How to Price Items to Sell on eBay

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By A. Suzanne Wells
eHow Community Member

Article Rating:

(9 Ratings)

You have to do some homework and research to determine how much to ask for an item you want to sell on eBay. The easiest way to determine a fair starting price or buy-it-now price is to search completed listings for similar items that have recently sold.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

eBay Account
Internet Connection

Step 1

Log on to your account on eBay.com.
Step 2

Click on the Advanced Search tab on the bar across the top of the page.
Step 3

Enter the relevent key words for the item you want to sell. Let's use iPod Nano as an example.
Step 4

After the search page loads, click the "completed listings" box under the key word box.
Step 5

You will see a list of all listings that have ended in the past 30 days with the key words iPod Nano. The list will contain both items that have sold, and items that have not sold. The price of sold items will appear in green text and unsold items will appear in red text.
Step 6

Depending on the number of results, you may want to narrow your search by adding more key words such as the color, model number, etc.
Step 7

Study the results from your searches. You can make educated decisions about pricing, shipping costs, and other criteria based on the results from completed listings.
Step 8

Remember, an item’s value is determined by how much someone will pay for it, now what you think it is worth. eBay is all about, supply, demand, and timing.
Step 9

See the resources section below for more info on making money on eBay.

Comments

MizGreenJeans said

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on 4/2/2009 Using completed listings is good, but I think now they just stay in the system for only 2 weeks. Using Google to search works to bring up older items that have sold. Great article!

Susang6 said

on 1/31/2009 Great advice, would it be advisable to price an item mid to low range in order to get more people interested in it? I find all of your articles to be useful. Thanks for sharing. 5*

tocuriousgeorge said

on 10/8/2008 Good sound advice! I have neglected to do this in the past and have regretted selling an item for MUCH less than I wanted to sell it for. I research everything I sell now. I have found that taking the extra minute of time before selling will improve your profits greatly.