to the Post Office allows me more time to concentrate on the money-making portion of the business. I think Ebay has made great strides the past 2 years in freeing up a lot of our valuable time and making the business much easier to manage.

I do disagree with John’s statement that Ebay “Owes us a Living”. Sorry John! But for an 85-cent insertion fee, Ebay owes you one week’s worth of advertising space. How you utilize it to make your living is totally up to you. You cannot blame anybody for your failures but yourself.

Controlling your Ebay Fees only comes from deciding how you want to run your business. If you are going to be a retail seller, don’t expect a break. After the massive insertion fee increase in 2004 (not 2005), it is evident that Ebay doesn’t want you around. Ebay realizes they can’t make much Final Value Fees on your items when your sell-through is only 6%. Therefore, if you are going to stay, you are going to pay. So if they can’t make it on the back end, they will take it from you on the front. Now, John can try to increase his sell-through rate to say 60% by lowering his prices. This would really lower his fees. But, he might find out that the profit is too small, or in the red! At this point, as a seller, you should really re-evaluate what you are selling. It may not be Ebay worthy!

To really control your fees, you need to be in the auction business. And to compete in the Ebay world, you need to have guts! You gotta be willing to take chances and take the good with bad. The more conservative you are, the less you are going to make. With a Gallery image, a 95-cent opening bid runs you 65-cents. And let’s say it sells for $150. Well, I could have started it at $150 and paid $2.75 in fees! But the problem here is most of us already knows $150 opening bids just doesn’t attract that many buyers! The truth is, I have had items sell for $175 when others couldn’t get a $150 opening bid on the same, exact item! I also know of many sellers who will list an item at $150 3 or 4 times with no success. After being fed up, they start the auction at 95-cents to watch it close a week later at $165!

[onlineseller]

An online seller can set up a nice shopping cart system to handle any size inventory with bulk upload and inventory control and buy Adwords and/or Overture (now Yahoo) pay per click and spend way less than $1,700 per month.

As you point out, the problem isn't ebay in certain cases, it is how people choose to run their business.

A 6-8% sell through rate on ANY venue would make me re-think everything.



p.s. There are two ways to run an antique/collectible business...go for book value (which as you point out is variable) or go for a certain mark-up on what you originally paid. Either way is valid. Both ways are used in every antique mall I have ever visited.

[picassosattic]

Thank you for posting your 13 selling tips! I found them very informative. Do you have any tips for those of us who are artists selling on eBay?

PicassosAttic

[BURIED TREASURES]

Hi Silverdollar! Welcome to auctionbytes and TIAS. Since you started a new thread and we want folks to know what you are talking about I am adding my post here. I will respond to your points in another post.

My previous article on how to deal with ebay's outrageous fee increases...

When I started this thread I had hoped it would stay on point and I asked that the ebay cheerleaders refrain from posting. They chose not to and in turn the thread turned out far different than it should have. This thread was about making a living on ebay. It has been turned into something far different though. If someone wants to sell items valued at less than $5.00 on ebay that is fine. I could care less. It is their valuable time and money they are squandering and in a free country they are more than welcome to do what they wish to do.

Here is my original post in it's entirety plus a few more points both in the article and at the end of it. My opinion has only gotten confirmed by the countless emails I have gotten from ebay dealers (both current and former) who have written me to thank me for this post. I was successful in my efforts in helping dealers to continue to make money on (and off) ebay. This was and is my goal and it is a worthy one. I hope it helps even more folks.

BUSINESS ADVICE

For those of you cheerleading Meg and her pirates at ebay please move on to the next post. This one is not for you. This post is designed to help my fellow dealers who are SUFFERING under the heavy burden ebay has been putting on us. This burden has only grown each and every year while at the same time lining managements pockets with our blood, sweat, tears and money. We the ebay sellers built ebay from scratch. The customers came because we listed. We gave ebay life, ebay OWES us a living.

To preface this article let me state for the record that the year 2004 fee increase DEVESTATED my business. Past increases were bad but last years was so much the worse. It was simply too much and my business almost failed because of it. I managed to recover but not without an increadable amount of pain and suffering along with a lot of lost sleep and countless hours in front of a computer that I would much rather have spent with my family. In the year 2003 my average ebay fees were $1,500 to $1,800 per month. The 2004 fee increase ended my massive spending spree on ebay fees and COST ebay in excess of $12,000 in lost revenue last year. It was a real joy for me watching ebay fail to meet it's fourth quarter projections and it was ENTIRELY because of dealers like me who listed far less this past year than we had in the past. I get the satisfaction of knowing Meg's massive benefits package was not quite as fat this last quarter. This years latest fee increase is all the worse. It will cost ebay another several thousand dollars in fees from me all because they are pricing themselves out of the market.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand of how to deal with all this mess. As dealers we have to adapt to the changing marketplace but unlike ebay management who live in la la land we cannot just raise our prices across the board without watching our already low sell through rate drop some more. My personal sell through rate at auction is between 6 - 8% which means for every 100 items I list at auction only 6 to 8 will sell. This is a rather poor performance and you have to make a big profit on the few items that do sell in order to cover the expenses of listing the other 92% + that did not sell.

Let us start by asking a few questions. Why are you in business? Most dealers do this part time for extra income but a few dealers like me are full time which means if I don't sell, my family does not eat and my mortgage and utitlities do not get paid. My hope is that smaller dealers will learn from me and will grow their business. Ebay's constant fee increases have cost them a lot more than just the listing and final value fees that they did not get from me over the last 12 months. Because it stunted my growth (for every dollar I pay out in fees, that is a dollar I cannot use to buy new inventory or pay off debt). If your long range plan is to leave your present job to do this full time it will take a lot of effort but it can be done. Make sure you have a lot of inventory and are limited in debt. This will give your business all the more chance of success as a full time venture. The more inventory you carry and the less debt you have the better your chances of growth and success.

