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First find out what costs you will incur with your listing. Do not list blindly assuming it will go for a lot of money because sometimes items do not sell when they normally would. Timing can be everything in the eBay world of auctions.

Pricing your products on eBay can be tricky because buyers are for good reasons are trying to get the best deal they can. It is like you are players on two rival football games; you have sellers looking to get more profit on their product and buyers who want to get your product cheaper than you are asking.

Overall success means you are more than covering the cost of the item plus any other costs or fees you will incur. Even if you are only earning five cents profit over your total costs that is still profit. On the other hand if you are losing even five cents per transaction you may as well go outside and start passing nickels out to strangers.

eBay offers some excellent resources on research and these are available with a few easy steps:

1) Visit eBay site map
2) Scroll down to the selling resources section
3) Select the eBay Marketplace Research link

You should also add this to your favorite links that shows up in your "My ebay". If you own a store this might even be included in your package for no charge.

Using this tool allows you to explore what items sell at what prices as well as learning what days that your products sell better on. For example I was surprised to learn that a Tupperware item I had listed twice before actually sold better on Tuesdays. Why I am not sure but I relisted it based on that information and it sold for more than I expected.

My personal formula is similar to how most businesses operate:

Buy it now Price=Product Cost + Reasonable Portion of Selling Fees* + Profit Expected

Auction starting price=Product Cost + Reasonable Portion of Selling Fees* + Profit Expected - Amount you are willing to risk in profit or costs.

You should always leave the option for Best Offer open because sometimes you will get an offer only 25 cents below what you are asking and why not take that.

For myself I have created an excel spreadsheet that compares the two forms of listings I may do: auction or store inventory. With this spreadsheet it is designed using the "if" feature to determine these costs:

1) Final value fee

2) Listing fee - including basic gallery which I consider a must on competitive products.

3) Paypal fees in the event the customer sends payment via paypal - This is roughly about the same as I would pay for credit card

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