selling hot items like ps3 wii and tmx elmo on ebay
I am not a retailer or a heavy seller but I learned few things on selling on ebay this holiday season. It all started this with us getting in this usual holiday spirit of buying new stuff. We really wanted nintendo wii, mainly because my son had nintendo gamecube and DS (and gameboy advance before that) and we already have games. Moving to a new platform needed lot of incentive.
However ps3 came couple of days before and there is lot of buzz and I was driving by Fry's electronics and decided to test my luck there just at the opening time. The line was short for a minute I was shocked but then I realized they already probably told how many they have and told the remaining guys and they must have left. Sure enough, there was a Fry's employee who is taking collecting interest lists. Fry's only sells bundles where you are forced to buy the console and 5 games. Still it looked like a bargain looking at the prices they were going on ebay.
And then wii came on the following Sunday, for which we stood in the line for an hour before store opening time. Even for wii Fry's is only selling bundles so not many people were found in the lines but we closely missed it. (They had about 50 but some enterprising people were camping out).
After couple of tries however we were able to get a wii from Target. (They announced in the newspaper ,insert not so prominently but the same day Circuit City and Walmart also got some stock.) Finally we got the wii and my son is enjoying it. And then the calls came from Fry's probably a week later for both ps3 and wii. So the prices still appeared high on ebay ( by looking at completed listings for ps3 on ebay and wii on ebay, you could see the completed item prices. ). I figured I can try to make profit by selling for profit on ebay and if I do not succeed return to Fry's unopened.
What followed is not at all expected by me.
So I decided to see whats happenning and how other people are getting hits/bids. Then I realized they have one of the following
However my experience with selling wii has been a lot better. Unlike ps3 bundle, for wii I did not list as a bundle (We kept the games for my son) and listed only the console. Because of this my starting price has been set to the list price of wii and had a buy-it-now price. (Here is the link to the item on ebay. Within 10 minutes after it was listed it was sold with buy-it-now price. I believe this search which is promoted on ebay's home page and probably by ebay placed ads on Google and other search engines is responsible for this sale. So it might be a good idea to think about how ebay promotes these items and make sure your item qualifies for those promotions.
One thing I did notice is ps3 definitely did not live up to the hype ( perhaps because of its already high price) compared to wii. On ebay however it seems wii which is getting sold most.
However ps3 came couple of days before and there is lot of buzz and I was driving by Fry's electronics and decided to test my luck there just at the opening time. The line was short for a minute I was shocked but then I realized they already probably told how many they have and told the remaining guys and they must have left. Sure enough, there was a Fry's employee who is taking collecting interest lists. Fry's only sells bundles where you are forced to buy the console and 5 games. Still it looked like a bargain looking at the prices they were going on ebay.
And then wii came on the following Sunday, for which we stood in the line for an hour before store opening time. Even for wii Fry's is only selling bundles so not many people were found in the lines but we closely missed it. (They had about 50 but some enterprising people were camping out).
After couple of tries however we were able to get a wii from Target. (They announced in the newspaper ,insert not so prominently but the same day Circuit City and Walmart also got some stock.) Finally we got the wii and my son is enjoying it. And then the calls came from Fry's probably a week later for both ps3 and wii. So the prices still appeared high on ebay ( by looking at completed listings for ps3 on ebay and wii on ebay, you could see the completed item prices. ). I figured I can try to make profit by selling for profit on ebay and if I do not succeed return to Fry's unopened.
What followed is not at all expected by me.
- I first listed ps3 bundle as is but for a day, there were not many hits to my listing. There were about 10000+ listings, since most people were looking for items ending now. Then I decided to promote my ebay item in Craigslist. I do not somehow feel comfortable in Cash transactions with unknown people so I did not want a direct craigslist transaction but was trying to point to my ebay item. But looks like everybody is trying the same, Craigslist refused to take my listing (because it contained a reference to ebay. Wonder what's happenning ebay's 25% stake!).
So I decided to see whats happenning and how other people are getting hits/bids. Then I realized they have one of the following
- Free Shipping
- Fast Shipping
- Auctions with the teaser prices like 0.01.
- Lastly Featured Items which are a little bit expensive to list
However my experience with selling wii has been a lot better. Unlike ps3 bundle, for wii I did not list as a bundle (We kept the games for my son) and listed only the console. Because of this my starting price has been set to the list price of wii and had a buy-it-now price. (Here is the link to the item on ebay. Within 10 minutes after it was listed it was sold with buy-it-now price. I believe this search which is promoted on ebay's home page and probably by ebay placed ads on Google and other search engines is responsible for this sale. So it might be a good idea to think about how ebay promotes these items and make sure your item qualifies for those promotions.
One thing I did notice is ps3 definitely did not live up to the hype ( perhaps because of its already high price) compared to wii. On ebay however it seems wii which is getting sold most.
posted by jagadish at 8:22 PM
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