Skip to main content

Minimum reserve on trademe.co.nz

Recently I have been asked what sellers should set as their minimum reserve for listing an item on www.trademe.co.nz - New Zealand's version of Ebay.

So I thought I'd post how we worked through this - while not directly related to intranets 'all things are connected'.

Example - Toby is using TradeMe to test the market for a new kid's product he has developed, Do it yourself tree houses for the 3 to 7 year old age group, Toby's Tots Tree houses.

Tree House kit - cost to manufacture NZ$80
Profit per kit Toby would like - NZ$20

As at 3 Nov 2008 TradeMe will charge Toby 6.9% for a successful sale under NZ$150

Toby is keen to make the most of the options available to promote the TTThouses so he has decided to pay for the following per item listed
  • Feature combo - NZ$3.95
  • Subtitle - NZ$0.55
  • One extra Photo - NZ$0.10
  • Scheduled end time for the auction - NZ$0.25
  • Reserve fee (so he can set the reserve) - NZ$0.25
Toby figures on the following being his labour time costs
  • taking photos - 10min
  • researching other listings - 10min
  • answering questions - 10min
  • arranging payment and pickup - 10min
  • actual pickup of the TTThouse - 10min
Total of 50minutes.
Toby will charge his time for this costing exercise at NZ$40 per hour
Total required to pay for Toby's time NZ$33

So Toby needs to sell his tree houses for the following amount at least:

NZ$80 + NZ$20 + NZ$3.95 + NZ$0.55 + NZ$0.10 + NZ$0.25 + NZ$0.25 + NZ$33
=
NZ$138.10
* 1.069
=
NZ$147.63

If Toby wants to include free shipping in the price, NZ$20 anywhere in the country, his price will go over NZ$150 so he falls into a different pricing bracket $10.35 plus 4.5% of the amount greater than NZ$150 that is paid.

NZ$138.10
+NZ$20
+NZ$10.35
=
NZ$168.45
+ (($168.45 - 150)*1.045)
=
NZ$187.73

This price (NZ$187.73) will cover
  • all of Toby's costs
  • allow him to sell his Tree Houses with "Free shipping"
  • cover his TradeMe expenses
  • pay for his time listing and actually selling via TradeMe
In conclusion
Be very careful how you price products you make or purchase if listing them on auction sites.

If Toby had sold his Tree Houses for NZ$120, or put a reserve of NZ$120 he would have been out of pocket for each and every one that sold for less than NZ$187.73

Toby though he might sell two a week so in the worst case he would have lost NZ$7000 over the course of a year.

Finally
One of the reasons I've posted this is for those of you who are looking can poke holes in our logic, so please let me know what you think and what your experiences have been.

DorjeM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To setup rails on IIS and enable it for multiple Applications. START Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP1 IIS 6 RUBY Install ruby 185_22_rc2.exe You don't have to put it in c:\ruby I created the following folder c:\webdata\ruby, then ran the install. Run install into c:\webdata and say "YES" to deleting the existing ruby directory. During the install I ticked SciTE and Enable RubyGems Took 10mins 1000s of files Ruby GEMS Install Ruby Gems 0.9.1 (don't change it from the defaults) Extract zip file to temp directory, then double click setup.rb, does the default install (about 5mins) Then run at the command line gem pristine --all c:\> gem pristine --all I tried to install Ruby Gems in a particular directory, but couldn't get it working because if you use the command line SET command to put a value into GEM_HOME when the ruby gems installer setup.rb reads the registry it doesn't account for the fact that values in the registry contain double b
4 comments
Read more

Yammer and puddles

Recently I was asked " What are the top 10 points you think are important to get across to staff at all levels in an organisation about Yammer? " My initial reaction was "Tough ask", mainly because I've seen great write ups on what organisations get out of Yammer but very few that talk directly to the user benefits. Many articles give the usual cop out "users can't see the point, until they get it" I admit I was in that boat when I started using Twitter, a public micro blogging platform. But just like they said "once I used it I got it". What they didn't say was that it took a while and it suits certain people better than others. So as with all things in the social media space, be aware that culture change not the technology may be your biggest challenge. So what does Yammer, a microblogging platform for organisational use , do for real employees that is compelling enough for them to spend the time to "Get it" ? First off Y
6 comments
Read more

Role Title on profiles

Today one of the people I follow on Twitter asked the following question. @ChristySeason Asking all #intranet tweeps: Does your company publish employees' titles on your employee directory/look up/phone book? In following Intranets Live I've been lucky enough to see some great intranets. As such I was able to reply to Christy with the following Nokia do Deloitte do (see the end of the post) Christy's question also prompted me to document my own intranet's profile page. The following image is from the view other's get of my profile. When I look at my profile I see every item that is recorded. I'll save you from that, another post perhaps, if you're interested. DorjeM PS a couple of Vendors I've been reminded of, thanks Crhis and Carolyn, also have screen shots of their profile pages on the web: ThoughtFarmer - intranet software - slideshow of screen shots and Intranet connections - software solution
2 comments
Read more