Starting your auctions at 99pence with no reserve is by far the best way to get interest on your items that you're selling on eBay. A low start price gains interest and brings in many more bids on your items and creates a 'snow ball' effect on those bids.iSold It stores run the majority of its auctions this way, and on average generates higher sell prices than its competing listings.
Take a look at the following article from the Telegraph with some interesting research on how items sell better when started at a low price.For a high price on eBay, ask for very littleBy Richard TylerLast Updated: 1:10am GMT 31/10/2006eBay traders make more money if they begin their auctions with a low asking price, a research study has found.Academics set up online auctions for digital cameras, Persian rugs and T-shirts and found that if a low price generated interest in the item it would achieve a higher price overall because of what they termed "auction fever". "Regardless of whether it's a unique item or a commodity, we found that starting low, as long as this results in traffic, means ending high," said Gillian Ku, professor at London Business School, who conducted the study with colleagues at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, in Illinois.The Nikkon cameras sold for $312 when the auction started at 1 cent, but only $204 when they began at a more sensible price. The same was seen for the rugs.Ms Ku said that the volume of bidders influenced their perception of the value of the items on offer."Just because an item has a lot of people bidding on it, they perceive it as a valuable item. Other people then start jumping on to the bandwagon," she said. Another advantage of starting low was it enticed people in to the auction, who would then invest time in it and find it harder to walk away when the price rose.Setting a reserve price decreases the probability of a sale, Ms Ku said, although on average these auctions achieved a higher price for the seller. Buyers can get the upper hand if they search auction sites for items that may have been spelt incorrectly.When testing the T-shirts, the academics advertised 76 featuring Michael Jordan, the basketball star: 43 were spelt correctly and 33 said Micheal. They found that potential buyers simply did not find the T-shirts that were spelt incorrectly and so these achieved a lower price.
