People with tons and tons of auctions and no bids

[Anthony1]

I see alot of sellers on ebay that list tons and tons of items, and they don't get any bids, and I wonder what the logic is behind that?

Doesn't it cost them money to list these things?

I know that sometimes under certain circumstances you can relist an item that didn't sell, and not pay another listing fee, but it seems like these guys just list these items over and over and over.

I know they can't just be throwing money away like that. No way they would continue doing that over and over.

Does Ebay have some kind of monthly fee that you can pay, where you can list unlimited items and pay one fee?

[Redlog]

If you have a ebay store, which is like 14 dollars a month, listing items in your store costs 1 cent.

[Zing]

I wondered the same thing. I will see the same crap set with a high-ass buy-it-now sit there with zero bids and get relisted over and over. It is annoying when I am searching for something specific and the results are muddied with these worthless auctions.

[Anthony1]

I wondered the same thing. I will see the same crap set with a high-ass buy-it-now sit there with zero bids and get relisted over and over. It is annoying when I am searching for something specific and the results are muddied with these worthless auctions.

I totally agree with you!

I wish you could filter that crap out.

[jonjandran]

I totally agree with you!

I wish you could filter that crap out.

You can filter out specific sellers now. After you do a search , go to advance search. Then click on "From specific sellers" and click "exclude"

I use that to get rid of a lot of crap.

[rpepper9]

If you have a ebay store, which is like 14 dollars a month, listing items in your store costs 1 cent.

Do you have any information on how to set up a eBay store? Do you have to meet certian criteria? Or can anyone do it? I think I pay more than 14.00 in listing fees every month. Setting up a store may help keep prices down.

[Anthony1]

I was talking to my Uncle who sells alot of stuff on Ebay about this $14 per month thing, and he seems to disagree about this.

He said that yes you can pay a monthy fee to have a Ebay Store, but that the items in your store for 1 penny aren't actually listed on Ebay as regular auctions. You still have to pay 35 cent insertion fee for every auction that goes on Ebay.

Now, if you are selling something on Ebay, you can have a link on your auction that will take people to your Ebay store, where you can have things on your Ebay store for 1 penny, but apparently there is no way around the 35 cent insertion fee.

So if my Uncle is correct on this, then how the hell do these people list thousands of items over and over and over?

I can't imagine that they pay a 35 cent fee for every item. But according to my Uncle, they do.

[Lost Monkey]

If you have an eBay Store, it is different than the basic eBay auction.

You pay a monthly fee for the store, I don't know what the fees are now, I closed mine in January before the price hikes, and you pay a small listing fee for each item in the store. The listings last for 30 days, and you have the option of having them run longer, you just get charged for the listing fee every 30 days. When a store item is sold, you are charged a percentage of the sale price as a fee.

The benefit to using a store was that you could list many items for cheap. The downside was that you would received less than stellar exposure - IE your store items would not show up in a seach unless the search netted 5 hits or less. Basically, if you are selling common items, no one will ever see them.

Since eBay raised the fees on store items, they essentially made it so that the eBay Store was no longer a desirable option for bulk sellers because the minimal exposure was now coupled with high fees. I had 1200 items in an eBay store and decided that it just was not worth the trouble anymore - as auctions get so much more exposure and items will turn over much more quickly via the auction route.

If you are curious about a specific seller or listing (as to whether it is a store or auction item), look at the listing start and end dates. Auctions can only last up to 10 days.

[Bluteg]

I have been wondering this myself as I've yet to understand all of those individual NES cart auctions with BINs of $1.99. There is absolutely no profit after ebay fees in these auctions and all they do is clutter my searches.

[Anthony1]

Still, can somebody explain to me all the auctions that I see over and over and over, that nobody ends up bidding on?

I'm talking about the regular ones that you find when you do a search on Ebay?

Not Ebay store stuff.

I have seen auctions for stuff that is repeated over and over and over, and since these people have to pay a .35 insertion fee (at the very least) every single time, how the hell do they not go bankrupt?

Originally, I figured that these people were paying some kind of monthly fee to Ebay to do unlimited listings for a certain price. So they could just have tons of auctions over and over and over, and even though 90 percent of them get no bids, the 10 percent that do, make it worth it for them.

Then I found out that no such monthly fee scenario exists. At least, that's how I understand it. From what I understand, if you have an auction on Ebay, there are 2 fees that you have to pay no matter what happens.

