Copyright © 1999 Richard Seltzer All rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com Comments welcome.
For current related information, see eBay update -- what's changed over the last few years and how you can take advantage as a seller: details that pay (2002)
For the companion piece -- "More practical advice for sellers at auctions: the devil in the details" -- go to www.samizdat.com/ebay2.html This article is based on my personal experience at eBay and discussions held in my weekly chat program "Business on the World Wide Web", April 8 to June 10, 1999. Complete transcripts of those chat sessions are available at www.samizdat.com/chat.html Thanks to all the chat participants for their insights and their probing questions. In particular, thanks to Ron Rothenberg (eBay = ronrsr), Tracy Marks (eBay = torreyphilemon), Bob Fleischer, Bob Zwick, Sue Rothberg, and Jay Martin. For an ongoing discussion of similar topics, check the Auction Help forum run by Tracy Marks at www.delphi.com/auctionhelp
Keep in mind that eBay itself offers a wealth of information for sellers as well as buyers. This guide is not meant to duplicate or replace any of that, but rather to serve as a quick reference for people who are new to eBay and want to sell there and want to get the most for their effort. This is practical advice from one seller to another, tips to help you get started and help you get the most out of your efforts. Aside from being a member, I am not affiliated with eBay; what I have to say represents my own personal views.
Millions of people gather here, and millions of items are for sale. In number of users and in diversity of content, it is comparable to the entire Internet back in 1993, just before the Web took off. You might easily be overwhelmed, get lost, not know how to begin to sell here.
If you haven't sold anything at eBay yet, now is a good time. Do some
spring house-cleaning and instead of throwing stuff out, put it on sale.
The odds are that what you don't want, someone else does. You could make
some money, and learn a lot about how ecommerce works. Gomez (www.gomez.com)
estimates that about 20% of eBay's sells are people making a business of
it. Perhaps you could become one of those people -- having your own business,
doing "ecommerce" without necessarily even having your own Web site. In
any case you can use eBay as a global recycling facility.
While some people, as matter of personality, will naturally browse through categories and subcategories and sub-subcategories, and so on; many simply click on "Search" and enter words that they'd expect to find in the titles of items they are interested in. (The more sophisticated will change the default setting of the search box, clicking to search for words in both titles and descriptions. But, apparently, most people don't know they have that choice).
To get started as a seller, you should think what words you would use in the title for your item and search for those words, then click on a variety of items in the list of matches to see
Also keep an eye out to see if some individuals are bidding for many different items of the same kind. If so, then search by bidder name and see what you can determine about what draws these heavy buyers to one item rather than another.
For new and near-new consumer goods, the category is likely to be very important -- just as it is in navigating through a department store. But for collectibles the category often doesn't matter because so many buyers use search to find what they want.
In other words, try to pick a category that will help your sale, but don't over-estimate the importance of category. In some cases, buyers, using Search, will find you regardless of where at eBay you hide your auction. And, also, if your item doesn't sell the first time around, you can always relist it in a different category.
Think of eBay as made of numerous sub-communities: collectors and buyers of particular kinds of things. Over time, these people build relationships with one another at eBay and through email messages to one another and other online contact. Their expectations of one another depend on their common experience. The behavior of newcomers (people with little or no feedback) is likely to be unpredictable, while that of the veterans will be more consistent. The newcomer might misinterpret a standard description of the quality and condition of an item, and be disappointed with a purchase even though the seller was quite precise and accurate. On the other hand, a newcomer might well bid far higher on an item than an old timer -- not knowing what such items have sold for in the past and how frequently such items are likely to appear again for sale.
You might be reluctant to sell at eBay, even though there is an enormous audience of potential buyers there, because you are afraid that your item will get lost among the millions of others posted there. You might think that you would do better at a focused auction site, devoted just to the kind of thing that you have to sell -- such as baseball cards or comic books. In my experience, that is not the case.
For instance, selling comic books at eBay, I got many bids from people who had no specific interest in comic books at all. They were searching for "dogs" or "Disney" or something else that they avid collect, and my comics happened to have the right words in the title. If I were selling at a comics-only auction site, I'd never get bids from those kinds of buyers. And those buyers, because they are unfamiliar with prices in this particular category, arriving here tangentially, are likely to bid out of all proportion to what you'd get from regular collectors with experience in this sub-community of eBay and with ready access to reference books about prices for this kind of collectible. Remember, you don't need for millions of people to see your item. All it takes is two enthusiastic bidders to raise the price beyond rational levels.
