Seller recommendations

[fetchnt]

I am getting seller recomendations, firstly that indicate I am not selling it at a high enough price with the comparative item sold for .45c more with $8 freight when mine is free....how does this result in more sales for me? Although they have declined so I am assuming that this might be the reason? 

[digital*ghost]

Personally, I think eBay's recommendations can be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps even several thousand grains. 

I've had them tell me to lower the price on items that were $40 to $4 (wouldn't have even covered material cost for that), and all it's based on is selected data matching, which then auto-generate the recommendations, so there's no actual thought going into it, just a computer program looking at broader data.

in saying that, raising prices can - at times - be an effective stratgey. If people are comparing two (for all intents and purposes) identical items, some will buy the cheapest overall item, others will buy more expensive ones due to other requirements and / or perceptions (as in, much cheaper prices can be suggestive of things like lower quality, or it's a seconds / defect clearance, even if there is nothing else to indicate it differs in quality to the more expensive item). 

[brerrabbit585]

Do your own research on what things are selling for. NEVER trust ebay's statistics on this sort of thing (or on most things).

[*tippy*toes*]

I love it when I do an auction and eBay kindly suggests to start it at 99c. Similar items have sold for between $90 and $250. If they've sold for that, why the bleep would I start it at 99c? It's no wonder so many new sellers get caught out and ripped off.

One time I did play their game. I can't remember the exact numbers now, but say it was an auction I had starting for $9.99. They suggested dropping it to $8.50, so I did. When it came to relist the next time, they suggested dropping it to $7.90, so I did. Next relist, drop to $6.50. I believe if I'd kept following their recommendations, I would have got down to a 1c start price. In the end I increased it to a start price of $10.99 and there was a bidding war on it. Quite often increasing your prices sparks attention, rather then dropping them. I've sold a lot of things by increasing the price.