Roughly six months ago eBay launched Fixed Price Format listings. In eBay’s New 30 Day Fixed Price Listing Format I talked about two possible ways I saw to take advantage of the new format.

I’ve been testing both over the last six months. While both methods have proven to increase sales to a degree, a third approach to using Fixed Price Format listings has shown itself to regularly increase my profits with certain kinds of items on a regular basis.

This approach works best with items that appear fairly frequently on eBay in both the auction and eBay store format. I’m going to use an example of something I sold a couple days ago to show what I’ve been doing.

On Monday I purchased a boxed set of The Story Keepers DVDs at a local thrift store for $6. When I got home I checked on Terapeak. In the last ninety days sixteen sets had been listed on eBay and sold. All were in the auction format with final prices ranging from $10.50 up to $56.00. The average ending price was $30.88. There were no closed sales for store listings or fixed price listings.

While there is no way of knowing where they would have ended, if I had listed my set in the auction format starting at $9.99 they likely would have sold for somewhere in the $25 to $35 range. Maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower.

Terapeak showed that the three highest items sold for $56.00, $51.01, and $49.00. So I knew that there were people out there who were willing to spend $50 for this set. Based on that I listed mine in the Fixed Price Format for $52.99 and offered free shipping within the US. The set sold the following day.

Although I can’t provide an exact percentage because I don’t know what the set would have ended at if I’d used the auction format, that is roughly a 70% increase in the sales price from the three-month auction average for this item. Granted, my total fees are a little higher this way than they would be if I’d used the auction format, but even factoring them in the increase is still well above 60%.

Using the same approach but placing the item in my eBay store would save a little on listing and final value fees, but I’ve tested that too, and store listings aren’t nearly as effective. Fixed Price Listings are a lot more visible to buyers than store listings are.

It doesn’t work for all kinds of items and they don’t usually sell as quickly as these DVDs did. Most of what I’ve sold this way takes between a week and two months to sell.

So far, I’ve only done this with items that have enough of a sales history over 90 days to give me a pretty good idea of a price ceiling and an average auction ending price significantly below that ceiling.

I’ve also tested it without the “Free Shipping” option and it isn’t nearly as effective. Offering that option is important.

While results can vary, if you aren’t doing this already I suggest you begin testing it yourself over the next few weeks or months. You may find when used discriminatingly, and with the right kind of product, it will increase your profits significantly.

Photograph by dno1967.

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