eBay Business All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2: Understanding the Finer Points of Selling

In This Chapter

• Discovering successful selling strategies
• Selling in other areas of eBay
• Following the rules

Ecommerce has made a turnaround. When eBay CEO, John Donahoe, joined the company eight years ago, auctions were in a rut. And as the brick-and-mortar businesses opened online web stores, shoppers looked for more traditional transactions. Customers wanted to just “buy” products.

On today's eBay, 70 percent of all items are sold at fixed prices (this includes Buy It Now listings), and 30 percent of its sales are auctions. This is not to say that auctions (for the time being) are not popular; many high-dollar profits are made from auctioning unique, rare, and high-demand items. Understanding how eBay sales work is important to anyone who wants to sell on the site.

You can buy the “inside secrets” of eBay from lots of places; e-books and webinars abound these days. Some of these authors and instructors try to convince you that only they have the surreptitious bits of knowledge — gleaned from years (months?) of experience on the site — that reveal what's Really Going On. Truth be told, the online e-commerce market changes so quickly that eBay can barely keep up with it — the profile of the online shopper changes constantly. How likely is it that anybody has the ultimate answer?

Sure, you hear mysterious rumors of the way to sure-fire profits (cue up The X-Files theme in the background). Start an auction at a certain day and ...