subject: Ebay Sellers: Are You Confused Over The Selling Formats On Ebay? Not Sure Which One Would Produce Th [print this page] Let me give you a quick summary of the two formats available, then I'll tell you how I use both formats and why I do.
Auction:
This is for single items and listings in this format are for either 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 days and the listing will end at the same time it began. Therefore if you list it at 9am it will end at 9am, so it's better to list in (or schedule for) the evening, when your potential customers are most likely to be at their computers. As soon as your listing becomes live it will be placed amongst all of the other listings in order of time. As the time runs down your listing will climb through the eBay pages and eventually end on the first page of your chosen category.
Your starting price should be as low as possible, to get people bidding on it. Obviously you need to cover your costs; for the item and listing fees.
People will, hopefully, bid on your item and when the listing time has lapsed the highest bidder wins the item. If you have more of the same item be sure to check for second chance offers, which will give the non winning bidders another chance to purchase the item at the price of their highest bid.
Fixed Price:
This is for single or multiple items and listings in this format are for either 3, 5, 7, 10, 30 days or Good 'Till Canceled (GTC), and again will end at the same time they began. Fixed Price listings do NOT climb through the eBay listings in the same way as auction items, they are placed by eBay in accordance with the sellers Detailed Seller Rating (DSR).
Your Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) is built by previous customers at the time of leaving feedback. They are asked to rate you on 4 points:
1, Item as described
2, Communication
3, Dispatch time
4, Postage and packaging charges
You are rated from 1 to 5 stars, with 5 being best. If your previous customers are not overly impressed with any of the 4 points they will give you a low rating. This low rating will in turn reduce the position of your fixed price items, especially if you have an average DSR of 4.4 or below.
When buyers visit your listing they can purchase it at a fixed price or, if you've activated it, they can submit a best offer. If you have 5 items available for sale the advert will remain active until the listing time has expired or you have sold all of the amount in the listing.
eBay recently announced that sellers may list up to 15 identical listings but only one of them can be in the Fixed price format.
Therefore, if you are listing many of the same items I would suggest that you have one advert as a fixed price listing and a few single item auctions. Then on the auction sales pages add a note at the bottom telling people that the item is available to buy now and add a link to your fixed price item.
Its very simple to create such a link on eBay, I have numbered the steps so as to make it easier for you to follow, (print out if you need to):
1, Open 2 tabs, (pages), and have your Fixed Price item on one and your auction sales page on the other.
2, Highlight the item number of your fixed price listing then right click on it and select copy.
3, Then go to the auction item's sales page and in the section entitled 'Describe the item youre selling' you will see a tool bar across the top.
4, Click on 'create links' and another window will open.
5, Here you have a number of options, but select 'Build a link to an item'.
6, Another window opens where you paste in the item number from the fixed price listing and add the text you would like to display on the sales page; for example Click HERE for the Buy Now option.
7, Then click preview and you will see how it looks and the html code below.
8, Right click in the html box and select all, then copy the html code and return to your sales page.
9, Find where you would like to place your link and type HERE then switch to the html view by clicking on the html tab at the top of the section.
10, Once you have the html code displayed simply find the spot where you typed HERE and highlight it, then right click on it and select paste.
11, Switch back to the standard view and check your work.
12, If you would like to change the position of the link from left to right or in the middle, simply place the cursor in front of the text and click the desired position from the tool bar.
I use this method myself and it has generated sales of my fixed price items. You see the auction items will get noticed as they climb through the listings and the links within the sales pages will help drive people to your fixed price items.
When i list in the fixed price format i list 10 items for GTC (Good 'Till Canceled), with my auctions leading back to them.
I hope that this helps YOU generate sales, best of luck. For more tips on eBay and Internet Marketing visit my blog'
