Listing on Ebay, lower price or free post

Coveredinbees!!!!

I'm currently listing a load of stuff on ebay but have been trying to decide if it better to list an item with free postage for say £25 or list the item for £20 with £5 postage. Which would seem like the better deal to the buyer. To me free postage seems like a better deal?

vacheron

I've found free postage wins psychologically every time. 

It also avoids those (thankfully rarer these days) people who used to complain that the P&P stated £5 but the label on the parcel only said £4.25!  (because of course, time, boxes and bubble wrap are all free!)

theoretica

Free postage can lower the incentive for people to look at your other stuff and combine postage.  If the stuff you are listing is stuff where you expect people to buy more than one item you might think of ways to still encourage that.

Coveredinbees!!!!

I'm bundling things already as I don't really want to have to post loads of single things. It's a bit chicken and egg deciding which way to go. I have tried facebook market place but that has it's own issues which are even more of a pain.

vacheron

Coveredinbees!!!! said:

I'm bundling things already as I don't really want to have to post loads of single things. It's a bit chicken and egg deciding which way to go. I have tried facebook market place but that has it's own issues which are even more of a pain.

Remember, if it's the multiple trips to the post offfice which you want to avoid, you can arrange up to 2KG shoebox sized parcel to be collected from your home by your postman for just £3.35 at the moment. It also includes £150 of insurance which is a pretty good deal. 

purplevamp

vacheron said:

Coveredinbees!!!! said:

I'm bundling things already as I don't really want to have to post loads of single things. It's a bit chicken and egg deciding which way to go. I have tried facebook market place but that has it's own issues which are even more of a pain.

Remember, if it's the multiple trips to the post offfice which you want to avoid, you can arrange up to 2KG shoebox sized parcel to be collected from your home by your postman for just £3.35 at the moment. It also includes £150 of insurance which is a pretty good deal. 

Just to clarify, it's free for the postman to collect but the labels costs £3.35 (from Ebay)

soolin

For me it varies from item to item. A lot of my business items are free postage although not as many as I had as little as 2 or 3 years ago. I have a lot of MVLs now and it means I can make a little extra if someone buys more than one item, although I do still get asked by people if I’ll refund something if I’m posting together as it should cost them less to buy 2 items at the same price, rather than in 2 separate transactions, I’ve partly eased those questions though by setting my MVLs to discount multiple sales by a small percentage. 

However virtually all of the items on my private account are with postage as an extra. I did it that way when RM prices started going up and where I had some stubborn items that wouldn’t sell. Instead of having to adjust my prices on each individual item to allow for the increases, I now just amend my postage template and all my listings using that postage are automatically updated. I do however refund some postage if multiple items are bought and people seem quite surprised when I do that without them asking. 

GadgetGuru

I usually add postage - I always feel the cheaper item price would draw some buyers in. Then again, I always add best offer, and end up dropping the cost of postage stating that I will 'post for free' as a bit of an incentive. 

Whether it works or not I dont know, but like others I'm finding eBay generally slow at the moment anyways. 

se2020

Do a few test runs,
List the same item twice with both options and see which sells first.

Just remember to end the 2nd if the first ones sells.

soolin

se2020 said:

Do a few test runs,
List the same item twice with both options and see which sells first.

Just remember to end the 2nd if the first ones sells.

You can't do duplicate listings on ebay. The system either stops you, or else hides one of them.

You could try it with 2 similar items, list one with and one without free postage but both totalling the same, and see if one sells better than the other. If you repeat that with a few similar items you might see a pattern emerge.

Coveredinbees!!!!

Thank for the tips.

I'm doing a combination of free post and added post depending on how I feel when listing,

Got loads to work thru so hopefully adding a suggestion to check out my other listings might help with selling too.