E Bay. Number of people 'watching'.

[Grindle]

For a long time i thought that with this selling medium, the more views your bike got the better, but the more people bothering to 'watch', well that was a real pointer to the bike's popularity and thus ease of selling at a good price.
But i had in excess of 100 people watching my Duke 690 and i ended up selling it on Gumtree to a buyer from 4 miles away!
Currently i have a bike for sale with 92 people watching, but no real offers of any worth. What is this watching lark, are most of them just nosey? !

[Jazoli]

I have all sorts in my watch list, cheap bikes/cars/kit tools I want to buy etc, I always have a couple of cheap cars in my watch list in case my current car sts itself, it can give you a good idea of somethings market value when it sells, I don't think the number it watchers makes any difference to whether it sells or not though.

[p4cks]

Grindle said:

...are most of them just nosey? !

Yep. I watch loads of stuff on eBay with no intention of buying (sorry!)

[alistair1234]

Grindle said:

For a long time i thought that with this selling medium, the more views your bike got the better, but the more people bothering to 'watch', well that was a real pointer to the bike's popularity and thus ease of selling at a good price.
But i had in excess of 100 people watching my Duke 690 and i ended up selling it on Gumtree to a buyer from 4 miles away!
Currently i have a bike for sale with 92 people watching, but no real offers of any worth. What is this watching lark, are most of them just nosey? !

I always watch things to see how much they go for if I’m thinking about selling a similar item, although I don’t think that many 690 sellers are doing the same in this case.

[V8RX7]

It is a good indication of interest - although I had over 4000 views and 200 watchers on my car and didn't have a single viewer.

Obviously on an auction people watch to see what happens at the end and might have a cheeky bid, on classifieds I'm watching a few bikes - both for comparison purposes and to see if they drop the price.

I'm looking for a supermoto and there only seems to be cheap tat or over optimistic sellers (judging on recent sales prices)

[Krikkit]

p4cks said:

Grindle said:

...are most of them just nosey? !

Yep. I watch loads of stuff on eBay with no intention of buying (sorry!)

Me too, my watch list is often over 50 items in various forms.

My experience is that eBay has gonea bit upmarket like AT used to be these days, for an informal cheap sale I look at Gumtree or Facebook.

[anonymous-user]

Krikkit said:

p4cks said:

Grindle said:

...are most of them just nosey? !

Yep. I watch loads of stuff on eBay with no intention of buying (sorry!)

Me too, my watch list is often over 50 items in various forms.

My experience is that eBay has gonea bit upmarket like AT used to be these days, for an informal cheap sale I look at Gumtree or Facebook.

Second this, can usually find a half decent deal on ebay if you're quick. some people watch it like hawks.
All of the stonking deals i've had have been through gumtree.

ETA if i'm selling something with a fair bit of value it will go on ebay as there is a large audience, any tat will go on gumtree.

[V8RX7]

Krikkit said:

eBay has gonea bit upmarket like AT used to be these days, for an informal cheap sale I look at Gumtree or Facebook.

It's not that it's gone upmarket it's that the cheapskates who won't pay for ads use Gumtree

and the real idiots sell on FB - so there is the odd bargain if you can face the pathetic search, trying to deal through messenger and the thousands who never remove an ad nor answer questions

[Rubin215]

Jazoli said:

it can give you a good idea of somethings market value when it sells

I look at the completed items to see what price things have actually sold for rather than what price they have been advertised at.
It's amazing how often sellers seem to think that if they advertise their item high then people will magically stump up more than it's actually worth!

[tedblog]

Alot of dealers buy on Ebay so they have a huge watch list so when it pings price has dropped thats when they step in. TBH alot of normal buyers do that too.
I set up saved searches so as soon as anything of interest to me gets listed i get an alert.

[soad]

Watchers don’t mean equal bids. Enough said.

[Fundoreen]

watchers probably own a bike like you are trying to shift. If it goes for £20k they will stick their one on.
Assuming they can get at it buried under the 20 years of shed dross.

[Dog Star]

I’ve sold some stuff (R1, Merc SL500) and had hundreds and hundreds of watchers - over 700 for the SL.

No bids. (And they were both very cheap)

[NickGRhodes]

A lot of my Ebay watches are merely dreams of what I know will never be.

[SamR380]

I watch stuff and wait for it to be relisted at a reduced price. If I wanted it at the current price I'd bid.

[V8RX7]

SamR380 said:

I watch stuff and wait for it to be relisted at a reduced price. If I wanted it at the current price I'd bid.

Never bid until the last 10 seconds

[SamR380]

V8RX7 said:

Never bid until the last 10 seconds

I normally bid the starting price and then wait until the end if I'm really interested. 'Sniping' tools should be built in to the eBay system. Having been caught out by quite obvious (in retrospect) shill bidding in the past, I wouldn't make a serious bid on something without using one.

[Dog Star]

SamR380 said:

I normally bid the starting price and then wait until the end if I'm really interested. 'Sniping' tools should be built in to the eBay system. Having been caught out by quite obvious (in retrospect) shill bidding in the past, I wouldn't make a serious bid on something without using one.

I use sniping tools and they work great at stopping shill bidding. However what then happens (I've had it happen a dozen times) is that you get an email saying the item is lost/broken or some bullst excuse because they didn't get as much as they wanted for the item. Latest was a set of roofbars for a Merc S213 - chime as a message comes in "Here we go" I thought and yes, "Sorry but I am refunding your money as I have lost the keys to the roofbars". Cobblers! The reality is that they'd gone too cheap and then he'd quoted a tenner postage.

Why not just put them up for the minimum you want to accept and save yourself the negative feedback that I will leave (because that's what I do).

[V8RX7]

Dog Star said:

I use sniping tools and they work great at stopping shill bidding. However what then happens (I've had it happen a dozen times) is that you get an email saying the item is lost/broken or some bullst excuse because they didn't get as much as they wanted for the item. Latest was a set of roofbars for a Merc S213 - chime as a message comes in "Here we go" I thought and yes, "Sorry but I am refunding your money as I have lost the keys to the roofbars". Cobblers! The reality is that they'd gone too cheap and then he'd quoted a tenner postage.

Why not just put them up for the minimum you want to accept and save yourself the negative feedback that I will leave (because that's what I do).

Yes - it ruins ebay - I've won various items, they are cancelled and immediately relisted, complained to ebay, bugger all happens if they want to set a reserve - fair enough.

I've set up secondary accounts so I buy them again and mess the sellers about.

[SteelerSE]

I've sold my last three vehicles on ebay and it's been painless. I use auctions, set my starting price at my absolute bottom price and then let the market do its thing. Lots of photos, lots of history and everybody's happy.