This just appeared as an option. I think that I like it.
Any serious bookseller ought to have a ballpark idea of what a book is worth, and that can be fine-tuned by looking at the available offers.
But it is becoming more common to put what seems to be a reasonable price on a book ( reasonable = about 75th percentile among similar offerings ), only to have it sell within 48 hours.
This leads me to suspect that the buyer has somehow already dismissed/rejected all of the other seemingly good offers. I don’t know why, and probably can’t.
Maybe they have bought and returned already, and the apparent competition is actually falsely advertised junk. Maybe they will only buy from sellers with 100% feedback. Maybe they have a fear of mold and will only buy from the drier parts of the country.
So it seems to be profitable to price the book a tad too high, and let the price settle over the next month or so. EBay just provided the tool to do this.
Yes, I could do it manually, repricing every month or so. But fire-and-forget is so much easier.
Does anyone else use it?
Does anyone know if this tool is permanent? Googling suggests that it might not be.
No idea, I only noticed it a few days ago, but I don’t list items on Ebay all that often.
I don’t, but I might.
For Amazon and Walmart, I use a repricer with carefully designed repricing rules to dynamically set the price of my items. On Ebay, that obviously doesn’t work, so I set the price at a certain margin above cost, with an auto-reject limit a given percentage below that. This option would give me some more flexibility to reprice on slower moving items.
Hmmm… even when creating a new listing I do not see it. I googled it and found information about it which agrees that it should appear on the listing form when creating a new listing. I doubt that I would use it, but am curious to understand the possibilities. Perhaps it is not available for book selling, or not included in the standard Book listing template.
From Google search: (note the last sentence: “Not available for all sellers This feature may not be available to all sellers or on all listing types.”)
AI Overview
eBay offers a feature called “Auto Price Reduction” that allows sellers to automatically lower the price of their listings over time, potentially increasing the likelihood of a sale. This feature can be enabled on the listing form, allowing sellers to specify a dollar amount to reduce the price by, a time interval (e.g., every 7 days), and a minimum price to stop reductions.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
How it works:
Enable the feature:
Sellers can activate the “Auto Price Reduction” feature on the listing form, often found in the “Marketing” section or during the listing creation process.
Set the parameters:
Sellers can customize the price reduction by specifying:
Dollar amount: How much the price will be reduced each time.
Time interval: How often the price reduction will occur (e.g., every 3, 5, 7, 14, or 30 days).
Minimum price: The lowest price the item will be reduced to before the automatic reductions stop.
Automatic reductions:
eBay will then automatically lower the price of the item according to the set schedule and parameters.
Benefits:
Increased sales potential: Lower prices can attract more buyers and encourage them to purchase the item.
Time-saving: Automates the price reduction process, saving sellers time and effort compared to manually adjusting prices.
Competitive pricing: Helps sellers stay competitive with similar items on the market.
Considerations:
Minimum price: Carefully consider the minimum price to ensure the item still sells at a profitable price.
Time interval: Choose a time interval that aligns with the item’s market demand and sales pace.
*** Not available for all sellers: This feature may not be available to all sellers or on all listing types.**
I sell only books, and I see it on 100% of listings in the past few days.
I hypothesize that eBay has offered it to sellers who they judge to have higher than average prices. This is the only rationally chosen category that I believe that I fit in.
The odd consequence is that it motivates me to start out with an even higher price, and end at the price that I would have selected anyway.
This seems to be generating a profit for me. I’ve been using it for about two months now.
I start out higher than I normally would, and set the repricing to settle to my intended price in the next year or so.
About 9 of 10 do not sell in the first few days, and I expect that they will sell normally in a year or so. ( I have space on the shelves )
But about 1 of 10 sell in the first 48 hours, at a price higher than I would have tried previously.
There are some desperate and/or abused customers out there, I think, willing to pay a premium price for an accurately described and well-packaged book.
I stumbled on to something. As best I can tell, auto price reduction is only available when quantity = 1. Most of my books are one only, so it has appeared to me that it is always offered.
But today I was listing piles of old remainders, a handful at a time. APR disappeared.
When I set the quantity to one, the APR option appears. If I increment, it disappears. If I decrement, it appears again.
I don’t see the logic in this. It seems to be to eBay’s advantage to have a seller lower the price any time they want to, and for as many items as they wish.
But, after playing with it a lot, I am fairly sure that APR is only good for one item.
Hmmm…this is more complicated than I first suspected.
I assumed that eBay was doing an A/B test: some sellers would have APR, and some would not. That much makes sense. They could determine if APR makes more money for them and/or the seller.
But it now appears that eBay is doing an A/B/C test. There are at least three groups.
Those sellers who do not have APR.
Those who have it only for single quantities.
Those who have it for any quantity.
I suppose that there could be even a fourth or fifth group. But I have no idea what eBay is trying to learn here.
