Tips for Pricing Items on eBay

| Pia Bogush Last updated 16 Dec, 2022

When selling on eBay, it’s crucial to learn to price items appropriately. Along with other factors like shipping speed, availability, and shipping cost, pricing is the most crucial factor influencing sales.

Finding the sale prices can be challenging for new sellers. For example, when you set low prices, you’ll get more sales, but the profit margin will also be low. In contrast, high pricing results in increased profit margins. Now the question is how to learn the art of pricing items on eBay.

5 Essential Tips for Pricing Items on eBay

The following tips will help price your items on eBay, supporting the growth of your business without sacrificing profits:

Know the market

Before diving into any business, learning what others are doing is essential. So, research the market and check how the competitors are pricing similar items and how much success they have. The easiest ways for market research are:

Use the advanced search tool of eBay and find out how many similar items were sold in the past. You can do this by entering the keyword and clicking on completed listings.
Use Terapeak for detailed market research. It can help you find the average selling price of millions of online items. You can use this for free if you have an eBay Store subscription.
Some other third-party websites offer sale data worldwide, such as CheckAFlip.com.
Some classified websites like Craigslist (For the USA and Canada), Gumtree (For the UK), and Kijiji are also helpful in checking average prices. Remember, items do not have to be sold at the listed price. Some fluctuations are also possible.

Select the listing format wisely

Though eBay was initially an auction website, currently, it follows fixed pricing. There are many differences between the listing formats, and they can help determine the selling price strategy.

In the case of the auction format, the market determines the sale price. The seller can’t influence the starting price and the “Buy It Now” price. This format is suitable for junk or rare items. Moreover, it works well with collectible items.

Furthermore, eBay can recommend auctions for all items because the competition is high in auctions, and prices can go beyond the perceived value. 99c is a frequently recommended auction start price on eBay.

In contrast, the seller has complete control over prices in the fixed-price listing format. Buyers can request discounts, but sellers have the power to accept or decline the request.

Don’t ignore eBay’s suggestions

Another valuable tip for pricing items on eBay is to consider the suggestions offered by eBay. Sellers can get assistance from eBay in many ways, one of which is the suggested price when listing items.

Over the past few years, some latest features have been added to eBay regarding pricing suggestions. For example, one is “Best Offer,” which has helped buyers suggest the price they want to pay for a particular item.

When you take eBay’s suggestions seriously, don’t ignore their intention. The main priority of eBay is to secure sales. However, the selling price and profit margins are not crucial for eBay, so they would recommend selling items at a low price to increase sales.

Take all expenses into account

The main goal of all the sellers on eBay is to make a profit. When you decide on profit, ensure that you add all the expenses to the selling price.

Some examples of costs are:

Listing upgrades
Income tax remittance
Listing insertion fees
PayPal fees
Packaging materials
New internet sales tax fees
Shipping insurance and costs

These are the general costs. Some sellers would love to add their home or office expenses and other warehouse or storage unit fees.

Another inevitable part of a retail business is handling returns and refunds. Sometimes the items can be lost and damaged as well.

Therefore, some eBay sellers add these prices into their pricing strategy to maintain profit margins.