This buyer behavior means that the words in your title are probably more important than the category you choose. Remember, that's the "title." Today eBay's search engine does not look at words in the description -- only the title.
In the real world, you sometimes rely on word-of-mouth reputation, but far more often you think in terms brand name. Yes, brand is based largely on paid advertising. But what matters in that context is not so much what the companies say about themselves in those ads as the fact that they are large enough and properous enough to advertise enough for you to remember them. That means that you should have no problem finding them if you have a question or problem related to your purchase.
At an auction site of this kind, whether buying or selling, you are dealing with individuals whom you have never met, and probably never had any dealings with before, and probably never heard of before. In theory, feedback comments are indications of trustworthiness, like word-of-mouth reputation. And the star labels that eBay gives based on cumulative ratings are a makeshift form of community-based brand.
Both for fear of shame and for practical reasons -- not wanting people's distrust of you to interfere with your ability to make deals -- the community-based ratings system means both buyers and sellers have good reason to deal fairly with everyone, and even to go the extra mile to be sure that everyone they encounter has good reason to think well of them.
I find that for low-cost items (under $20), people at Ebay tend to be very trustworthy. My policy, (which is counter to what nearly everyone else there seems to do) is to ship the merchandise immediately upon receipt of the buyer's address. I don't wait for payment. Often I receive payment days after the buyer has received the goods. But that practice
The typical eBay seller waits for arrival of a check or money order, or even waits until the check has cleared. Shipping immediately means that the buyer gets the goods far more quickly and is also likely to be pleased by this unexpected sign of trust. The value of the positive feedback you are likley to get from such a policy is far greater than what you are likely to lose from the rare person who will try to cheat you (especially given the feedback system). If I can raise the average final bid for one of my items from $4 to $16 through trust, then if I lost a few payments the benefit is well worth it. (And after several hundred sales, everyone so far has been good about paying).
For higher priced items, you need to weigh what you stand to gain, with what you risk, and decide what makes sense for you.
Self-policing
The rating systems also operates as a self-policing mechanism, similar in effect, though quite different in practice, from the way newsgroups operated before the dawn of the Web. With newsgroups, if anyone misbehaved, acting rudely or inappropriately, other members quickly spoke up and reprimanded. You don't see newsgroup-style candor here. Most people are afraid of getting negative feedback and go far out of their way to avoid it. At the same time, they are very reluctant to give negative feedback, even when they believe strongly that it is deserved; because whoever they give that negative feedback to might give negative feedback in return.
You could take issue with the eBay practice of lumping together all feedback -- both as seller and as buyer. An individual selling something might have a very impressive star, but may have earned that reputation entirely as a buyer -- never having sold before. And the fear of feedback retaliation seems to lead to a stalemate, with no one really saying what they think.
On the other hand, this stalemate in the formal feedback mechanism means that most misunderstandings and dissatisfaction are dealt with in the privacy of person-to-person email. And the threat -- without the necessity of the reality -- of negative feedback encourages everyone to be considerate, reliable, prompt, and accurate in their descriptions of what they have to sell.
In general, unless you have a major gripe against someone (which is likely to be a very rare occurence), you should immediately enter positive feedback for every buyer, as soon as the transaction is done -- and send the buyer a quick email saying that you've given that feedback, which is a gentle reminder that you would appreciate feedback as well.
Particularly for used items and collectibles, the description of the condition/quality of the item is extremely important. The difference in value between a baseball card in "fair" or "good" or "fine" or "excellent" condition can be enormous. But a bidder must be sure that the description is accurate before taking the bidding high. Vendors who have very little feedback will find that most bidders don't take them at their word, and assume that the condition is probably worse than the description indicates, and will bid cautiously. But bidders who have lots of positive feedback, and especially those where the actual comments praise the accuracy of the descriptions, will command top dollar. In this environment, as a seller, you benefit from being very conservative in your descriptions -- mentioning every little defect. That increases your credibility for that item, and at the same time makes it likely that the buyer will be pleased, helping to build your positive feedback.
For collectibles, what does feedback mean in terms of price? I sold several hundred comic books at eBay. When I started -- and had the "shades" to indicate I was a newcomer -- I only got bidders on about 30-50% of my auctions, and the final price was often the starting price: $3. After a month, the shades went away, and I was well over the 10 positive feedbacks needed for a "star". Soon comparable comics were generating prices of $15 to $30; and one brought over $120. The mechandise was the same. Thee descriptions and categories were the same. All that had changed was my reputation -- both in the formal feedback system and also in direct dealings with regular buyers, who saw that my descriptions were conservative and accurate and seeing that I shipped immediately, and hence went out of their way to find and bid on my auctions.