In a nutshell ebay is an overpriced shopping search engine and nothing more. It's user base (both buyers and sellers) are an intangible asset and as we all know the sellers are not very happy now which means they will be looking at other venues (heaven knows I am) to sell their wares. The average ebay buyer is a bargain hunter so you need to be aware of this. You must decide whether or not you are going to target the bargain hunting "average buyer" or if you are going to target a smaller audience, the group where money is not the object. Personally I BUY from the sellers who market their wares to the bargain hunters but then turn around and SELL my new inventory to a different and much smaller group. This group represents the people who are willing to pay a fair price from a seller who shows himself to be honest and upstanding in the ebay community. Your feedback is EXTREMELY important if you are targeting this group as you want them to have COMPLETE AND TOTAL CONFIDENCE in you and your product. To do this you must have an ironclad money back guarantee. That is not to say you don't have a restocking fee or not pay for shipping if the buyer has buyers remorse BUT if you as the seller are at fault it means YOU take the hit to your pocketbook and not your customer. Customer service is CRITICAL! If you can make your customers come back to you again and again you are all the better for it. When competition is fierce (and on the internet and ebay especially it is cut throat for sure) then you must show yourself to be DIFFERENT then all of the other sellers and one of those ways to do that is to go above and beyond for your customers. One of the ways I do that when it comes to selling silver (my specialty) is to shine my items. In the 6+ years I have been buying silver on ebay I can count on 1 hand the amount of times my silver has arrived nicely polished. Hundreds and hundreds of purchases and less than 5 clean silver packages. Needless to say my shined silver is one of my Unique Selling Positions (USP). What can you do in your business and in what you sell to set yourself apart from everyone else selling the same thing as you?

I am one of the most expensive dealers on ebay in my catagory. What that means is a much lower sell through rate. Any idiot can give away their product. I cannot tell you how often I have purchased something on ebay only to turn around and sell it on ebay for a significant profit. If it was not for the regular mistakes made by other sellers I could not stay in business. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. The more you know, the better you will do. I say this again and again in the hopes that dealers will understand the basics. YOUR PROFIT IS MADE AT THE BUY, NOT AT THE SALE. I am not telling you to cheat people but I am telling you to keep your inventory costs to the bare minimum. The greater your gross profit margin, the more abuse you can handle from ebay management when they raise your fees again next year.

Cheap items LOSE money. For every item I list online it represents a half hour of my life. I BETTER be compensated for my time. What that means is that you will not find very many items in my store priced at less than $10.00 because it is a WASTE of time unless it is a fast seller and you can relist them because you have a few hundred available. For those of us who sell unique items if they have little value you have lost time that should have been better spent with your friends and family. Ebay's auction listing fees for items priced at under $10.00 are too expensive so avoid them entirely. Big ticket items are fine but they represent a lot of money tied up in inventory and will take much longer to sell so that means extra expenses. Therefore items over $200.00 need to have good margins as well, especially since ebay charges so much in listing fees for that price catagory. Over $1,000 really starts to hurt because if you have $500.00 into an item and it takes you a year or two to sell it and a couple hundred in listing and final value fees you really have not done that well, especially if you have been nailed with the reserve price fees a couple of times. The more expensive an item is, the longer it will take to sell. Even worse if you get hurt with a credit card chargeback your problems are only intensified. Don't get me wrong, I have expensive items but I do limit it to high quality goods I do not mind owning and my opinion is that the customer can either pay my asking price or else I will keep it and enjoy it myself. BUY WHAT YOU LIKE AND WHAT YOU KNOW. That way you don't feel bad when that item you thought would sell instantly still sits in your inventory 5 years later. The good news is that an occassional "dog" will sell and sometimes a lot sooner than one would think!! I have had some items I asked myself "Why bother" sell almost instantly when I thought they would be passed on to my great grandchildren!

Ebay's fee increases are short sighted. They will continue to lose far more than they will gain with these higher fees. In a nutshell we dealers are paying ebay a fee to use their search engine and get eyeballs on our items. Ebay management is not interested in a mutually beneficial growth strategy. They are instead concerned only about their share prices. Meg and the rest of her management group have been dumping ebay stock as fast as the securities and exchange commission will let them. Ebay stockholders beware, you are going to take a bigger bath in the years ahead. Any stock with the quantity of blue sky ebay has is begging to jump off of the price cliff. Ebay will have to start expensing stock options this year which means ebay's earnings will take a heavy hit in the 3rd and 4th quarter this year. Consider yourself warned.

The whole economy is suffering. People and governments are in debt like never before. We are in a BIG financial house of cards and if the wind shows up a lot of people are going to experience an economic nightmare that makes the great depression look like a minor recession. Interest rates are rising and inflation is running rampant. The government inflation numbers conveniently leave out food, fuel and housing costs as otherwise we would see a much higher inflation rate. Additionally the U.S. dollar is falling on the international markets which means foreign imports are going to be much more expensive in the years ahead AND a lot of foreign nations like China and Japan are busy getting OUT of the U.S. credit markets (they have lost BILLIONS with the drop of the dollar) . Now they are diversifying into other currencies which means they will not be nice and continue buying our debt from us which is how we have managed to have low interest rates for so long. Therefore the fed will continue to print new paper and digital money further debasing our fiat currency and only fueling the fires of this evil thing we call inflation. Inflation I might add is NOT caused by business raising prices but is instead caused by governments DEBASING their currency by printing a lot more of it. Therefore as foreignors lose purchasing power they will demand more of our fiat currency to offset this loss the next time we buy their goods. This is the first step of inflation as higher cost of goods means higher cost to suppliers which of course is passed on to the end consumer ie. you and me.

I can hear all of you now saying "This is all good and well but please get back to telling us how to deal with the ebay fee increase!" Kindly pardon my rantings but these facts are all relevant if you are going to survive the economic downturn we are only just starting to see. Everyone of us will suffer from it. The question is how badly will you suffer? That depends entirely on you.

I know a lot of you folks have closed your ebay stores when they raised the basic store fee and final value fees. For those of you who have less than 200 items to sell this is a wise strategy. If you are a growing business though and are sitting on more than 200 items you may wish to reopen your store. Let me explain why. An ebay store allows you to have a search engine on your listings and also gives you a place to point your past ebay customers. I get a lot of business from add on sales by pointing people who have bought an item from me on ebay to other similar items I have listed in my ebay store. For every item I sell out of my store, it is an item I don't have to list at auction.

