posted on November 7, 2003 09:46:14 AM new
Lets say you post a purple widget, and your purple widget sells. You have a second purple widget, do you immediately relist, and attach to the auction which just closed, REGARDLESS of the time of day OR do you relist, and schedule the time of the relist to start?
NORMALLY, I post for auctions to close between 7PM and 8PM, west coast time. In the past when an item sold and I had a duplicate, I relisted, with a scheduled time to start, which would again be in the evening time.
RECENTLY, I have been testing by simply relisting the item, regardless of what time it is (except the middle of the night). That is, if I posted the purple widget with a closing time in the evening, and it sold at mid-day, I have been trying to simply immediately relist, without scheduling the relist to start at night time.
QUESTION: What do you do? How successful have you found immediate relisting, the new auction, regardless of the time of day?
Thanks am really interested in your responses............
posted on November 7, 2003 11:27:21 AM new
My auctions close on Sunday evenings, no later than 8:30 PST. I watch what doesn't sell and decide on the spot, right then and there, whether to give the unsold item to the thrift shop or relist. What I've discovered is that, if it's, say, 8:45 p.m. and I want the 7-day auction to end at 7:30 p.m., I relist for that ending time anyway. Most of the time, the relist will end at 7:30 p.m. the following week.
I'm fussy about when my auctions will end, even though I know there are some seasoned sellers here who have auctions ending at all different times of day and night and claim good success.
___________________________________
Junk: Stuff we throw away.
Stuff: Junk we keep.
posted on November 7, 2003 11:27:50 AM new
I sell the same items week in and week out and use the buy it now format offering several of the same item for each listing. Often they sell out before the 7 day run and I just relist whenever I see the auction/listing ended. I have tried waiting until that evening but don't bother, just relist when it ends. I think it works about the same either way.
Good luck
posted on November 7, 2003 11:46:39 AM new
ALWAYSFUN - that was the question I was asking - on sold items, regarding relisting times........that is what I am testing now, and "think" it works better than rescheduling them for a later time.......
posted on November 7, 2003 11:55:55 AM new
If you relist immediately, you risk alerting some bidders that what you are selling is not exactly rare or hard-to-find.
On the other hand, you may get bids from inexperienced people who didn't have the good sense to place a proxy bid the first time and are now kicking themselves for it.
There's an undeniable demand curve; I see it time and time again. I recently listed a pair of earrings that sold for about $11, a very nice profit given what I paid. However, I have sixteen more pair. If I run the auctions consecutively, by the time the seventeenth pair finally sells, it'll go for something like one dollar. You could say that at that point, everyone who wanted a pair of those earrings had one.
There are all sorts of ways to deal with the demand curve. One way would be for me to do eight consecutive auctions in one category, while at the same time running another eight in a different category with different title, picture and text.
Another way to deal with the curve would be to sell several pair now, then stash the rest in the back of a drawer for a couple of months. The yield per auction would doubtless be higher but inventory turns would be fewer.
--
The beauty of the California political process is that "Recall Gray Davis" can now have a question mark on the end.
posted on November 7, 2003 04:23:12 PM new
I see that curve on ebay all the time.
A seller gets nice, fairly unique items ( but all the same or very similar ) to sell on ebay. The first item placed on ebay gets a bidding war and a nice price. When to start the next item? Immediately is bad because like Fluffy said the bidders see that it wasn't as rare as they thought. Even if the seller waits the price realised steadily declines with each new auction as demand is staisfied. If the seller was naive that thought he had 20 identicle items and if the first brought in $50 the entire lot was worth $1,000. When in reality the items may only average $10 each and the entire lot of 20 will go for only $200 when all the auctions are over.
It's usually better to have at least somewhat unique items than all identicle items. Fluffy should attest to that as most of her items are unique I believe.
-------------- sig file ----------- *There is no conclusive evidence that life is serious*
posted on November 7, 2003 04:40:39 PM new
AA: IF you're following my auctions and IF you think most of the items are unique, then I'm doing my job correctly.
Back when I was dealing antiques, I bought a big set of Clarice Cliff Bizarre Ware dinnerware (one of the less-desirable patterns, Capri, as it turned out) at auction. I paid $1700 for it. Sold the serving pieces first, and those got good prices as I had only one of each.
But there were dinner plates, luncheon plates and bread plates. And collectors generally wanted only one plate AND they wanted to think they were getting something rare, whereas I just wanted to unload the 20-some plates I had left, preferably at the price I got for the first one.
Took me well over two years to sell them all.
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The beauty of the California political process is that "Recall Gray Davis" can now have a question mark on the end.
posted on November 7, 2003 09:40:29 PM new
If you have two of the same item but only listed one and you have more than one bid on that item why not do a second chance to the next bidder. I have done that as I had 3 of the same item and had 1 for auction and then did 2 second chance. There was only a two dollar difference between the first and the third one. You still have to pay the fees but you get your items out faster as you don't have to wait the 7 days. Only do that though if you think your item won't go higher than the one you sold.
posted on November 7, 2003 10:06:44 PM new
I've only had about a 20% success rate with Second Chance offerings. Sometimes I think most bidders may believe it's a trick of some kind.
-------------- sig file ----------- *There is no conclusive evidence that life is serious*