Relationships with buyers
Keep in mind that along with the community-based reputation of feedback, you are building direct relationships with individuals. Someone who buys one thing from you may well be interested in bidding in other auctions of yours. In the description, tell how you acquired the object. Be chatty and friendly as well as accurate and informative. Then include friendly questions and comments in your correspondence about payment and shipping. By so doing, you can uncover what else they are looking for and why they collect what they collect. I've done many deals offline with eBay customers, based on their interests. You can also get clues as to how to better group, organize, and describe what you have to sell at eBay. For instance, selling bottle caps -- what is the optimum number of caps to have in an auction lot and should they be mixed (many different kinds) or all of the same kind?
If you have many items that fall into the same general category, over time you develop your own niche -- establishing a reputation in that sub-community at eBay and perfecting your descriptions and email messages, based on what you've learned from your previous auctions and related correspondence.
Another side effect of selling at Ebay is the people you meet. For instance, someone who bought a Wild Bill Hickok comic book from me had just sold a script to a TV network for a pilot for a series set in Deadwood. Someone else bought an old copy of Playboy because there was an Elvis Presley poster inside. The buyer is an avid fan, who legally changed her name to "Presley", bought a house next to Graceland, and moved there from New Jersey. She now makes a living selling Elvis-related memorabilia.
Credit cards
If you already have a small business, you may have a merchant credit card account -- an account which allows you to accept credit card payments. If that's the case, you should give customers the option of paying by credit card.
You might be reluctant to do so with small (under $10) transactions, because the credit card processing companies take fees out of every transaction. But keep in mind not only that
As my feedback rating and personal reputation at eBay grew, the percent of buyers who wanted to pay me by credit card climbed from zero to about 15%, with most of those from eBay veterans who have bought many items that way and have learned the value and convenience of trust.
We often hear that many people are concerned about security in doing credit card transactions over the Internet. I'm seeing the opposite at Ebay -- far greater levels of trust than you'd normally expect in the "real" world. About 10% of my customers send me cash through the regular snail mail -- including a customer in Germany who has no problem at all about sending $100-200 at a time that way. Some of these people don't have checking accounts, and don't want to go to the hassle of buying money orders. Others are overseas without credit cards, but with US currency. Rather than jump through hoops to come up with a secure and mutually acceptable payment method, they find it's simpler to just stuff the cash in an envelope.
eBay allows you to set a "reserve" price in addition to the starting price. This is the minimum price at which you would be willing to actually sell the item, but the bidders do not know what that number is. The theory is that a low starting price will interest bidders, but, with the reserve, you protect yourself from letting the item go for too little.
In practice, however, bidders hate auctions with reserve prices. It is very frustrating to come back again and again over the duration of an auction (typically 3-7 days), to finally enter the winning bid, and then to discover that there was a reserve which is higher than your final bid, which means you don't win at all. Hence most bidders will not participate in auctions that have reserves.
You might consider testing the market, by running an auction with a reserve to see how high the bids go. If they go over your reserve fine. In any case, you'll get an indication of the level of interest in your item. And if you relist without a reserve and maybe with a low bidding price -- which you can and should highlight in your description -- the bidding will probably go higher than it did with the reserve. But it's still a gamble.
It's a lot easier to deal with prices when you have many similar items or many that at least fall into the same general category, and when you wouldn't mind selling a few for $2 or $3, if the average sale were up around $20 or $30. Then you can fine-tune your pricing over time, based on experience.
For my auctions, I put the starting price as low as I can -- just a little more than break-even given all the time involved in posting the description, communicating with the winner, then preparing, packaging, and shipping the goods. A low start attracts a first bidder and activity breeds more activity. Remember, for many people, online auctions are entertainment. They get caught up in the excitement of competition. Hence you want to do whatever you can to attract a second bidder and a third -- to make it a contest. And a low starting price is an excellent way to get that rolling. For instance, a comic I sold for $34.00 was posted with a starting bid of $2. Other similar comics that I posted with a start of $10 or even $6 got no bids at all. In other words, if you have enough items in the same category to build a niche for yourself, low starting prices are likely to bring you higher average final sales costs.
The vast number of participants at eBay makes this possible. It's a bit like brownian motion -- if you get enough of these bidders banging around and you have enough similar items for sale, the bidding on any individual item will be random, but over time the results for a large number of items will be very consistent and predictable and you can, with confidence, sell valuable items with very low starting prices.
