Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
Then start the auction at the open plus shipping cost with free shipping. You're not really fooling anyone by starting the auction at $0.99 with $2.99 shipping rather than starting the auction at $3.99 wit free shipping.
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Sorry if you misunderstood my comment, but starting an item at $0.99 with $2.99 shipping that has a final bid of $10.00 vs. starting an item at $3.99 with free shipping that has a final bid of $10.00 is not the same thing.
My point is that with Auctions, the price the item sells for is largely independent of the starting price (unless your starting price is what you expect the item to sell for, with 1 bid, which is essentially listing at Fixed Price). I guess you could argue that buyers will look at your shipping price and factor that into their bidding, but from my experience, any increase in bid prices for items with free shipping won't offset what you lay out in shipping expenses.
With Fixed Price listings, or as I said, when running auctions with high starting prices that you only anticipate getting 1 bid for, rolling the shipping cost into the starting price totally makes sense. The few times I've tried it with auctions though, the result was that I ate a lot of shipping expense without seeing any real increase in overall bidding.