Auction vs Buy it Now opinions please

KRDmum

So over the past 6-7 months that I have been doing a clear out, I have tried both, auctions and BIN listings on my private account and I just cannot determine which works best. With auctions, you have to wait 7-10 days, then be dissapointed when items don't sell and there are no promotions for free listings but then with BIN you get silly offers from people, who ofer you £20 for £40 item etc.

I was just wondering what choice of listings you guys prefer and whym thanks

sham63

One of the main advantages of BIN is that you can 'require immediate payment' so you don't have to wait for payment (or wonder if you'll ever get paid!)


I terms of receiving silly offers, either turn off 'best offers' or set it to auto-reject offers below a certain amount.

jon81uk

If you are using best offer, set it to auto-reject anything below your absolute minimum.

I was selling a jacket for £25. Set it to auto accept over £20 and auto reject under £15. Anything in between I got an email so I could think about it.

mrcol1000

It really depends on the item and how much you want for it. Some people will pay more for an item buy it now so they can get it now rather than wait. But then some people will be pulled into an auction with a low start and pay over the odds as they get carried away. I have started something I have had buy it now for £10, at 99p just to get rid of it. Although it never sold for £10, at auction it may go for £15.

People can tell you what works and what doesn't for them. Really though a lot of the time it comes down to luck and people finding your listing. If you have something that there is a lot of it for sale, then a buy it now is probably best. If you do it cheaper than everyone else then it will probably sell quick. If its rare then an auction with a low start is going to do well, as long as plenty of people want to buy it.

KRDmum

Thank you for your responses guys, much appreciate it. With going away for a week I've ended all my BIN listings and then upon return I've used up pretty much all of the current offer allowance on free auction listings, which means I'm going to have nearly 100 listing end next Sunday and so on (here's hoping eBay will have another promotion). Maybe I should stick to BIN, at least that way the sales can be a bit more spread out and like mentioned above, with the 'immediate payment' requirement there's less chances of unpaid items.

WLM21

I think I am right with my thinking here ..:D

If you are selling a widget for example on an auction and it ends in 20 minutes, everybody looking for widgets will see it, assuming their ebay listing is set to ‘time ending soonest’ .. the default setting me thinks.


As the time tick down, the listing will eventually be at the top of the list.


However, if it is being listed as a 'buy it now' item , there is probably a chance that folk will not see it at all.

mrcol1000

WLM21 wrote: »

I think I am right with my thinking here ..:D

If you are selling a widget for example on an auction and it ends in 20 minutes, everybody looking for widgets will see it, assuming their ebay listing is set to ‘time ending soonest’ .. the default setting me thinks.


As the time tick down, the listing will eventually be at the top of the list.


However, if it is being listed as a 'buy it now' item , there is probably a chance that folk will not see it at all.

I don't think it is that simple. Who knows how Ebay do their Best Match search results but I personally suspect that it is different from user to user. So if I search for "Blue Widget" then I will see different results to someone else. It also depends how people change the search results. So if you are cheaper than everyone else buy it now, then you will catch the people who change results based on price. Also as it gets to the end of the buy it now listing, people will change the results to see what ends soonest. Probably to see which auctions are close to ending. However they will also see your buy it now listing and may just decide to skip the uncertainty of an auction and buy it.

Really though you'd drive yourself insane if you tried to figure all this out.

Procrastinater

At auction I've had items I would have BiN'd at £500 go for £1350 and another I paid £60 for some years before go for £240 when I'd have BiN'd it at £50 ! But then most of the time, I use BiN because it lasts longer and the sales are spread out.

And because a lot of my items are cheapish and they'd likely hget "poached" at the 1 bid level, if I listed at 99p instead of £5.99 !