New sellers can face some serious challenges when they try selling their products online for the first time. When you price your items at a high price point, you won’t make any sales.
Conversely, if you price them at a low price point, you won’t make much profit, which means you’ll need to find a balance where you can adhere to the average pricing of your products but also make a profit. Fortunately, there are a couple of strategies and tools to help you make the most out of your products. Here are some of them.
Know the Established Value
One can’t put their products on eBay’s listings without knowing at least what they’re originally priced at. If a price is way above or below the established price point for a certain product, you can expect massive losses or no sales at all. Ideally, products already have an established value on eBay, which you can know either by checking these items manually or you can choose that eBay crunches you must keep the numbers for you. Of course, checking the prices manually and calculating the average price is easy, but some claim that asking eBay to crunch the numbers is far more accurate than their calculations. Plus, that’s a good way to avoid human error.
Estimate the Costs
The next thing you should calculate is the overall costs. You might think that your work is done once you’ve established the value of a certain product, but that’s only a small part of the whole calculation process. The best way to estimate the overall costs is by checking the average costs of packaging as well as shipping and handling. Naturally, eBay charges for selling, so make sure to factor that into your calculations. Payment processing fees, which are normally charged with online payment methods like PayPal, can make a significant cut out of the overall costs and they can be tricky, but once you’ve got the hang of them, you shouldn’t face problems estimating the costs.
Look Through Sold Items
Another way you can go about this is to check the sold items on eBay. To do this, simply go into eBay, then from the left-hand sidebar, head down to the bottom with your cursor and click on the “sold items” options, which is under “show only”. The folks at https://www.checkaflip.com/ explain that this is the quickest and easiest way to check sold items that have made successful sales. Once you check that box, you will be able to see a list of sold products with successful sales. from there, you can use the filters as you see best to find the results that match your own products to understand which price point you should place your items at. If you’re planning on adding a list of products auction-style, you can either determine its price according to the value of the product or you can look through the sold items and determine your starting bids from there.
Crunch the Numbers
As we previously mentioned, you can ask eBay to make price recommendations for you once you add enough information. For instance, when creating a list for an antique piece, you might get a narrow price range, especially when you pick only one product.
However, you might get a wider price range if you don’t do so or don’t enter enough information, so be mindful of these facts when asking eBay to crunch the number. Always be mindful of the shipping fees on the right, as this will determine how much you’ll charge for shipping depending on the percentage eBay displays there.
Use eBay App
Errors can happen in your calculations, even in the best of times, and that’s normal. In fact, that’s why you’ll have an array of various apps to help you do these calculations. One of the most useful services that eBay provides to sellers is the eBay application. Most sellers already have this app installed on their devices, but in case that you don’t, make sure that you download it as soon as possible, as this app will help you with scanning an item’s barcode and do everything you can on the website (like checking sold listings for example) and it is within arm’s reach. Be sure that you make use of other price checker tools to help flip your items faster.
One important thing to remember is that prices are highly dynamic; thus, it is crucial that you keep an eye out for price fluctuations for items similar to yours and see how competitors are adjusting their prices. Make sure to experiment with several strategies and don’t hesitate to use several eBay tools and strategies in order to achieve your ultimate goal: making successful sales.