Additionally Ebay stores are ranked well on search engines like google. What get's the most attention are your 5 most expensive items in each of your 19 catagories although you can change that to different keywords if you choose to. The default is the 5 most expensive items and their titles though. In addition to that you have access to statistics when you have a store and these statistics can be VERY enlightening. They show keywords people used to browse your store, how they found your store and even what items they are looking at. That is a wealth of valuable information at your fingertips. Additionally Ebay stores now even have the ability to have a mailing list and I have made use of my mailing list and made sales because of it. This list will continue to grow as time goes on. By using it WISELY (write great headlines and interesting tidbits so people will read them) you can increase your sales without having to spend more money in keyword advertising. Also be sure to have links to your websites IN EVERY SINGLE EMAIL YOU SEND. Those links are money in the bank and WILL generate a sale or two on occasion with NO effort from you.

I have had an ebay store since it's inception and have seen some improvements to include having items show up on ebay auction searches if less than 20 relevant "hits" are found at the ebay auction site and you have a "match" in the store. If you have really rare items that people search for by name this will make a HUGE difference and will save you listing fee costs. Additionally they finally got around to making it easy to convert store listings to auction listings (only took them 2 years to do this thing that should have been a priority). Just recently they changed things so you can bulk list your store items to auction with just a few clicks of a mouse (25 store listings at a time). Takes me about 4 minutes per 25 listings. I use my ebay store to "hold" a lot of my slower selling items and then when a low priced listing day comes along I list it on ebay the auction site. The bigger your store is, the more money you will save by listing on the cheap days. In December the formerly "free" day cost me .10 cents per listing plus "add ons". Prior to the 2005 fee increases I still used things like gallery, buy it now and 10 day auctions. Therefore when I listed my 2400 items on the December 10 cent day it cost me .60 per listing or about $1,440 not including final value fees and paypal fees. I sold about 8% of these items and once I paid all the fees it simply was not worth it on sales of about $5,5000.

On 14 February ebay had a 5 cent listing day in an effort to damage the boycott (which was partly successful). Instead of paying for all the extra fees I listed 2100 items with only the buy it now (still 5 cents at the time) which meant my 2100 listings cost me only $250.00. I DID NOT use gallery or 10 day listings EXCEPT on about 100 of my most expensive items. I sold about 6% of my listings but since my fees were significantly lower because I did not use the "add ons" it really did pay for itself. From now on this is how I will do it. Take advantage of some of the low priced listing days. It will help you to survive the higher fees you pay for the rest of the year.

Treat ebay not as a "wholesale" selling venue but as a RETAIL one. Price your items near full price and accept the fact that most everyone else will be selling the same items for less than you are. Compensate for your higher prices by having better customers service and quality photographs, descriptions and a sterling reputation for excellence. Customers WILL pay your price as long as they feel you are "worth it". Make sure you have an ABOUT ME page telling them all about yourself, your business practices and of course your listings and sell yourself as the dealer they WANT to do business with.

Keywords are another thing to consider BUT it can get very expensive very quickly so use them sparingly and keep their cost to a bare minimum. Don't bother paying for ebay keywords (at .10 cents they are too expensive with not enough benefit) but instead pay outside search engines like yahoo and google to drive traffic either to your ebay store or to your own personal website.

In an ideal world ebay and us dealers would have a win/win situation. Ebay is not interested in this. They care only about their bottom line to prop up the stock price. Therefore from ebay's perspective it is win/lose with us sellers being on the losing end. I for one do not like being a slave, whether it is to a credit card company, the government or a selling venue. I am more than happy to "share the wealth" but when they take a lions share of the wealth off of my sweat it burns me up when they don't give me added benefit for those additional fees. Let other dealers pay the high ebay fees. Do your best to limit yours.

I know full and well it takes sales to grow your business and that might mean a slower growth for your business goals. The methods I have discussed are NOT how you will grow fast and furious but they will allow you to grow. It is also the "safer" method because if you spend thousands of dollars to list items that do not sell and watch your profits evaporate to pay for ebay management to live a life of ease and luxury Meg will thank you for helping her get her bonus (so she can then turn around and raise your fees again and continue dumping her stock shares) but you will instead have lost this revenue forever AND the time it took to list those items. Be VERY selective in what you list on ebay so you have the highest chance of making a sale. The sharks at ebay are out to eat each and every one of us dealers. Contrary to popular opinion of some smaller dealers fee increase DO NOT help larger dealers any more than they do the smaller ones. Fee increases make it that much harder for the larger dealers to do business and hire new people and grow their business and the economy as well. ALL SELLERS lose with higher fees.

After only a short time a big percentage of the ebay drop off stores are failing even though they don't have inventory costs. Granted some of them fail because they cannot get enough inventory but for the most part it is simply because they have discovered that the high fees they must pay to ebay require a big profit margin and even limiting what they agree to sell (usually items valued at more than $50.00) their take at 30% is only $15.00 assuming they get the $50.00. They must then pay ebay and paypal fees, rent, utilities, webhosting fees and other expenses as well. That is a LOT of effort for a small profit (assuming they made a profit after paying all of the expenses). Learn from their mistakes and let me again remind you, YOUR PROFIT IS MADE AT THE BUY, NOT AT THE SALE!

Some folks say that our complaining about the latest fee increase fell on deaf ears and that the boycott was a failure. I beg to differ. Ebay gave us a 5 cent listing day (and a few other special priced listing days). Next month will be a free month for ebay stores, they increased the percentage off they give us for traffic we drive to our stores and a few other things I cannot recall right now. In short we complainers DID have an effect. I suspect we are going to see a lot more sales days in the quarters ahead. Why you ask? I have seen a BIG drop in listings in the auction section I frequent (sterling). There are less listings AND there are a lot more gaps between auctions (sometimes several minutes). This is NOT typical. Ebay management assumes that we sellers will continue to "take it". This has proven NOT to be the case. Instead we are diversifying, reducing our listings and turning our backs on ebay. As long as ebay management chooses to mistreat us sellers, we MUST keep up the pressure by doing everything we can to help grow other websites. Fees WILL go up again next year although I suspect not as much as they did this year (some fees went up as much as 400%).