There is one important exception here -- beware of seasonal variations. For many collectibles, activity at eBay drops precipitously over the summer. Keep a close eye out for the seasonal buying patterns associated with the kind of thing that you have to sell.
The market fluctations for different kinds of goods tend to be different. Experiment to determine the optimum pattern/rhythm for what you have to sell, and adapt your behavior accordingly. Is spring, summer, fall, or winter best for you? Do you do better with auctions that end on weekdays or on weekends? If weekends, is Saturday or Sunday best? And what time of day do you want your auctions to end, to make it more likely that interested buyers will be connected during the final, potentially exciting and hectic moments of your auctions?
Also, what is the optimal length for your auctions? As of now, you only have four choices for the length of your auctions -- 3, 5, 7, and 10 days. Which works best for you?
People buying for hobbies and personal use are likely to connect evenings and weekends, or maybe over lunch break from work. People buying items for use at work, may prefer business hours.
Also, remember time zones. 6 AM on the East Coast of the US, pretty much rules out participation from the West Coast where the time would be 3 AM; but might be convenient for folks in London, where it is 11 AM. If you end auctions at around noon Eastern Time, that will allow Western Europe and California to get involved in last minute auction frenzy for your items.
Also, remember that the audience is global. If you have a potentially large market south of the Equator, the seasons are reversed there (winter there when summer here). And for Australia and the Far East, noon time there is midnight on the East Coast of the US.
From my experience selling collectibles, I do best with auctions that end on weekends -- Saturday a little better than Sunday. And 9 PM Eastern Time works best for me as an end time. For others who are selling new and refurbished merchandise, like digital cameras and computer gear, week days may be better than weekends.
Having done your calculations, the general setup at eBay makes it difficult to get the ending time you prefer. The time of day that you start is the time of day that you end. If you start your auction at 8 PM, it will end at 8 PM -- you cannot select an ending time. So you have to plan ahead and post at the right time to get the right setup. And if you have dozens of items you want to post, it will difficult to get them all in with an end time close to what you want.
Remember the cost of packaging as well as the postage, and also try to minimize the time that it will take you to package your item and drop it off for shipment.
If you have a choice, sell small items rather than large ones. Sell items that will fit in a standard size box that you could send parcel post, rather than selling furniture or pianos. And better still, in the US, sell items that will fit in a flat-rate priority mail envelope.
In the US, for an item that could cost $2 or more to mail first class, you are better off sending it in a flat-rate priority mail envelope for $3.20. If you went with first class, you would end up spending nearly $1 for a padded envelope, which would add weight and raise the postage cost. Even if the first class postage would be less than $2, you sitll might be better off with priority mail because the cardboard flat-rate envelope provides good protection for paper goods, like comic books, and your package is likely to arrive sooner at its destination, with more careful handling.
Also, with flat-rate priority mail, you know the shipping cost right away without going to the trouble of weighing -- if it fits in the mailer, then regardless of weight, the cost of $3.20. This gives you the opportunity to use the shipping cost as an incentive for people to bid on more than one item from you.
In my case, if the buyer is getting one comic or five, the shipping price is $3.20, because that many can fit in a single flat-rate envirope. When the typical winning bid for a comic might be $2.00 to $10.00, saving on shipping can be a strong incentive for someone to bid on more than one from the same person, which helps drive up bids, and also greatly simplifies my logistics. For 45 comic book auctions, I might end up having to ship just 15 packages (and just keep track of 15 customers).
But priority mail isn't the only way to use shipping charges as an incentive. You can make special offers in your product description -- for instance, free shipping to anyone buying a certain number of items. Or you might, in followup email messages to winners of your auctions, offer those individuals a special break on shipping costs on future purchases of theirs from you (either from Ebay or arranged directly between you by email).
The importance of shipping cost as an incentive or disincentive varies widely. Some people will pay without hesitation shipping charges that are equal to the cost of the goods, or even double the cost, perhaps because the item you are selling is difficult to find or perhaps because the buyer lives in an isolated area or for one reason or another finds it difficult to get to physical stores where they could find anything comparable. Other people will drive many miles to pick the goods in person and thereby save a few dollars in shipping cost. Be flexible and understanding.
The cost of shipping a package that weighs less than four pounds is less than $10 to most countries. And, in any case, you can set the terms when you post the item, and should have it as "buyer pays shipping."
