Over the years, eBay has introduced many different auction types in an effort to give sellers more options. For every seller who doesn’t like the idea that their item might sell for a lower price than they intended, there’s another who wants to sell hundreds of the same item fast. eBay tries to cater to all needs. This is an overview of the different kinds of auctions and their advantages.
Normal Auctions
These are the bread and butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows: buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple.
Reserve Auctions
Reserve auctions are for sellers who don’t want their items to sell for less than a certain price — a concept that comes from real world auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that the buyer will be told if their bid does not meet the reserve price you set, and they’ll need to bid again if they want the item. If there isn’t anyone willing to meet your price, then the auction is cancelled, and you keep the item.
Fixed Price (Buy It Now) Auctions
Buy it Now auctions work in one of two ways. You can add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, allowing buyers to either bid normally or to avoid the whole bidding process and just pay the asking price. Some sellers will now cut out the auction process altogether and list all their items at a fixed price. This avoids all the complications of the auction format and lists your items for how much you want them to sell for.
Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions: the “best offer.” This means that buyers can contact you to negotiate a price, which could be a good way to buy items at a small discount. The only downside to reserve and fixed price auctions is that you pay a small extra fee to use these formats. In general, it’s worth using reserve auctions for higher-priced items and fixed price auctions than for lower-priced ones — but remember that you can combine both formats.
Multiple Item (Dutch) Auctions
These are auctions where you sell more than one of an item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. If you have trouble wrapping your head around that, don’t worry — everyone else does too. These auctions are very rare.
What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item, and lists it using a combination of two auction types: a multiple-item fixed price auction. This just means that you can say how many of the item you have, and offer them at a fixed price per unit. Buyers can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them.
Now that you know about the different types of auctions, make sure that the items you plan to sell don’t violate eBay’s listing policies. The next part will let you know what’s allowed and what’s not.
Learn the insider secrets to creating profitable auctions on Ebay, with this informative tell all guide. Click here: Mining Gold From Ebay
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