As sellers we MUST have a business plan and must do our best to follow it through. We cannot control everything but we MUST control as much as we possible can, especially the expense side of the business. Building a business is no easy task, especially for those of us who have families and do this full time. If it get's to be too much there are some of us who will go back into the workforce and when that happens ebay has really lost out because these types of folks will never be back.

Carpel tunnel will get me eventually (and taking ebay listing pages from 2 pages to 7 on ebay only speeds up the process) but as long as I can continue to grow my business and feed and house my family by selling online I will do this for a living because it is what I love. My goal is to make ebay almost irrelevant to my business but as long as I have to use it to sell I will look at ways to keep my costs to a bare minimum while selling as many items as I can for as much as I can. Additionally I will continue to use ebay as a source of new inventory. With the higher fees more dealers are looking at "saving" money thus they are starting their listings for lower prices in order to save on listing fees. The end result is often not what the seller would like to see ie. furious last minute bidding. Instead they watch in horror as their quality item get's purchased by a dealer or consumer who is smiling from ear to ear because they "stole" something. DON'T be one of the dealers selling your quality items for pennies on the dollar. Instead be one of the dealers who bought it cheap and sold it high! You will last a lot longer as a business and may even make a few dollars after paying ebay's outrageous fees.

I hope I have given you a few pointers and that you can take something away from this conversation. Remember, we ALL started small and only through HARD WORK AND PERSISTANCE IN THE FACE OF IMPOSSIBLE ODDS do a few of us break away from the rest of the pack and grow our business to the next level. It is not an easy life but it can be a satisfying one. I don't drive to work which saves me a fortune in gas and wear and tear on a vehicle. If I need to take some time off I just walk away from my computer. I wish each and every one of you the very best with your online business. May your ebay fees be low, your profit margin high and your customer base ever growing. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com

I have seen everything I mentioned in the above post come to pass. In the silver catagory alone listing pages have dropped significantly and in some cases by as much as 1/3. I always browse listings "ending today" and have watched them drop from an average of 60 pages on most days to 40 pages. Sunday's usually had about 160 pages or so and that has gone down by between 15-25% over the last few month so the average has been between 120 pages to 140 pages. This means less competition on ebay the auction site (at least in my catagory).

I have been surprised at how many people still use gallery. I was expecting a big drop off with the higher gallery fee. Some of the larger dealers in silver (including me) use it less when selling at auction but overall most dealers still seem to be using it. I think what sellers have done is just decided to list less items to offset the higher fees instead of modifying their listings pattern in any way. Sellers using Buy It Now's have gone way down though and that is no surprise. It is no longer worth it except on very expensive items or dirt cheap items. I do wonder if the lawsuit is the reason for the higher fee on buy it now but that is just speculation and I have no way to prove it.

Another thing I have done to raise revenue is raised my handling fee. As near as I can tell it is having no affect on my sales. As long as you post in your description what your shipping and insurance fee will be you will not get backlash from customers complaining about your shipping costs. By being upfront with your fees you are being fair to them and helping them to make informed decisions. They know EXACTLY what they will have to pay and will often pay right after buying with paypal so you have speeded up the process. That lets you promptly mail their product to them while at the same time gets you your money much quicker. Don't forget that the post office has asked for permission to raise rates again this year and I suspect they will get their wish so price your shipping accordingly.

Now let us take the above post and discuss other ways to help keep our costs low selling on ebay. What have you done with your ebay listings to deal with the fee increase? List less? List more? Use less features? Cherry pick your inventory? Start bidding low or high? Let us know what you have done, how you have done it and whether or not you were successful in achieving your goals as a seller. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com
_________________
http://www.stores.ebay.com/buriedtreasuressterlingsilver?refid=store

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=32

[BURIED TREASURES]

Ok, now where to start. To begin with I did take time to read your 13 points. I considered your articles to be funny and fact filled. You did a great job writing them. I wish I could say I learned something but like you, have been doing this for awhile and thus there was nothing new for me. Glad you remembered things like holidays, photographs, the use of reserves and of course ebay's add on "gotchas" and starting prices of auctions some sellers use. Like you I have seen so much waste on ebay by sellers it makes me sick. It is the little things like these that will really eat a persons lunch (and dinner too!).

You will need to modify the price on page 8 to the new ebay store fee. I would also suggest you modify your color scheme on a couple of the pages as light letters on a light background makes for hard reading in some places and is thus a strain on the eyes. Additionally you should include a link to your auctions both on those pages as well as here on this forum as you will generate traffic because of it.

Now on to your points on this forum...

I seem to be getting a lot of response to the "idiot" comment. I can assure you it was not directed at anyone but was instead a way of saying it takes no talent or foresight to list an item at that price. I can truthfully say that if it was not for many of these dealers starting their auctions at these rediculously low prices my business would not have enjoyed the AWESOME growth it has experienced over the last several years.

Silverdollar, I AM NOT saying your method is wrong. It works for a LOT of people BUT it is not for everyone. People who benefit from starting bidding at a buck include (but are not limited to)
1. Those who have no room for storage.
2. Not a full time business, just a part timer making a few extra $
3. Desperate for cash or paying bills or can't afford high fees.
4. Getting rid of clutter.
5. Sellers who deliberately choose this method and are happy with final results based on the "whole" instead of "by the piece".

I have never accused anyone of "ruining" the market. Some sellers do this to themselves (I see it a lot) but like I said, if it wasn't for these one dollar no reserve folks I could not buy the bargains I do and make a living. By all means I HOPE to do business with you. Since you sell silver on occassion it is very possible. Additionally since you sell clocks you may see my father bid also! In other words, POST YOUR LINK!

Anyway, back to the debate....

EVERY item has multiple values. They include
1. Closeout pricing (fire sale)
2. Wholesale
3. Retail
4. Replacement
The difference between these 4 can be rather significant. For example let us say widget A is is a sterling fork valued at $5.00 on a REALLY bad day when no one was looking at the auction. It should wholesale for $10.00 and is worth $25.00 in the "retail" world (before discounts) and a DESPERATE buyer looking to replace said item will pay $35.00 so that their mother does not find out they put the family silver down the garbage disposal. Which price is the "right" price? All of them and none of them. Value is determined at the point of sale between a buyer and a seller who agree to a mutually satisfactory transaction (win/win).

