Odds and Ends: Combining Items for Successful Sales
Odds and Ends: Combining Items for Successful Sales
Have you ever bought a portable CD player, toy, or other similar device and forgot to buy batteries. Well some items should just be sold together. This informative article shows you how to discern what items work together well and how to sell them on eBay, for much more than you paid for them.
Even if you have regular merchandise on eBay, you may occasionally use it as a place to get rid of certain miscellaneous items hanging around your house. Most sellers have found through sad experience that these items don’t sell - at least, not by themselves. However, if you are willing to give it some thought, you can make a sale by combining a number of items into a single auction.
How do you combine items? Well, unless you’re famous, you can’t just toss a dozen random items into a single auction and give it the title of “Buy My Old Crud.” Grouping together a number of items related by a single theme, however, can work very well.
For example, I recently tried selling an odd little gadget called a cream maker (basically, it emulsifies milk and butter back into cream). Even at an extremely low starting price and with some funny auction text, it didn’t sell. At that point I had two choices: give up and donate it to charity, or try again with a themed auction. A little rooting around in my overflowing basement yielded several kitchen-related items that I don’t need, including a pair of potholders in like-new condition, a decorative glass pasta jar, some recipe cards, a cheese slicer and a painted tea tin. I could combine these with the cream maker to create a kitchen-themed auction that is much more likely to sell.
You can also use this strategy to combine two or more failed auctions, into a single successful one. For instance, if you’ve tried selling science-fiction paperbacks in separate auctions with no success, combine them into one jumbo auction and add the magic word “LOT” to the title. You will get nibbles.
There are two seller advantages to combined auctions. First, the more items you include, the more you increase your chances of getting bids on that auction. Even if a bidder is only interested in one or two items, he may bid on the entire lot to get what he wants. Second, auctioning a collection of items rather than one object means you’ve raised the lot’s overall value. You can raise your starting price without losing the interest of potential bidders.
I’ve seen this strategy in play on many occasions. A single pillar candle goes unsold, but fifteen novelty candles (including the pillar) sell handily. One back issue of National Geographic receives no bids, but all the issues for that year can create a feeding frenzy for collectors. A large plastic embroidery hoop won’t attract anyone’s attention, but add a packet of needles and some 12-inch-square cuts of calico fabric and it becomes a patchwork quilt starter set. Any lone item, given some time and thought, can create a starting point for a themed auction.
Please note: these combined-auction sales aren’t designed to bring in the most money. Your regular merchandise will be a much more reliable source of income. However, odd-lot auctions are a great way to get rid of items you don’t want, or need, while making some pocket money in the process.
Resources:
http://www.ebay.com/
http://pages.ebay.com/education/selling.html
