In the 3 years I’ve been a member of eBay I’ve participated in 7 auctions. And I’ve won every one. I’m not very prolific. But I was wondering at those who participate in more auctions. About what percentage of auctions you bid in do you win?
Curiously yours,
Osiris
I’ve been a member for about three years, and I’ve participated in roughly 75 auctions. I’d say I’ve won 90% of auctions in which I was the bidder.
I’ve won about 20 out of 30. But I admit to sniping.
My current seller rating is a paltry 201 but I have started 266. On the 4th of July I was bored and listed 10 items. Only 5 of them received bids. One bidder backed out with less than an hour to go. Of the 4 left, 3 met the reserve, the other came in well under. 3 emails went out. One deal was done within an hour. One buyer wanted the pass key number for the game first. I declined, all he wanted the number for was his warez version. He refused to complete auction, I left negative feedback. He is threatening a lawsuit now. Bring it on, Buddy boy!!! I never received a reply from the third. The person has an excellent rating so I am waiting a few more weeks before I drop a negative rating on them.
I have listed roughly 800 auctions on eBay as a seller, and had about 200 transactions as a buyer. As a buyer, I’ve won about half of the auctions I’ve bid on, but I have some pretty firm limits on myself - when I bid, I bid the max I am willing to pay, and rarely if ever do I want something so badly that I will snipe it or even place a second bid.
We have a running joke about the “kitchen that eBay built” - about a year ago I redecorated my kitchen from the floor up, and every penny spent on it came from my eBay sales, plus about hal of what’s in there decor-wise was purchased on eBay.
I win maybe 70% of the auctions that I bid on. I always snipe but sometimes am beaten by the proxy (where are the lowballers when you need 'em?).
I’ve listed around 250 auctions and estimate that 90% sell the first time around. Off the top of my head, I can only recall 2 or 3 items that didn’t sell after the second listing.
I’ve bid on about 12 auctions. I lost most of the ones that I wasn’t willing to pay more than what I thought was market value. (This is bearing in mind that I’m usually bidding on somewhat esoteric items.)
Of the ones I won, two were exactly as represented: I was extremely satisfied with the transaction.
One, the person was stretching the truth slightly, but still provided a fair exchange.
I’ve had very good luck communicating directly with the sellers asking for more information about what they’re selling.
I usually win about 20%. But I almost always know the retail value of the item I’m bidding on and if the bidding gets anywhere near retail, I won’t bid any further. I’d rather buy it from a store in that case.
I also don’t snipe or worry about the ending time much unless it’s something I can’t get locally. Then I’ll do the ‘two windows’ trick.
“Two windows” trick?
Okay, suppose there is an item that you haven’t been able to source locally, and you really, really want it, no matter the cost.
What you do is you open two windows on the item, one of which you will simply refresh every few seconds to keep track of the last bid. The other window you will have all set up to make a new bid that is some multiple of the minimum incremental bid higher than the last bid, so that all you have to do is hit enter to send your bid.
For example, someone is selling a vial of Elvis’ nose hairs that you absolutely must have for your collection, and you have previously entered a maximum bid of $10.00. The minimum bidding increment is 50 cents, and the frenzied bidding has ridden the current bid up to $9.50 with 2 minutes to go. You just know someone is going to come in and snipe you at $10.50 at the last second. You set up a bid of, say $19.75 in one of your windows so that it’s all ready to go. Then you watch in your other window, hitting ‘refresh’ every few seconds. As soon as you see the bid go over $10.00, you switch to your other window and hit ‘submit bid’, and hope your ISP doesn’t pick that instant to balk.
Actually you can do this without being the high bidder. Just be sure to make your bid a multiple of the minimum incremental bid. Most snipers will just try to enter a bid that is only one MBI (Minimum bid increment) higher that the highest bid. I believe sniping software does this also. You want to be high enough that they can’t ‘step up’ past your bid amount in the time available to them.
I hope I explained that clearly enough.
Ahh, yep. I have already been doing that. Just seemed like the right way to do it.
I still can’t figure out what the deal w/ ebay is. Why are people buying this junk for so much money? I see auctions for magazines that sell for $1 ea with subscription. People are buying them for $2 and paying another $2 to ship them. Doesn’t make sense. But, at least now I have something to do with already read magazines.
I’m 1 for 1 as a buyer
I’m a little higher, maybe 35-40% besides looking up the actual prices I’d pay for the items in the store and comparing some of them to price finding sites like mysimon.com, I keep an eye on lots of autions on my watch page, and bid on the one ending the soonest in a good price range. As soon as it goes higher than I like I move on to the next one that I consider reasonable- I think I bid on paintshop pro 8-10 times before deciding one didn’t go so high it was unreasonable. I don’t feel the overwhelming “need” to win an auction unless it’s a unique item, at which point I might up my bid several times; that’s rare, though. I usually don’t snipe, but I have done it once or twice; usually it’s done to me, more times than I count. :mad: