Business week has an excellent article on “eBay sellers go back to school: 10 tips” that centers around ways to improve your selling and final values.
There were several that were pretty common tips that you hear everywhere like “use photos”, “avoid reserve auctions”, “spell-check”, “avoid negative feedback”, and “don’t overcharge for shipping”.
There were also several that took me by surprise.
- 7. Hold longer auctions: “seven-day auctions are about 24% higher, and 10-day auctions 42% higher on average.” This surprises me. I really wouldn’t have thought those numbers that high. I suppose the difference is in the extended exposure, but my thought would have been that less people actually search far enough in to find the auctions that end more than 3-5 days out.
- 8. Don’t end auctions during “eBay happy hour”: “auctions ending during peak hours on eBay are actually 9.6% less likely to result in a sale.” Seems simple when you think about it. There’s more and more competition during the “happy hour”. And do buyers really shop in greater numbers during those hours? Perhaps not enough to validate ending during that time.
Each of their points is backed up by a study that has some very nice statistical data in it. It’s a must read for any eBay seller, new and old.
[tags]ebay, tips, selling[/tags]
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September 14th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
http://cgi.ebay.com/Toshiba-Laptop-1905-s301-P4-2-0Ghz-256MB-CD-RW-DVD_W0QQitemZ170029632520QQihZ007QQcategoryZ140085QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem
That Toshiba laptop probably has a clogged heatsink or a dead cpu fan. I’ve sucked wads of dust off the backside of the heatsinks on those bastards and had to replace probably three fans in them when they failed to spin up during use. Often they get so hot it damages the harddrive causing so many hardware crc errors that windows won’t boot. We run mhdd on them in the shop after ripping them down and cleaning them up. Did you get yourself something nice to replace that bugger?
September 14th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Haven’t replaced it yet. I’ve used canned air to blow the heatsink out, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
Hoping to find something nice to replace eventually.