Why do they do it? So you get on ebay and you shopped around and you found the best possible deal on "product x" and now you are going to list and sell it and make a killing right? That is until... ebay user "wrecksmyday" comes along and starts selling the exact same item with free next day shipping, gift wrapped in crisp $100 dollar bills and he's only charging $1.29!!! why! we answered the how already now let's look at "why". there are a number of reasons for selling things below value and the most important one I can think of...off the top of my head....ummm....money This would be called creative marketing. The easiest explanation sounds just like this: The Ebay user "wrecksmyday" sells something else, not the thing you sell and you think, he sells. For example: perhaps he sells a subscription to a service that has reccurring billing and only cost $5.95 per month, so to get leads he sell an xbox for below market value and then gives away a one month subscription, requiring a cc to activate, that then automatically bills each month for $5.95...of course like all services they probably have an "upsell" where for just $x.95 more you can get what you really want and soon "wrecksmyday" is making commisions on $24.95 monthly subscriptions by the hundreds or mabye he sells xbox consoles and accesories and to gain attention he sells $50 games for $0.99 no reserve counting on the fact that most folks will purchase and extra memory card from his store inventory before they leave. I know of a guy that sells cruises and vacation packages. The way he generates leads is to auction "nothing" on ebay, then he refunds every penny plus a couple bucks, and sends a coupon for a reduced rate on a vacation package. He auctions "bottle caps" and "dried up leaves" and "a piece of yarn tied in a knot" and this gets people going.."huh?" and they look and they try to figure out why someone would bid $329.72 on a "broken pencil" and in the process they have been exposed to this guy and they enter or email him and he sends another discount which leads to another sale. Loss leaders. This is one reason "why". Another reason would be the entire reason ebay exists, at least today. It may have started as a community garage sale on a world wide scale...but it has quickly become the overstock and surplus outlet of the world. Let's say you buy pallets of merchandise and you rotate them on ebay and 90% of it sells and the rotation keeps on going and more pallets show up and you follow a formula...pay x, then charge y...rinse and repeat. but after a while you start to notice that every pallet you buy has a few items that just won't sell. you list them and relist them and nothing happens. You make a profit on your pallets but these things are starting to pile up... My guess is you would list them for a penny just to get rid of them, which happens quite a bit on ebay. Sometimes people just get overstock and they need to liquidate it. There are other reasons and I do not claim to know all, but if you look a little deeper you will find another answer. There was a story on tv about a guy that stole entire shippments and then sold them on ebay...and while I do not think this is rampant, my guess is we will run into something like this if we spend enough time online. They can't keep it up forever. Just ride it out and wait until the market changes and go back to selling your items. |  
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