1. Insertion Fee - minimum of .35 cents

2. Final Value Fee - I believe the Final Value Fee is basically 5.3 percent of the final bid price.

From what I understand, there is no way to get around those 2 fees. Not that I'm looking for a way to get around them, but I figured that there would be some type of option of paying a large monthly fee and then being able to list unlimited items.

Anyways, if anybody has any insights into any of this, I would love to hear it.

Thanks.

[THXII38]

I wondered the same thing. I will see the same crap set with a high-ass buy-it-now sit there with zero bids and get relisted over and over. It is annoying when I am searching for something specific and the results are muddied with these worthless auctions.

I totally agree with you!

I wish you could filter that crap out.

There is a freeware programme called Auction Seive (better check my spelling on that :/ ) which you can set to filter out stuff.

[Lost Monkey]

Still, can somebody explain to me all the auctions that I see over and over and over, that nobody ends up bidding on?

I'm talking about the regular ones that you find when you do a search on Ebay?

Not Ebay store stuff.
Anyways, if anybody has any insights into any of this, I would love to hear it.

Thanks.

Did you read my post?

If the item is an auction listing, then they are paying the $.35 over and over, it is as simple as that.

As to whether they make or lose money - how could anyone who isn't one of the sellers you are referring to know that? Take a look at what the seller charges for shipping, take a look at how much feedback they receive. If a seller is doing enough transactions where they make a dollar or so, they can cover the cost of the auctions that don't sell. If they aren't making money, they will eventually go away.

Did you read my post?

If the item is an auction listing, then they are paying the $.35 over and over, it is as simple as that.

As to whether they make or lose money - how could anyone who isn't one of the sellers you are referring to know that? Take a look at what the seller charges for shipping, take a look at how much feedback they receive. If a seller is doing enough transactions where they make a dollar or so, they can cover the cost of the auctions that don't sell. If they aren't making money, they will eventually go away.

[Bluteg]

Wow, Lost Monkey you just created a new type of double post.

Anyway I'm talking about auctions like these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...195173861&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...195173897&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...195173871&rd=1

These type of sellers list this stuff hoping to make money on shipping, but after ebay fees it would still seem like a waste of time.

Then we this type of seller:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...195719800&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...195719954&rd=1

They relist the same overpriced auctions over and over.

They sell a few of the games with a "name" and keep relisting the crap over and over. This seller spent $74.55 to list these auctions and they probably do not make that much off of the better games they list that actually sell. I just do not understand it. It would be financially better to just sell them for $1-2 each in a lot rather than spend all of those listing fees.

[Anthony1]

I read your post, and I understand your take on the issue, but I don't know......

I still think that there must be something going on that I don't know about. Some special unlimited listing program or something.

There is no way that these guys are throwing .35 cents away, over and over and over. That's simply not logical.

I mean, I know that .35 cents isn't much, but if you keep listing items over and over and over, that shit adds up quick!

[Lost Monkey]

I read your post, and I understand your take on the issue, but I don't know......

I still think that there must be something going on that I don't know about. Some special unlimited listing program or something.

There is no way that these guys are throwing .35 cents away, over and over and over. That's simply not logical.

I mean, I know that .35 cents isn't much, but if you keep listing items over and over and over, that shit adds up quick!

It isn't my take.. it is fact...

I was one of those people, I paid $22,000 in eBay fees last year. If you don't want an answer, why post a question?

There is no hidden volume discount option - eBay doesn't give a shit how much you sell or don't sell, because these sellers just keep listing this inventory that they have to get rid of in order to pay their bills. At the end of the day, eBay gets their piece whether the seller sells anything or not.

[Anthony1]

[quote="Lost Monkey"]

It isn't my take.. it is fact...

I was one of those people, I paid $22,000 in eBay fees last year. If you don't want an answer, why post a question?

There is no hidden volume discount option

Well, if you are doing that kind of volume on Ebay, then I'm sure you know what the heck you are talking about. So I definitely believe you on the .35 cent for every transaction regardless thing.

Still, I wonder what the hell those sellers are doing. For every hundred auctions that go unsold, they are throwing $35 down the drain. And that is just for the basic insertion fee. The auctions that I'm talking about have a number of pictures and gallery pictures and all that other crap too.

I guess they aren't doing it for the hell of it, but I'm trying to figure out what their likely business model is, and it's not making a helluva lotta sense.

I guess maybe they just look at it as the cost of doing business, and that they feel like it would be part of their marketing costs if they were a normal brick and mortar business. Still, they must make a huge profit margin on the few items that actually do get bids, to make the whole thing worth it.

But I do want to say that I appreciate your insights into this, because you obviously know the real deal.