At one of our chat sessions, Ron Rothenberg noted that he had just sold a keyboard to someone in Brazil. The winning bid was $30, and the shipping charge was $40. Even at a total cost of $70, the buyer was delighted -- to him, in his local marketplace, this was a bargain.
My best comic book customers were in Germany, the Netherlands, and Qatar (on the Persian Gulf). Two of them paid with credit card, and the other sent US currency in cash by snail mail (see the section on "credit cards" above).
Once I was able to take good digital photos of my comics, I found myself literally falling in love with some of those old comics, with their amazing cover art. It became hard for me to part with them. Fortunately, bidders fell in love with them, too. (Keep in mind that decorative graphics and photos that have nothing to do with products for sale are still of very questionable value, and are often negative. But for e-commerce, you need to show what you want to sell.)
Whatever you have to sell will probably sell better if you include a photo in your posting. You could take traditional photos and when you get the film developed request them in digital form, on diskette or on CD ROM. Or you could use one of those low-cost video cameras you plug into your PC for online two-way video, and save still images. But it's simplest if you use a digital camera.
At first I used the "Big Picture" video camera and capture card from US Robotics, because I already had it installed for videophone kinds of things. But that confined me to taking picture a short distance from my computer, because it was connected by a short cord. And it was difficut to get the lighting right. But even with those drawbacks, I could see that my items sold better with than without photos.
I signed up at Xoom (www.xoom.com) for 11 Mbytes of free space and uploaded my photos to Xoom using FTP. Then I entered the URLs of the photos in the auction form at Ebay, along with the descriptions of the items, etc.
After a couple of months and a few thousand dollars in revenue from selling comics and bottle caps, I decided to splurge and buy a digital camera. I decided on a Sony Mavica, because it is so simple to use and stores photos on ordinary 3-1/2 inch diskettes, that I can pop right into my computer for viewing, editing, and uploading.
The new camera cut the time it takes me to take photos down to about a fifth what it was before -- which is very important if you are selling dozens of items at a time. It also allowed me to take the photos wherever I like, because there is no cord. That makes it far easier to set up for the best lighting. In addition, the resulting photos were larger and sharper -- giving a much better idea of the true condition of collectibles.
If you've been itching to get a digital camera, this could be the excuse you've been looking for.
In general, you should set up a "studio area" -- with dark non-reflective background and lights set up the way you want them; so you only have to deal with those details once.
With the camera I have, I can zoom. In any case, I see the image that I'm going to get on the screen in the camera, which means that I can get just the image I want, without having to crop afterwards. Remember you are taking these pictures for a business purpose -- not art. You want a clear, sharp, appealing picture, but you can't afford to spend a lot of time getting it, unless your item is going to sell for a lot of money. For something that is likely to sell for under $10, you really don't want to take more than two minutes taking the picture.
About the only editing I do on these photos is rotating the image, if I held the camera sidewise.
There are some people who "shop" at auctions, wanting to get a good price for a quality item, but just wanting to get in and out with a minimum of hassle. Those aren't the folks you want to cater to. You want to appeal to the folks who enjoy the auction experience.
And if you sell collectibles, you also want to tap into nostalgia. Many of today's online auction buyers are looking for items that they once possessed as children. In our society, many families move frequently, and parents typically throw out many items that they believe are of no value or that they believe their children have grown out of. Years later, when those kids hit middle age, they have an urge to get back in touch with their past, and will go to great lengths to obtain long lost items they associate with their childhood.
Experimenting at Ebay, I've discovered an interesting law of economics. (Perhaps this is well-known, but I had never heard of it before). The less the intrinsic value of a mass-produced object, the more likely it will become valuable over time as a collectible. (Their lack of intrinsic value means that few people will save these objects, which means that they will become rare. And the fact that they were mass-produced will mean that they are imprinted on the consciousness of many, and thus subject to nostalgia by association, and hence will be in demand.)
As a result, I can get more money selling a fair-condition bottle cap than selling a 100-year-old book that's in fine condition.
This changes the economics of collectibles. There used to be a large gap between the prices a dealer could get selling to collectors and the prices an ordinary collector could get selling to a dealer. Now anyone who knows how to play the online auction game can sell at dealer prices. In fact, anyone with a little knowledge and ambition and online savvy can become a dealer -- buying and selling in the same online marketplace and serving the irrational but very real needs of those who want to buy a piece of their childhood past.
If you have your own Web pages, you might want to include links from there directly to each of your current auctions. As an alternative, use Search at eBay, to look for yourself as a seller. That brings you to a page with a list of all your auctions. Copy the resulting URL and make a hyperlink from one or more of your Web pages directly to that list -- that way you won't have to change links as auctions of your end and start.
