Seemingly, no competitive bidding on auctions...

[michaelcollinshimself]

Perhaps we have a buyer`s market out there, where there is little, or no bidding for items that are perhaps just below what one might expect to be a fair starting price? And or it`s a combination of this and that buyers have less to spend, and so are less inclined to enter an auction and just make a minimal maiden start price bid?

I`ve had requests for special deals, or offers made to BIN, but the auction function seem redundant.

This may be due to nature of items I`m selling and not promoting them either, but I wonder what other members have found happening here on eBay recently.

In any case, in the past I would have expected bids on items once they had reached 5 watchers perhaps, but now this seems less likely with a fair number of "potential buyers" just watching?

So effectively now, most things I`m trying to auction are BIN`s!

[tressygirl]

I'm by no means expert on how to make items sell faster, but one observation I can make , your CD's these surely have a celing level of price unless they are rare,  apologies as I'm not familiar with those artists.

I would imagine someone wishing to buy a CD will wish to buy and pay for it asap,  and not wait 5 - 7 days for an auction to end.  Perhaps list those as BIN's ?

Your other items are lovely collectables,  eBay do advise the first 4 words in the main title are the most important,  those are the ones buyers will use to search for the item. 

Find other sellers selling the same item,  look to see the ones which have sold,  and see the titles selected for those successful sales,  they may help yours,  if they need adjusting.

@michaelcollinshimself 

[michaelcollinshimself]

Thanks for the suggestions and pointers, I do usually check similar listed items that I sell... some of my CDs` are unusual in you can only buy them direct from the artistes at their gigs, or their sites. Most are competitive unless you can find them on music magpie or get lucky in a charity shop!

Haaha! Would you believe it? As I write this  bidding has stepped up on one of my larger lots!

Perhaps we should listen to eBay when it encourages us to "keep up the momentum", as more buyers and watchers perhaps save us as favourites!

[plpmr]

online auctions are different to B&M auctions in as much, the main bidding usually comes at the very end, in the last few seconds.

[michaelcollinshimself]

Sorry, I`m not a pro seller, what is a  B&M auction?

[a45heaven]

Auctions are good for certain items - mainly rarer more obscure items, the common items only appear to sell if you happen to list an item where by one or more collectors desire the item.

That said, ebay have much adversly affected auctions (and to a degree Set Sale too) - selling fees are much higher than dedicated selling platforms. Search functions are barely usable to the regular buyer who have not been coached on essoteric inputted vales to the search. 'Check Out' functions are difficult to complete for more than a sungle item,  ebay have basically stopped the combining capability of sellers with the '4 day pay or else' threats, which rules out the sale of marginal items, unless you maybe go for multiple 'grab lots' ?

As i sell a similar product to yourself, i have had to attract buyers to my auction items, as ebay does not do.- although my items are probably more niche than yours.

Set Sale is not for me on ebay these days, that was ended when ebay started reaping fees for postage by the way.

Further volume of items are reduced by each negative interference by ebay.

Positve changes from ebay are not apparent at the moment, nor on the horizon.

Sorry for grammer and spelling errors , ebay are weeks into fixing their problem , but have failed so far.

[tressygirl]

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@michaelcollinshimself wrote:

Sorry, I`m not a pro seller, what is a  B&M auction?

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Bricks and Mortar,   so an auction house.

[a45heaven]

Which auction comes in the last few seconds, ebay or B&M ?

The problem with ebay is, as has been widely commented on on the boards, the count down clock jumps back or forth coming to zero time. (It didnt use to on ebay, but changes have been made).

Surely both auction places should allow bids to made at a time suiting the Bidder, Snipes or not.

[tressygirl]

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@a45heaven

I think @plpmr   was referring to eBay auctions. 

That is, peeps put the auction perhaps first on Watch, then come back in the dying minutes,  even seconds , to place their bids.  

Personally,  that's what I do.

@a45heaven

[eastern-lights]

I think it does depend very much on what you are selling. I am currently bidding in an auction that has ten bidders, eighteen bids.

One thing to try if you are not in a hurry is a slow "dutch" auction. List item as a BIN at the highest price you could reasonanly expect to get for it. After several weeks, if it is unsold, re-price it down by about 10%. Repeat until it sells.

Do check you are getting views, or better still, watchers. If you are not getting any views you need to re-think.

[a45heaven]

I agree the product is a major factor.

Due to ebays search failures, i advertise my auctions directly to potential bidders on Social media sites, that would not be practical with unknown end times i think.

I never relist an item - theres other sites to sell on should ebay fail.

But the 'Dutch Auction' function you perform , presumably suits your market - do you not feel you are doing ebays work for them? All they do is to hold hands out for fees!

Ive been on here too long to have faith in ebay 'Views' or 'Watchers' - from the days of having dozens of either within seconds of the listing going live, then following questions about that data, suddenly we got zero Views / Watches for days after going live. Doesnt smack of a reliable figure.

[theelench]

In addition to all the other good advice already given, have you checked your Selling Preferences, especially if you haven't listed for a while?

Recently ebay decided that it would help to reduce non-paying buyers if sellers required buyers to have a payment method on record with ebay as a requirement before making a bid.

They thought this was such a brilliant idea that they opted all sellers into the scheme, but you can opt-out by unticking the box, if you disagree.

To check whether you're in or not go to Account (top left on main site pages)

Scroll down to Selling > Selling Preferences > Your Buyers >  Manage Who Can Buy From You > Buyer Rules

You'll see a tick-box  with "Require buyers to provide a payment method before they place a bid."

If it's ticked, your buyers are subject to the requirement.

Personally, I don't remember when I last had a non-paying buyer and un-ticked the box because IMO it is likely to put bidders off bidding as once they have given ebay their payment method, ebay will use it on all future auctions (and possibly all future BIN purchases???)  

It's up to you, others will probably be of the opinion that unticking is a bad idea, but as a buyer I wouldn't give ebay easy access to my funds and wouldn't bid on any auction where I had to agree to do so.

Having said that.

I have opted-out and used to regularly use 7 day auction listings.  Having done so before and after this Preference was introduced I haven't notice any real difference in the dire results for selling niche collectables on ebay on either format.

Two weeks ago I listed a rare-ish Art Deco bowl at auction.  The only other one on ebay UK was £168 + postage from the US.  Mine had an opening bid of £95 + RM P&P £12(?).  It got a "magnificent" 17 views, 3 Watchers and 0 bids.

Opting-out might get you a few more bids but between more people with less to spend and the manipulated search that makes un-sponsored listings increasingly difficult to find I've come to the conclusion that trying to sell anything on ebay is akin to flogging a dead horse.