09-29-2009, 07:10 PM
I always factored the fees into my pricing, and figured everyone else would do the same. It's unfortunate overhead, but set your price as low as you feel comfortable with selling the item at, don't use reserve pricing, and set the duration of your auction based on how long it will be on the first four pages at the best times of the week for your product.Like with my products, I discovered (using the tracking stuff), that if I had an auction in for 10 days, it was not getting attention at all except on Friday, Sat, or Sunday. On a long auction, where I tried to use two weekends, the first one was usually a waste of time, unless I had a one-of-a-kind super-duper item that I knew was going to start a bidding war.If my competition has a buy it now.. so did I, undercutting by one dollar, or better yet.. undercutting on the shipping cost, unless there's other competitors and a quick moving market, at which point I just match the lowest one if I could.If it's not worth the cost of selling through Ebay because of the resultant price inflation, then obviously, it's not worth selling through Ebay. $10 may seem like a lot on $100, but unless it matches your profit margin, you're still making money or you simply need to start higher. It's the cost of hitting such a large market.