burntwire brothers wrote in People asking for BIN on Ebay:Any other sellers on Ebay getting a lot of request for Buy-It-Nows?

Every time I list I get 1 or more people who asks if I have a price in mind that I would sell it for.

I used to sell everything by auctions but several years ago I started selling everything at a fixed price.  I now have a job where I am usually at home each evening and can devote thirty minutes or so, if necessary, to packing and labeling each package.  This is necessary with fixed-price sellers.  However, the biggest change for me is that I used to have thousands of items to sell, and I just needed to clean out space, so auctions provided a quick sale.  Now, I am down to hundreds of items and space is no longer a major concern.

I think the more interesting and possibly unstated question is whether you can maximize your profit with one method over the other.  I think we've all seen things sell for way more than we thought they would and we've all see things sell for way less through auction sales.  Overall, my own personal belief is that you do about the same with both methods, however, the fixed price method seems to work better overall for lower-priced, less valuable items, say, under $25.00.  It's the rare items that can really shoot up in price higher than we imagined and make worth any sales which didn't quite meet expectations.

Anyway, I think Buy-It-Now is a fine option for auction sellers, but if it were me, I would state a highly optimistic (significantly inflated) price for my Buy-It-Now price if I did so.  My own experience when I had auctions was that anyone asking for a Buy-It-Now price was looking for a discounted price.  I never ended an auction early for a Buy-It-Now offer, and I never regretted doing so.  Any offers I received were always significantly lower than the ending price.  I wouldn't worry about their Buy-It-Now requests too much.  

The main reason I brought this up was to bring attention to the fact that many people on Ebay seem to be doing this. If you see an item listed you are interested in you may want to put a decent bid and also contact the seller. If you let the seller know what the end price may end up being maybe someone won't snag it out from under you with a low BIN.

if you keep on listing interesting items I'm sure you'll keep getting these requests;) I think its either due to 1)people want to avoid those last min snipping issues, 2) want to get a bargain (or steal it) 3) make sure that if you will consider a BIN they won't get "cut out" by not asking.... some of the rares these days you just can't pick, a lot are going for way more money than I would expect (from me anyway), you do get some that are cheepish.. I've spent way less on some auctions because there was no BIN or the selling not considering one... I think its a bit of poor form for the seller to sell stuff when when the auction has started though.. there have been many time when I have seen an auction end early because they have accepted an outside BIN..

Brette:)

edit: Oh do you have any examples of what people offered (if a fig$$) and what the auctions finally went for at all?

Every offer I have received is usually something like,"Do you have a BIN price?", never had anyone actually offer a price. I have thought about doing high BINs on a couple auctions with the best offer feature. However, I personally have had zero luck when I have offered something lower than the BIN in the past with other sellers. That is even when the BIN was $125 and I offered $100. I think the best option for me is to just keep auctioning, ignoring the BIN requests and add reserves to certain items.

In the name of fair play and all of that warm fuzzy feel good magic, I think that sellers (and I include myself in this mix) should more often utilize eBay options like "reserve prices" and "make offer".  In my opinion, not only does this maximize sale potential and control for the seller, but it also allows a rules-driven playing field for potential buyers.  I hate feeling like if I don't message a seller about a "sell it to me early" price, then someone else will ultimately beat me to it.  These things should be settled like they were in the old west ... multiple buyers, continuously throwing money at an item until all other buyers blink (or come to their senses, lol ... depending on your point-of-view) .