a query regarding putting prices up

brettcta

i sell a certain home made clothing accesory on ebay and have been selling said item for nigh on 4 years now.

my prices since day 1 have been £9.99 but recently with increased production costs (even though i'm still making a decent profit) i've been toying with the idea of putting prices up £1, but i don't then want to be sat with a load of my item sat round my house unsold.

there's no one else on ebay selling what i sell and i've found quite a niche (albeit a small one) and i've conducted a couple of surveys with customers and they're all happy with the item, mainly because of the build quality but primarily because it's under the £10 mark. most of the time i can only sell 3-5 of the item at a time due to the time it takes to make them (a batch of 4 can take 3 days to make). on a batch of 3 items, i've been known to have 9 watchers and over 250 page views and the items are usually sold within 3 days of going on sale.

as i say, i've been considering, but holding off, a £1 price mark up.

my question to you is, would it be worth putting the £1 mark up on the items but also donating the extra £1 (well, it'd be £1.10 if i set it at 10% but that's just splitting hairs) to a charity (as yet undecided)?

the obvious flaws in this are that people may be tolerant to paying the additional £1 as it's to charity but if/when i put the actual price up without the charitable donation, will that tolerance go west?

any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

xx

username & items kept anonymous as i've had my ebay details splashed out here before and had some eejit (no names) wrecking sales on aforementioned items.

soolin

I wouldn't bother with any charitable donation to be honest, just put the prices up a little now and maybe a little more later on. If that affects your sales too much then you can always drop them again later.

DaveAshton

Go for the price increase. If they go a few days, or even a week, without the same level of interest/ sales, drop the price back to what it was originally.

brettcta

aye, good call.

cheers to the pair of you

Hintza

This is when feedback is your enemy (folk can see past sales prices quite a way back). Why not try £2 increase. £11.99 sounds better than £10.99 in a strange sort of way. In addition put a paragragh in your listing explaining why you have had to raise prices (take it out after the price is established)

If they sell for £9.99 it must be on BIN why not try them at auction for a bit with a £9.99 start price?

Could you double your price? Then you would only need to sell half as many?

brettcta

i don't think i could double the price, that'd be taking the mickey well & truely.

i might try one on an auction, see what it fetches

chja

You could try one at a much higher price (double, or whatever) but with the best offer option - then the buyer is telling you for the future what price can be sustained.

weegie.geek

Have you had a good look at what you can do to decrease the cost of manufacturing whatever it is you sell?

Hintza

chja wrote: »

You could try one at a much higher price (double, or whatever) but with the best offer option - then the buyer is telling you for the future what price can be sustained.

Yes but a quick check will show what all the previos ones have sold for. if you move prices you have be able to atke initial resistance.

brettcta

weegie.geek wrote: »

Have you had a good look at what you can do to decrease the cost of manufacturing whatever it is you sell?

yep and it resulted in the items falling apart.

the particular adhesive i use is very specific and no other cheaper adhesive comes even close to what i use.

the rest of the materials i have no control over as i can only source them from one place.

Awec

I would put your price up and not bother with the explaining paragraph. Most people will be intelligent enough to work out why I think.

If your sales do drop, maybe put in a paragraph explaining why, and if that fails, drop them down again.