Let us talk auctions for a moment. I usually start my bidding at slightly below retail with a buy it now of between 20-30% higher(just like you suggest). That is a spread of about 25-35%. A sizable percentage of my auctions end with BUY IT NOW therefore my customer was willing to pay what I considered to be top dollar. My customers STILL set the price. The only difference was the range I used as a foundation (higher range instead of a lower range). What I really enjoy is watching one of my items get bid on by a cheapskate who could have used buy it now. I like to imagine them watching in horror as they had to pay MORE than my original buy it now price (sometimes A LOT more) or else lose it to another bidder. Again, it proves my prices are "real" and are not inflated (even if they are higher than other dealers selling the same items on ebay).

I don't use books to determine value. Like you I think books are garbage unless it is used as a method of identification and NOT a price guide. Same goes for ebay sales prices. I consider ebay to be a wholesale (and often below wholesale) market therefore it's values are subjective at best and VERY WRONG at worst. I use real values based on real world experience in a catagory (silver) that I am well versed in. I KNOW the ranges an item should sell for and as long as they are within my ranges I am more than happy to sell it. That also tells me at what ranges I can afford to BUY the item at. I have a basic rule that is called the ACID TEST. If I HAD to get my money back tommorow, could I get the same amount I paid for it? This rule gives me a LOT of flexibility and a lot more upside potential than downside. After all, I can always send in my silver for melt (not that I am planning to).

Since I don't run anywhere near as many auctions as I once did though (most of my ebay sales are store listings now) my fees are managable and I make money which is why I am in business in the first place. Your "average" return is impressive but so is mine. The difference is I do it with no risk AND increase the value of my business each in every year because inventory not sold represents money in the bank in the future when it does sell.

By turning your inventory every 10 days you have no storage hastles but have no business asset growth either. By adding new inventory to my existing inventory and selling less at a higher margin I get a little less of a return after fees than you do but watch the value of my business skyrocket. In addition to that I also watch as my position on ebay becomes ironclad. Note who is in the number 1 slot in my category...
http://antiques.stores.ebay.com/Silver_W0QQcatZ20096QQtZlw

You can't do that by selling out your inventory every week. I am TWICE as big as Replacements Limited in the silver catagory and the number 2 guy is not competition as he sells mostly new holloware and I sell mostly antique flatware and holloware. Additionally with all of these extra listings and me being the "top dog" that drives additional traffic to my store as well. They may not buy the item they originally looked at but maybe they will buy something else or bookmark me because I am so big with such a great selection!

Now the one question that everyone SHOULD ask (but no one has) is "John, when selling at auction what do you think is a GREAT sell through rate for you?" My answer may surprise you. 12% is good and 15% is GREAT! Not the answer you were expecting huh? Let's talk auctions now. You list your item at auction and it costs you .65 cents. For .65 cents I can have 21 MONTHS (approximately 630 days) exposure to your 7 days. Yes it may take me between 1-3 years to sell an item and I pay a VERY HIGH final value fee BUT by following my own advice I have SLASHED my listing fees by 80% on average. I sell less but I also can afford this as I am not paying OUTRAGEOUS fees by selling at auction. Truthfully though most items I list sell within 2 years and a sizable percentage within 6 months. Since what I sell is very specific and will only have a tiny amount of people looking for it this is a very acceptable time frame.
By being diversified over several venues this helps me to turn over inventory.

I have to disagree with you on the catagory issue. I basically sell in the antique silver catagories. By specializing I do limit myself but at the same time I don't make mistakes either. That is not to say that I don't sell things in other catagories. It just means I don't list as much in them because that is not what I like. One of my business rules is ONLY BUY WHAT YOU ARE WILLING TO BE STUCK WITH. That means I don't buy much clutter but instead buy items I like to own. If I like them I know others will too. Of course like you I have also had a few "AWFUL" looking things that caused my jaw to drop to the floor when they sell (especially when they sold FAST). I suspect most dealers have some kind of a niche and ebay's biggest competition are usually niche sites created by those who are tired of ebay fee increases.

You buy at estate auctions and yes, I do too. But the internet has generated a lions share of my business inventory purchases (and not just ebay either). People have contacted me via the internet and I have made some great buys because of it. I LOVE technology. I do most of my buying from my living room. No wasted gas driving around town or wasting time waiting around as junk is sold at a live auction while you hope the pieces you want to buy get's put up soon so you can go home.

Regarding sell through rates again, yours is impressive. So is mine. 99% of all items I have listed online sell. Sometimes within hours, sometimes 6 years later. One just never knows what will sell and more importantly WHEN it will sell. As I have said before, I have a very few items I thought would sell instantly which I still own years later. Other items I thought would be passed on to my great grandchildren aka "plastic cows" sell quickly. One just never knows! Anyway, I am up to 7,500 items having been put online since I started and I only have about 2,800 of them. Additionally half of those have been added in the last 12 months with about 600 of these items added within the last 2 months. In a nutshell, that means I am selling (and at my price).

Contrary to your opinion my customers are not getting "cut". They are getting REAL value for their money (as my stellar feedback reflects). As I said before, I clean my silver whereas 99.99999% of other sellers don't. I also present it well with lots of photographs and great descriptions. These things are worth a small premium in price. You have chosen to sell to the masses. I choose to sell to the professionals. I know who my target audience is. They are usually females and almost always professionals ie. Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, Nurses etc. I am happy to do business with Joe six pack but they are not the ones who have (or will) grow my business at the rate I wish to grow at. If they buy from me at my price, GREAT. If not, I do hope they get their bargain from another seller.