You might also want to add a line to the standard signature file you automatically add to your email messages, pointing people to eBay's list of your auctions.
If there are related newsgroups (check www.deja.com) or email discussion lists (check www.liszt.com) or forums (check www.forumone.com), consider posting brief notes about your auctions there (if that is appropriate behavior for that particular group). Or join in newsgroup discussions on topics related to the kinds of things that you are selling, and append to your postings your signature file with its link to your auctions.
If you send out paper communications about your business and your auctions are related to your business, be sure to mention your online auctions. Depending on how important this is to you, you might even include a brief plug in your voicemail message.
Even though the traffic at other person-to-person auction sites like Yahoo (auctions.yahoo.com) and Amazon.com is far less than at eBay, you might want to post a few auctions there, and in the descriptions point people to your similar auctions at eBay. Even if you don't get many sales, the promotion value might make the postings worth the effort.
As Tracy Marks noted in one of our chat sessions, one clue to how well this "outreach" effort works is the number of bidders who have "0" next to their names -- in other words, the number of first time bidders. Some of these may be just random visits by eBay newcomers. But if you see a sudden rise in newcomers right after you do heavy promotion outside of eBay, it's likely that many of them are coming in direct response to your messages.
Since eBay provides you with the email addresses of everyone who bids on any auction -- not just yours, you may be strongly tempted to build mailing lists of people interested in the kinds of things that you have to sell. For instance, you can click on "bid history" and get a list of the usernames/"handles" of all the bidders; then click on an individual handle and, after entering your own eBay username and password, see that person's email address. The temptation may be very great, but don't go down that path. As a rule of thumb, never add anyone to an email list without their explicit permission. Otherwise, many recipients of your promotional messages are liable to consider them as "spam" -- unsolicited and unwanted advertising. Some will probably be mad enough to send you nasty messages in return, to remember you and not bid on your auctions in the future, perhaps to give you negative feedback at eBay, and perhaps to complain to eBay management, who frown on "misuse of bidder information." They don't want their members subjected to spam, and will take steps to prevent a recurrence.
In general, it is not a good idea to initiate contact with an unknown person who is a bidder at eBay for the sole purpose of selling something to them off-line. But there's a wide gray area, involving personal rather than mailing list messages, that you might want to explore. For instance, if you have more than one copy of an item that you put up for auction, when the auction ends, you might want to contact the second highest bidder. This message could let them know that you are starting a new auction with the same kind of item. That kind of message would be perfectly acceptable to eBay management. Or you might want to ask them if they would like to make a deal off-line for a similar item. eBay management would frown on that because they don't get posting and transaction fees for your off-line deals. But what matters most is how the recipient of your message would take your suggestion. If the bidding was intense, and this person really wanted that item, your message may be very welcome. On the other hand, if you were sending the same kind of message to someone who was the second highest bidder at someone else's auction for an item similar to what you have for sale, that would be taking a step out of the gray and into the dark side.
At the other end of the gray spectrum, when I conduct business at Ebay, I build relationships with repeat bidders and buyers. People email me with questions while an auction is going on. They ask me if I have a certain related item and would be willing to sell it to them off-line. And when someone repeatedly bids on or buys items of mine, and we repeatedly correspond on the subject, I feel no qualms about letting them know about other related items of mine that they clearly would be interested in. The auction takes place within the community. But what I do in other ways with folks that I met there is really my own business.
But keep in mind that the acceptability and desirability of a given tactic depends on the kind of item that you are selling. Personal off-line communication is common and generally welcome with regard to collectibles, especially rare items. But if someone is selling brand name, mass manufactured merchandise, the temptations to over promote and the reactions of potential buyers to their messages are likely to be quite different. For instance, someone might try to operate like a vulture, watching other people's auctions and offering the very same merchandise to bidders at a lower price. While some people might welcome such a bargain offering, such behavior disrupts the auction environment an is a clear violation of community rules.
On the other hand, if you are a regular seller at eBay, with many items in the same general category, you can expect that frequent bidders will occasionally contact you and ask for an "off-auction" price for a similar item. As Ron Rothenberg noted in one of our chat sessions, "Some people find the idea of auctions just awful and don't have the patience." Those kinds of people might use eBay as a way to identify sellers and then make their own separate deals, quickly and simply.
To connect to the chat room, go to www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html
Edited transcript of recent auction-related chat sessions
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