Selling on eBay: does the # of watchers...

[pastrygirl]

Just curious. In your experience selling on eBay, if you have several watchers but no bids or a single bid just hours before the auction ends, do the # of bids go up right before the end? Not really? 50/50? Almost all of the time?

I can't stand the wait! I'm hoping to get more bids because I priced my items a little too low. I looked at completed listings to see how they started and ended, and priced mine similarly. But now I have only one bid on each, with 3 to 7 watchers on each. I'm hoping for some bidding wars, LOL! I'd love to see the prices that were reached on the completed listings. :)

[mamaoftwins]

I find that most of the time, I'll have a few people watching and only one bid or two at the end. I've never had a bidding war. :( Although I certainly would like one on some things!

I just listed some items last night and already I have 6 watchers on one.

[pastrygirl]

I've never had so many watchers before, but I used to price my items closer to the amount I hoped to get. I don't know why I decided to start so low this time around... :o

[mamaoftwins]

I always think of the price I would hope to get and then drop it a little, also checking around at what similar items sold for. I always think abt shipping costs, too. Like if you can get the item for $20 new, I want to stay well below $20, shipping included. That's just my way of pricing. I don't think most people really want to pay what I hope to get right now, KWIM?

The item that I have 6 watchers on is now recently hard to find, and I priced it half of what it retailed for, so I'm hoping it goes higher!

[KrisM]

I think it depends on a lot. If it's a hard to find item, people will watch because they have one similar to sell and want to see how yours does. People will do that even if it's not hard to find.

I usually get a few bids in the last few minutes, but not a bidding war, really. Actually, I don't run actions anymore, because they were all ending too low for me. I just use the 30-day fixed price and have been selling quite a bit that way for the price I want.

I hope your watchers bid!

[citymama]

Recently (in the last 2 months) I've noticed that many kids clothing items on eBay are selling way lower than they used to, and fewer bidding wars. (Attributing this to the overall decline in spending/retail sales.) I'm speaking as a buyer. I'm one of those people who doesn't bid on anything until the last 3 minutes of the auction, but at that point, if the item is already above my budget, I won't bid at all. It used to be that with brands like Boden and Hanna, that was almost always the case unless the auction ended at a weird time or item was incorrectly listed. Now I'm finding that isn't true - many items close with just a single bid, or 2 bids at most. I tend to do reasonably-priced BINs more often than not these days, since I usually go on eBay to get a very specific item with a fixed budget.

Good luck!

[AngelaS]

I think the days of bidding wars are ending. I used to get them fairly often when I ran "buy 5 and get free shipping" specials, but the last time I did that the one who won 5 bought all the things that went for their opening bids.

It also used to be that the number of watchers doubled was the end price. So if it had 5 watchers, it'd sell for about $10.

Also, my auctions used to double in about the last 12 or 18 hours. I know when I did auctions before Christmas they didn't do that well. :(

I listed 48 auctions last night and I'm really curious to see how they'll do. :P

[pastrygirl]

Ugh, to top it all off, I think it's not doing well because there's a typo in the title. I thought the default search option was to include the description (where it's spelled correctly), but it's not. So it's not coming up on the search. I'm so mad at myself! It's a piece of $$$ electronic equipment that my husband hasn't used in years. I was hoping to get a nice chunk of money for it. :(

The other things I have listed aren't as big a deal to me, just some handbags and shoes. But I really wanted to do well with my husband's thing.

[mamaoftwins]

Can you edit the title to fix it? I'm not sure.

You can always cancel the auction and start over again. (if you think this would help you make more $!)

[pastrygirl]

I got a bid as soon as I listed it, and wasn't able to change the title after that. The auction just ended. At $50 less than what others were selling for on eBay. I'm so mad at myself. :(

ETA: This was supposed to help pay for a stroller I just bought. I can't believe how badly I messed this up. The last electronic thing of my husband's that I sold made over $200. I really thought that by starting the bid low, it would escalate. Some of them started at $10 (for this same exact thing)! I don't know why this one didn't go as high as all the others.