eBay has been in business for quite some time, hence devising a number of auction formats that would open up flexible ways through which buyers and sellers can conduct business. Be you a seller and don’t want to undersell the value of your product, or be pressed for time and selling out several units you have in stock, eBay will definitely have something to offer you. This article will give you some idea about some of the auction types and the advantages presented by each one:
Regular Auctions
Standard auctions are the bread and butter of eBay’s site—the no-frills way things work. Bidders bid, others outbid them, and so on until the auction closes. Highest bidder takes the item. Simple as can be, and most folks know how it works.
Reserve Price Auctions
Reserve-price auctions will help people who don’t want to sell an item at a price below a certain value. Here’s how it works: just like in any traditional auction, if the highest bid doesn’t meet your reserve price, then the auction will be covered without selling the item, and you will retain the item under bidding. This puts a warning to well-informed buyers with weak bidding prices, and the process for sale goes on.
Very different are fixed price auctions. You may set the price of the item at which people can buy it immediately, so a bidding process may be eliminated. You may simply add an option to your regular auction for a ‘Buy It Now’ action or list all your items at a fixed price, so everything becomes very streamlined toward achieving your desired price.
More recently, eBay introduced a ‘best offer’ facility with Fixed Price auctions. In this, bidders make an offer that the vendor can wish to negotiate if they wish. In both reserve and fixed price auctions the fees are a little higher, but as a general guideline the reserve option is much more effective with high volume items, and the fixed price with single items. On some sites, you can also list it both ways, at greater cost, but with more flexibility
Many Item (‘Dutch’) Auctions
In a Multiple Item, or “Dutch,” auction, you can list and sell more than one unit of all identical items. Buyers state a price and the quantity they would like. All winning bidders will then pay the lowest winning bid price. Certainly, though perhaps a little confusing, the format does allow a one-time efficient way to sell multiple identical items.
More often, sellers of multiple units of an item simply identify the number available and the price per unit using a multiple-item fixed price auction, and buyers can select as many as they wish by clicking ‘Buy It Now’.
Now What? How Not to Get Your Listing Pulled
Now that you know all the auction types at eBay, let’s make sure the stuff you’re going to sell is in line with what’s allowed to be listed on eBay. In our next email, we will get you through what’s allowed and what’s not.
Read more : Your First eBay Sale in 2024
