if your not making money, your service is not going to be that good, unless your crackers,

even then, it dont matter if your a saint, you cant control the poor sevice of others, ebay buyers dont think of the individual seller, they think of ebay in general

The only reason I considered a drop was a competitor selling an identical product had lowered the sale price, I *think* I was winning the battle because of better feedback but with the ole credit crunch I think price can play more of a roll? so I am watching the other players more carefully.

However, if you’re still getting sales at the higher price, why not leave it?

crystal

we really cannot believe why many sellers actually bother considering the returns they make per item

Offer good service, at a fair price and that’s better than cheap prices. What I do find is cheap prices usually also entail poor images from sellers, poor DSR’s etc.

On the being no1 or no3 in search results it makes a huge difference for commodity products. At the end of the day if no1 and no3 are selling the same product at the same price no1 will outsell them many times over. Buyers appear to think the no1 position is best (Why wouldn’t they?). Even if no3 is cheaper on many commodity items at sub £5 cheaper will be measured in pennies and that doesn’t appear to be enough to attract the majority of buyers from no1 to no3 (or even no2)

Of course it’s different in categories like art where products will be substantially different and subjective.

It is a struggle to sell items profitably with ebay/paypal charges & policies and this is coming home to roost. I think sellers will continue up until the Xmas period and then a load will drop out, coupled with buyer’s credit card bills in January, will see a huge drop in sales/revenue/fees.

I wouldn’t be suprised in a $5 share price in the new year.

If you’re in the UK and you’re not at the top of Best Match with a long history of sales from your listing it’s almost impossible to compete against an incumbent.

I noticed almost all Quantity Manager users are from the UK. In the US people just seem to complain about best match.

Also one line I have been selling is titanium rings, now I sell the same rings as a competitor does, his rings are £39.99 – £49.99 plus £2.95 delivery. I sell mine at £19.99 including delivery yet he has been selling more than me!!!!! So put my prices up and now selling more…………………lol

I think it must of been that people thought they were to cheap so not as good…..

Anyway thats my little thought

Stu

You pay a premium to be #1 but is it really necessary? As long as you are say top 3, I would argue, you receive equal visibility as rank 1. You don’t have to be the cheapest, but you should be up there in terms of rank for a specific keyword search.

If you want to be #1, you would need to exceed the daily volume that the current “king of the hill” holds and it would take as long as number of days Recent Sales calculation is used for that category. For art, it might be 30 days, while iPod may only be 3 days.

Recent Sales solidifies in my mind that eBay sellers need to branch out. I have a few inbound links where forum members recommend a product I sell. I have to list the same product for less on eBay to compete, but I can sell many on our web store for a higher price. Direct referrals are valuable since it removes the direct competition issue that eBay searches raise.

One trick a lot of people seem to be missing is using MarkDown Manager to temporarily deflate prices. It enables you to be cheapest on eBay with a higher headline rate. The lower price is temporary, and at the end of the sale returns to your full price with NO loss of visibility in Best Match.

Definitely one that should be experimented with if you want to cut prices with the option of restoring them to previous levels

As you might imagine, people who had higher prices had some sales, but not a lot.

The graph SPIKES at 10-25% lower than the average price. Of course, if everybody starts pricing lower, the average falls. But we know from behaviour on eBay that shoppers tend to treat the average price like it’s the VALUE of the item. If you price higher, they will think you’re out of your mind.

The interesting thing on the graph was that if your price is less than 25% below the average, your sales drop again to similar levels as items priced above the average. My guess would be that at that point, people may just not believe it’s real or in good condition, etc…

So while I think eBay has always been a place to bargain hunt, and the graphs show people go for the lower prices, I thought it was interesting that eBay showed poorer sales results for people who REALLY dropped prices.