MR TiGGer
Trackday Hero
 Offline
Location: 100 Acre Woods near St Helens
Member for 1891 days
So many cats, too few recipes!
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« on: August 21, 2007, 10:38:36 PM » |
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Can I pass some wisdom that was passed to me that works.
Start at 0.99p make sure it finishes at 9pm Sunday night but not on a Bank Holiday weekend and no reserve, and before you all cry you must have reserve let me explain.
You're playing a game here and you need to generate interest, and you do that by getting the "Bids" count really high. so some muppet bids a quid, another £20, then other £100 etc etc so after 3 days it's up to 7 bids and £150 so people go oooh!! and notice other people are really keen and they want to know why.
Reserve is a very bad thing as it tells people you know what it's worth so they ain't going to win it for peanuts, so they don't bother, it's the same with a hiked up starting price with the joke phrase "No reserve" Starting price £2'500, so again no bargains to be had and more people turned away.
The game is very simple and the 'trick' to make sure you don't take a bath is you ask a nice person who you can trust and lives nowhere near you to bid on Friday .... sometimes Saturday to bid your 'Real Reserve Price' the price you'll not let it go for no matter what. So now you're protected because you have an agreement that if your friend wins then officially he paid and officially it's gone.
Now the best bit which is the game part, is starting at 0.99p there's people who got involved near the beginning and get emotionally involved, and then are determined to win no matter what, and so do a couple of other people and Hey Presto!! A Bidding war ensues.
Yea it's naughty but 9 times out of 10 if you follow this path you don't even need to involve anyone but remember nothing really gets going properly until the last hour then the last 3 mins and finally the last 15 seconds as the Sniper Programs kick in.
The Antidote to this behavior is to use a decent Sniper Program like Auctionsniper.com work out the very most you're willing to pay, lock it into the Sniper and forget all about it, let others do the bidding war and escalate the price beyond reason then look for another somewhere else.
Timing is very much the key, I won a very expensive keyboard (music) for it's starting price of £25 instead of paying roughly £130ish, the going rate for that age. The reason? It finished at 9:30am on a Wednesday so it was never at the top of anybodys search requests for Keyboards in the peak hours. She basically took the kids to school and thought "Oh yea the keyboard on ebay" without using "Scheduled start"
And don't forget the pictures must be top quality in daylight, the more money you want, then the more pictures in large format you need. crappy pictures = crappy price
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