eBay Auction Home Business Tutorial: Don't Charge Too Much...Or Too Little!

In my last few eBay auction tutorials, we talked about what you can sell to make money on eBay and start your own home business.  But whether it's an ebook packed with your favorite recipes or custom coffee cups, one of the most important decisions you have to make is the price of your item.

As we all know, the highest bidder in an eBay auction wins the item.  There's also a "Buy It Now" feature on Ebay you can use to sell your item for a set price rather than auctioning it off, and that's the way I sell all of my items.  If you use "Buy It Now", the purchaser can decide to pay your asking price and purchase the item immediately, rather than having to wait for the end of the auction.

If you're selling a physical item, you have to take inventory and shipping costs into account, and we all have to pay various fees on eBay in order to sell items there.  These fees vary depending on how much your item is sold for.  If you’re selling a physical item, don’t try to cut the price of the item and then charge a lot for shipping.  For example, there’s a certain type of computer cable I occasionally buy on eBay, and I’ll see the same cable listed at $5 from one vendor and 99 cents from another.  Why?  The vendor selling it for 99 cents asks $8.50 for shipping!  EBay is really starting to crack down on this behavior, and frankly, it’s a really good way to discourage customers from making future purchases. 

When deciding on a price, the key is to NOT price the item too high…but you also have to avoid selling it at too low a price, because that will make people think that your item has no value.

I went through that personally.  When I started selling my first ebook on eBay, I priced it very low, thinking that I'd make up for the low price by selling a lot of them.  It just didn't work out that way.  If you put too low a price on an item, instead of being happy that the item is cheaper than others, it makes people wonder what's wrong with it.  After a while, I raised the price, and started selling more ebooks!

You may have to experiment a bit in order to find the best price to offer your eBay customers, and that's just part of being in business.  The key is not to ask too high or too low a price. If you have a competitor on eBay selling the same thing you're thinking of selling, check their feedback to see if they seem to be selling quite a few of them, or hardly any.  Adjust your price appropriately, and if one price doesn't move items, try another.  And when it comes to selling on eBay, don't be afraid to ask for a premium price - as long as you're offering a premium product!