Dear fellow seller on Delcampe,

I'd like to open a discussion on Fixed price format sales vice Auction format sales here on Delcampe. Pro & con.

I would like to suggest that sellers take a second hard look at the fixed price method of selling here on Delcampe.

At first one would think that selling by auction would get you the best return for your item. At first thought I thought this also.

But now I think that one has to consider selling at fixed price in order to generate more sales.

We recently reached our 100,000 item listed here at Delcampe. That # of items so far generated 18,000 items sold in sales. Fully 91% of them were through the fixed price format for us.

We are
sold on that method of selling.

Here is what we do and why we do it at SCVIEW.

The Fixed price format on Delcampe also gets your item automatically listed directly into Googlebase ; enabling your item to be seen on the most active site on the Internet as well as Delcampe.

The Fixed price format gets you more "impulse" buys. Someone sees your item on google. They see that they can buy it right away and they do so. No waiting on the item no worrying about any "sniper" software coming in at the last moment and taking an item away before you can respond.

I admit that The auction format does get the occasional bidding war, but as a whole items both here and on Ebay go "one bid and out".

You could have it both ways if you like. Put your item up and let it run for a week. If no sale, re list it as a fixed price item and let it concurrently receive google exposure.

The current mess that is ebay was in a large part caused by the failure of the management there to recognize that buyers prefer fixed price sales over auction format sales. Especially when the last min sniper software is factored in.

So now, We now only do fixed price sales here on Delcampe.

When we did only auction sales we got one sale for ever 13.11 items listed.
With fixed price sales we are getting one sale for every 5.4 items listed.

Our average sale price for auctions was $10.97 USD and for fixed price it is $11.32 USD.

Our average auction customer buys 2-3 items at a time.
Our average fixed price format buyers buys 6-8 items at a time.

In the auction format every 27th person was a new buyer on Delcampe.
In the Fixed price format every 11th buyer is new to Delcampe.

So for us we get more sales per buyer, more $$$ per sale and more new buyers to Delcampe.

Another nice side effect of listing in the fixed price format is that as the number of Delcampe items on Google grows, the ranking of Delcampe among online auction site goes up, getting more exposure for the site as a whole, and ultimately more sales for us sellers here on Delcampe.

What is your view on this?