My time is valuable and every item I list represents a half hour of my life (start to finish). I expect to be compensated for my time of sitting in front of this computer instead of spending it in front of the tv or spending quality time with my family. Life is about trade offs and I have made many sacrifices to get where I am today. My only regret is that I have not been able to spend as much time with my kids as I would like. Time is a limited commodity and we spend it daily as we cannot save it for later. I have spent a lot of valuable time writing these articles in an effort to help my fellow dealers. I therefore have succeeded because of the positive feedback I have gotten from them but the cost is the lack of work I have accomplished to further my business goals.

I won't waiver on my "ebay owes us a living" comment. I have said it before and I will say it again. I don't mind sharing the wealth, my problem is when a venue decides that they are entitled to not only the lions share of the pie but the whole pie! Everyone suffers when this happens. Dealers ask themselves "Why bother" and quit. Who wins? No one. Website loses revenue, consumers lose choices and I lose potential sources of inventory and the benefits of the traffic these other dealers generate.

[Silverdollar]

John….Anybody running a brick and mortar store and supplementing their business on Ebay needs to really go over all your points with a fine-tooth comb! Every point you make is absolutely true! But let’s take a show of hands. How many people here are Brick-and-Mortar owners? And how many people here are Work-from-their-Homes type? I am willing to bet that most of the sellers are individuals working from home using online venues as a method of supplementing their incomes. Therefore a lot of your big business advice would not apply to the mom or dad that has to meet a big tuition bill next month.

You state it’s Okay to hold out on an item for 6 months. But what you are failing to state is how much additional money does it cost per month to hold that item! STORAGE SPACE IS NOT FREE! Storage costs money! It appears to me you are running a large retail front! How many square feet do you have? And is your gas, electric and insurance provided for free, also? So do you have employees working there for nothing more than pure enjoyment? Were your trucks used to move this stuff gifted to you? And does the gas station down the road offer a “10-cent/Gallon” day once a week?

I think a lot of Ebay sellers can hold out for more money on items if they wanted to pay the extra for storage. But I think it’s out of the scope for most. C’mon! Now you and I both know that a lot of replacement flatware and holloware can be purchased by the buckets for $3 and $4. I rarely pay over $25 for complete flatware sets in their original boxes. I pass on BOXES of holloware because I just don’t have the room to put it. And yes, I do own professional buffing equipment, compounds and platers. But that equipment costs money, not to mention the fact the experience to use it. An untrained rookie on a high-speed buffer is a sure recipe for serious injury. In other words, most people purchasing these kind of items for resale on Ebay aren’t interested in holding out for 3 months to get top-dollar. Nor are they prepared to offer it in the prized condition you do.

You are working on one side of a rather tall fence. Grab a ladder and look over to see what mom and dad with 3 kids have to do to make the bills this month. You offer a method of retaining a strong profit margin with high start-up costs and high monthly expenditures. I offer up a method of getting an average of $300 back in 10-days for a mere $100 out of pocket. Everybody knows that they can start a good retail business if they have $50K or so in the bank. And then, follow your advice to build it. But the nice thing about running a full-time business online is that you don’t need $50K to do it. Anybody can start today. My tip site has had over 19,000 hits in 16 months. Why? Because 19,000 people found out that the illusion of big bucks and awesome, easy Ebay business they read about just isn’t that simple as the press touts. They have enjoyed little or no success. They are looking for alternatives to help meet those pesky, monthly bills. Or many newbies need to know where to start with only $150 in the bank.

(Oh, and thanks for the critique of the site. Yea, I know it has some problems. But you should have seen it a year ago! I pushed more for the quality of content rather than quality of presentation. Oh, and AOL provides that space free. Their editor is quite limited. But the site makes its point, and nobody has to pay. http://hometown.aol.com/roy4ohio/index.html )

[BURIED TREASURES]

Most of the folks on these boards know me but for those who do not go here to learn about me
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6373909#6373909

I am afraid you have made a few wrong assumptions so let me clarify a few things. I am a single individual working to improve my families lot in life. I have no employees (although my wife will occassionally shine some of my silver when I get behind). We HAND POLISH our silver. Buffing machines DESTROY the beautiful details of silver.

My business did not start out with $50,000 in assets. 6 years ago my business was probably valued at less than $30,000. That has of course changed over the last 6 years. Don't know what it is worth now but a conservative estimate is $200,000 which means maybe $125,000 if I have a fire sale next week (won't happen). All companies have to start somewhere. I am assuming you read my above post so you know the humble beginnings and struggles I had leading up to my internet based business. Anyone can do what I do. It just takes time and effort (and yes a little bit of money). You get the money from reinvesting. I sell one, buy 3 more. As I said before, exponential growth. Alongside this business growth my bills get paid, my family housed and fed and I make people happy and my government money.

Now what does the extra storage space cost me? Very little. The building I work from is where my parents live so utilities would be the same. My personal residence is next door so I walk to work. Our fuel bill for vehicles is low because aside from going to the store or post office or church and an occassional trip to go antique shopping we don't do a lot of extra driving (my wife is a stay at home mom). Both vehicles are paid for. I drive a 1989 Caprice Classic that looks like it would not get 50 feet from the driveway but runs like a dream (because I have kept it in good shape and spent money when I needed to). My wife drives a 1991 Ford van. We could have new vehicles but why when you can drive used (which cost so much less). In other words, transportation costs are basically nil and consist of insurance, gas and oil changes and on a rare instance maintenance and tires.

To be fair I will say I have 10 booths at a local antique mall and pay $500.00 per month rent plus 10% commissions. I lose money there but do not mind as it has allowed me to organize my online business. Additionally I like having an antique mall near me and since I am the biggest dealer I am treated VERY well. I generate sales which generates taxes which helps my community. Net loss to me last year, about $100.00 per month after paying for product and rent and commissions. Since it is a new mall (opened in October 2003 ie. only a few months before I moved in January 2004) I suspect it has not yet seen it's full potential. When it becomes better known this pittance I have lost will come back to me in spades. Worst case scenario is if I don't make any money at the antique mall it will cost me less than $3.00 per day (assuming I continue to lose $100.00 per month) for someone to babysit my stuff 5 days a week. That works out to a grand total of .38 cents per hour and since the owner usually has a helper that is .19 cents per hour per employee. What is minimum wage? There will of course be some theft but that is a part of the formula as well.

