Is there something to be learned here-EBAY sellers

[Hawaiian Bam Bam]

As I was searching EBAY for some cards tonight,to buy, I noticed over and over that the bigger name BAY store that have 20,000 -27,000 cards listed in their store have a set price with no "best offer" option and shipping is consistently at $3.00. when i checked there feedback, they are ebay top rated sellers that get on average 700-800 ebay transactions per month.(so they are doing pretty good!) i then noticed that medium size sellers that have about 1,000- 2,000 items in their EBAY store have a "best offer" option on their listings wit FREE shipping, however their feedback scores per month average only 100-200 feedbacks/transactions at most per month.(so they are doing just OK in sales) for both scenarios they are selling cards with an average sale price of $4-5 (so not high end cards) so qith that background is it better to be like the big sellers and list a TON, charge for shipping and dont have a "best offer" option? or is it better to be like the smaller sellers and not have much listed, offer FEE shipping on everything and have a "best offer" option on your items? would be very interested to hear your guys thoughts on this. thanks in advance for your thoughts, opinion/ advice on this.

[geoffyb]

My example of this would be burbanksportscards on ebay. sure their prices are high and shipping is high too. they have thousands of listings at a time. they almost always seem to have something i want that no one else has so i am usually forced to pay the high price.

[sschind]

I'm guessing for the big guy there are a lot of people who buy more than one card to make the shipping cost worthwhile (assuming they combine shipping) If you have 1000 cards listed and only one $5.00 card that a buyer is interested in he may not be willing to pay the $3.00 shipping but if you have 10000 cards listed chances are 10 time greater that he will find more cards that he wants and he will package them together.

I think the obvious lesson regardless of the shipping and the best offer is the more you list the more you sell. If you don't have the cards it doesn't matter if your shipping is free or not. If your cards are priced fairly it doesn't matter if you have a best offer.

[97/98 SPX BK]

I'm guessing for the big guy there are a lot of people who buy more than one card to make the shipping cost worthwhile (assuming they combine shipping) If you have 1000 cards listed and only one $5.00 card that a buyer is interested in he may not be willing to pay the $3.00 shipping but if you have 10000 cards listed chances are 10 time greater that he will find more cards that he wants and he will package them together.

I think the obvious lesson regardless of the shipping and the best offer is the more you list the more you sell. If you don't have the cards it doesn't matter if your shipping is free or not. If your cards are priced fairly it doesn't matter if you have a best offer.

I agree with all of this. Another thing to keep in mind, although it doesn't really change anything on this particular topic, is that ebay feedback received is only a fraction of what any particular seller's sales are. I typically get feedback from about 20% of my ebay buyers and 13-15% of my amazon buyers. However, I don't sell cards on either site and I'm sure these percentages will vary slightly from industry to industry.

Top Rated Seller status plays a big part in exposure as well. Having this status helps you move to the top of search results on ebay so a non-top rated seller is at a disadvantage exposure-wise.