The most popular type of ebay listing is the general ‘auction’, but there are also three other types of listings that can be used.
The four types of ebay listings are:
• Auction
• Buy It Now
• Dutch
• Store
Auction Listing: The auction listing is plain and simple. You have an item to sell so you set the listing up for auctioning a quantity of 1 item.
You may start the auction at the price of your choice and some auctions will allow you to have a reserve price.
Some sellers will start their auctions at the minimum price that they would like to receive for the item and many sellers will even start their auctions as low as .01 cent.
Buyers will then bid on the auction and the winner is the person with the highest bid when the auction finishes.
The buyer will then send you the money for the item and you will then send the item to the buyer.
Buy-it-now Listing: With Buy It Now listings you are leaving nothing to chance. You are asking a specific price that buyers can purchase at. With Buy It Now listings your buyers can purchase the item immediately instead of waiting for the auction to finish.
You can have a quantity of just one or a multiple quantity. This method is very good if you are selling information products as you can sell as many as you like all from the one listings.
When selling a multiple quantity using the Buy It Now listing, it is a good idea to have the items listed over a seven or ten day period. This gives your items longer exposure and will be seen by more potential customers. You will have a longer period and may possibly sell all the quantities advertised over that time.
Dutch auction: I have used this a couple of times and with the right products can actually be very profitable. With the Dutch auction you must start at a minimum price of 99cents, you can have a quantity of 2 or more. The Dutch auction works like this: we’ll have a quantity of 2 as the example, a bid is placed by one bidder say for $2.00 but their highest bid is actually $5.00. With a normal auction it will show $2.00 and when another person bids it will increase until it reaches that persons highest bid of $5.00. With the Dutch auction, when the second person bids it may go up to $2.50 so both of them have bids at $2.50. Every time that someone places a bid both bids increase by that amount. So if a third bidder joins and bids, they will need to bid more than at least one of the other bidders, which will then bring the second bidder up to that amount also. So if the third bidders bids $6.50 and outbids the first bidder whose highest bid was $5.00, both the third and second bidders’ bids move up to $6.50.
I hope that makes a bit of sense, I never read anything about Dutch auctions that made sense to me, it wasn’t until I tried one out that I really worked out what it was all about.
Store Listing: To have an ebay store there is a monthly fee of about $15. If you are selling a lot of items on ebay as a full time job, then it may be worth paying the fee and having an ebay store.
Store listings are at a fixed price similar to the buy it now listing. Store listings are listed for longer periods however, usually over a 30 day period with the option to automatically be relisted at the end of that period if there are still some quantities left for sale.
Store listings are a lot cheaper to list and the final valuation fees are also less than with the other three types of listings.
Store listings get less exposure as they do not show up first during customer’s searches. If you have an ebay store it is a good idea to also have normal buy it now or auction listings, and mention your ebay store in these listings.
These listings will get more exposure and be advertisements for your store stock.
What type of listing you use will depend on what you are selling and the quantities you are selling. Sometimes you may take some time to find out what works best for you.