On the subject of flatware and holloware I do not dispute your perception in the least. I regularly buy silverplate flatware as long as it is in good condition. Why is it so cheap though? Because it has not been shined up and a lot of the time you cannot identify damage because of this (although I do a pretty good job of trying). It is one thing when you are physically holding it. It is quite another when you are buying it online. I don't buy much silverplate online simply because most of what I end up getting has damage not mentioned by the seller. I get my premium for my silverplate and sterling because I shine my silver. Additionally since I have properly described it and have the reputation to back up my descriptions it generates additional revenue as well. It is a confidence issue and past customer feedback is critical to future success.

I suspect you don't buy much sterling by the chest full for $25.00 although I do realize it could happen. As I said in my second post, feel free to sell to me. If you can make money as a picker and I can make money as a retailer we both come out ahead. Just send me a link to your silver listings when you post them.

I recognize I am unique. Having a wife and 4 kids makes me that way. Having years of business experience does not hurt either. We did not learn all we know overnight. We learn from each other through books, venues like this, email subscriptions and advice from friends and family. All of these come together to create a mindset that causes us to act in a certain way with regards to running our business enterprises.

I keep getting the impression you think I am attacking your method of selling. I am not. I recognize it does work at times and I posted several reasons people may choose to sell your way. I am sure there are other reasons I did not think of as well. Dealers come to us and ask advice. Why? Because they want our impressions and input. They are free to accept it or reject it. Just enjoy the fact that they honestly do want it and do your best to be a mentor.

Internet retailing is challenging to say the least. Everyone has their own way of doing things and who am I to say that my way is the only way? I merely point out the method I use to grow a business and the reasons why I will not use your method when it comes to selling silver on ebay.

The inventory I have at the mall is not just silver. It is also glass, jewelry and porcelain which are things I don't like selling online because of the extra headache of having to ship them. My online inventory is not at the antique mall. I would not want to drive back and forth getting stuff. If I did start doing it I suspect I would never have a month in which I lost money at the antique mall.

Each part of my business serves a purpose and as long as I am happy with the results of my hard work then I know I have done all I can do. People have benefitted from it and that makes the world a better place. Websites get revenue which allows them to hire employees and make improvements (although I think ebay is a little lacking there). Consumers benefit because they get the items they want at a reasonable price that has been properly described and shipped with loving care. Lastly I and my family benefit as we have a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs and clothes on our backs. Life is about choices. We will just have to agree to disagree when it comes to the issue of online auctions.

In closing if asked I would not hesitate to send people to read your 13 points. We now leave it to the individual dealers to decide which method they would rather use. For those of you who are reading these posts, the number of hours spent by myself and Silverdollar having this debate is worth hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars in time. Take what you have learned and apply it to grow your business. Best wishes. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com
_________________
http://www.stores.ebay.com/buriedtreasuressterlingsilver?refid=store

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=32

[xppman]

I've been doing it for almost six years now. Selling Full time on the net and supporting my family doing so. Sadly ebay seems to not be the place to get as many buyers anymore.

And sadly IMO, it is NOT always because the great sellers were not there to offer great products and services. It is simply because the venues management got to greedy, couldn't stop tinkering with the site, would'nt address fraud seriously (just to name a few), and have made some terrible long term strategic moves in a very short cited manor.

On a side note: Over the last couple of years I've seen many tout how successful they are on ebay and how GREAT ebay is and then give advice as to how to make it on ebay.

The strange part is usually the one's stating the above NEVER show the numbers.

Why is that????
_________________
Tim

[kjp55]

Silverdollar, there isn't anything you wrote that I don't agree with. Like you said, there are different types of sellers on eBay, those who are strictly RETAIL and those who run AUCTIONS.

If you are relying on eBay as your sole RETAIL business, or to drive business to your off-eBay business, you must realize the price you are going to pay. It's right there in black & white.

If you are listing items by using the AUCTION concept, you realize that you are accepting the possibility of selling your item(s) for under [book] value. That is where the 'buying' skills come into play.

I also agree that if I buy something for $5.00 and sell it for $10.00, I've doubled my investment [less fees] and that is more than I could ever do at any bank or investment firm in such a short amount of time. If my item(s) sell below [book] value, so be it. In the collecting business, an item is 'only worth what someone is willing to pay for it'. If you can afford to sit around relisting your item(s), waiting for that buyer who will pay [book] value, you're playing a game that most eBayers are not part of.

To those who think we garage sale, dumpster diving, 'idgits' are decreasing the [book] values of collectibles, all I can say is 'buy the stuff from us and resell it for [book] value'. I'd be happy to be your wholesaler.

[BURIED TREASURES]

Update from the 12 May 10 cent fixed price listing day.

Ebay again had a cheap insertion day on the 12th of May and I wanted to let you folks know how it impacted my business. Remember I don't run many auctions anymore so when I list my entire inventory on the ebay auction site it makes an impact.

What I did was as follows. If my item had a value of over $75.00 I used a 10 day listing with the gallery feature. My cost to list these items was $.85 each. Items valued at $45.00-75.00 were listed on 7 day listings with only gallery. These cost my business $.45 per listing. Finally items priced at less than $45.00 did not have any bells or whistles so their cost was 10 cents per piece.

When it was all over I had listed 2,676 items from my ebay store to ebay. On ebay in the sterling silver catagory there were 27,682 items and I had listed 1,901. In other words I had 7% of the ebay marketplace for the week. In the silverplate catagory ebay had 11,337 items. I had listed 614 so I had 5.5% of the ebay marketplace for that week.

What were the results? When the smoke had cleared and the last ebay listing had ended I sold 67 items. This represented .025% of all listings I posted. Put in another way for every 200 items I listed only 5 sold. I was very glad I did not use a lot of bells and whistles on most of my listings. In the future I will not run any 10 day listings and only items valued at $100.00 or more will have gallery with them.

Sales of small stuff came to $1,898.00. The only saving grace was I sold a set of sterling silver on the last day for $2,999.00 so end result of having put all of my ebay store on the actual ebay website was $4,897.00. Listing and final value fees represented approximately $850.00 of that.

Afterwords it takes me about 3 full weeks consisting of 12-14 hour days to relist items and do paperwork associated with relisting them. I was a bit surprised by the results as I had guesstimated I would have a sell through rate of closer to 6% based on averages in the past. I did take into consideration it was the start of summer and that the economy is suffering though. This is the reason I did not use more of the add on features.

Once again to summerize, in the future I will not use 10 day listings (even on my most expensive items) which will save me .40 cents per listing and only my most expensive items will have the gallery feature ie. items over $100.00. This should cut my listing fees in half so I can absorb more of the low sell through rate the ebay marketplace is experiencing. Let me state though that this problem is not just an ebay problem. The economy as a whole is slowing down and we antique and collectible dealers have a rough patch ahead of us. People have too much debt and not enough income. My advice once again is BUY LOW, SELL HIGH. This will be the ONLY way you can stay in business and make a few dollars. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com
_________________
http://www.stores.ebay.com/buriedtreasuressterlingsilver?refid=store

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=32

[BURIED TREASURES]

Now with regards to running auctions I thought I would perform my experiment again to prove my thesis that running auctions cheap is a sure way to lose money. To my utter dismay yesterday the results again proved my perspective is correct. DO NOT run auctions starting cheap in the hope that they will get a "fair" price.

I ran 2 sets of sterling silver flatware valued at $499.00 for one and $425.00 for the second. In other words the value of the two sets was $924.00. Sold as scrap silver for melt their value is $300.00.

I started the auctions on a Thursday night running them for 10 days so I got two full weekends of exposure and they ended on a Sunday night which is generally considered to be a better time to end auctions. I started the bidding at $9.99 which is what Silverdollar claims is the "right" thing to do and which I disagreed with. I listed the sets in TWO catagories, their respective catagory in the antique sterling silver section and also in the home and garden section in the sterling section. I used gallery features and in one case even used a subtitle. Cost to list was not cheap with all of the add ons. What were the results?

In the first example we have a beautiful set of Prelude flatware. Prelude is a popular pattern and this was a DINNER size (not luncheon) which adds 50% to the value. It was worth $499.00. When the dust settled my heart sunk. Final sale price $100.05.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7327741796

In the second example we have a very beautiful set of Stratford. This circa 1902 pattern was worth $425.00. Results were not much better with the closing price being $153.50. The high bidder was a former customer of mine who knew about the set being offered AND IT IS HER PATTERN. I dread what would have happened if she had not bid on the set. The final sales results would have been much worse. She was prepared to pay me $240.00 for it a few weeks earlier.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7327743877

I also used my ebay mailing list twice to let my subscribers know about the flatware sets. I DID NOT mention these flatware sets on this board because I did not want to bias the results. The results speak for themselves. If I had not been the one selling these flatware sets I would have been the one BUYING them.

I honestly expected them to sell for at least 50% of true value but they only brought .275% of that. One other point is that I also sold 2 oval soup spoons in the Prelude pattern on Sunday out of my ebay store. Final sale price was $59.99
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7325425885
Even told this customer about the flatware set and was surprised he did not bid on it.


I now have to use 2 more fingers on my hand for the amount of times I have lost money selling my quality antique items at auction on ebay with a low opening bid price as a starting point. Between this time and the time I proved my thesis for Ruby Lane dealers a few years ago I am very satisfied with my results. I have again proven beyond a reasonable doubt that selling your quality items at a low opening bid and hoping for a lot of action at the end is BEGGING to take a financial bath. There were 16 people watching the Prelude set and 11 people watching the Stratford set. Sniping did not happen on the Stratford set and with the Prelude the snipe was only worth about $15.00. How very sad.

I have gone to very great lengths to help you, my fellow dealers get a better understanding of the marketplace. I hope you have learned from me and will not make the mistakes suggested by others on these boards. If you follow my advice you will be able to stay in business. If you want to gamble and lose money, go to Las Vegas or Reno. Don't do it on ebay or if you do make sure you do it with silver and send me a link to your auction. At least then there is a chance you will get a fair price for your items when I bid on it. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com
_________________
http://www.stores.ebay.com/buriedtreasuressterlingsilver?refid=store

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=32

[reed]

Great information, thank you!

[TheRobGallery]

BuriedTreasures, you mentioned the mailing list via ebay stores.
Why wouldn't you either subscribe to a mailing list service or create one yourself? Why keep yourself tied to ebay? If they decide to start charging for this (at this time, FREE) service at the point where you have mega subscribers, wouldn't they have you over a barrel? I feel every aspect you control at the start will make it much easier on you down the road if or when the boss wants to change the rules!? At any rate, you should keep your own backup list of subscribers in hard copy in case you did have to start from scratch it wouldn't be all the way back to square one. What do you think? Karen.
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http://www.therobgallery.com

[BURIED TREASURES]

Hi Karen,
Actually ebay charges you after mailing to 1000 people per month although I have never mailed that many. This feature is fairly new so my mailing list on ebay is just over 50 people. It will take time for it to grow as ebay users are just now starting to learn about it.

In regards to having my own mailing list I do although I have never used it. I have the names, addresses and emails of hundreds of dealers and thousands of customers. The first time I use it will probably be when I go forward with my online antique mall.

I am not tied to ebay in the way you think. The reason I did this and only used ebay tools was to prove my point (which to my regret I did). I BUY when people sell their items like this. I will never again "prove" my point for the benefit of others. I will merely point them to this thread although over time the links to the auction will go bad.

My advice is tried and true and is applicable to ebay AND to the rest of the internet. I sell on multiple websites and use the same formula. Buy quality items for low prices, present them in a much better manner than the other seller did and price them at their full value. My turnover rate is lower but my profits are much higher while at the same time the value of my business grows exponentially. I have thousands of satisfied customers and many of them come back again and again.

The best chance of success for any dealer is to do what I suggest. Keep listing and don't stop even when you are frustrated with your sales. Sooner or later EVERYTHING sells and for the price you want as long as you are selling quality. Sincerely, John Leckrone John@hopkinsvilleantiques.com
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http://www.stores.ebay.com/buriedtreasuressterlingsilver?refid=store

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=32

[xppman]