We Made Selling Easier: Learn About the Merchant Tools You May be Missing Out On
What is Scheduling Fee Bidding?
Scheduling Fee Bidding, or SFB as we often refer to it, is similar to a listing fee — it’s the cost of getting an item scheduled into auction. The Scheduling Fee bid set by the Merchant determines how much volume is scheduled for auction. High Scheduling Fee Bids will result in more volume; low Scheduling Fee Bids will result in less.
What should a Scheduling Fee bid be set to?
Scheduling Fee bids are real-time and category-specific. On each product we display a range to advise Merchants on the current average bidding price, based on real-time competition. To sell at auction, a bid must be set above $0. If a bid outperforms the average, more volume is likely.
Don’t forget about the Daily Budget
The Daily Budget is the total amount a Merchant will spend on Scheduling Fee Bids per day. We aim to use as much of the Daily Budget as possible, to schedule as many products as possible. As a Merchant scales on Tophatter, it’s important to increase their Daily Budget to move more volume.
The Daily Budget can be set at the top of your Products page or on the Terms page. Our system will stop scheduling products for auction once the Daily Budget is met. If a Merchant is looking to move big volume, set a high Daily Budget to ensure products are scheduled throughout the day.
How to use the Bulk Scheduling Fee Edit and Add tools
These are two different tools with two very similar names and functions. The Bulk Scheduling Fee Add tool allows Merchants to bulk upload new products and set a default Scheduling Fee bid to all of them—or upload a CSV that contains bids. The Bulk Scheduling Edit tool allows Merchants to edit Scheduling Fee bids on existing products in bulk.
How much should a Merchant charge for Shipping?
We get it, shipping prices are a give and a take: consumer behavior shows a desire for increasingly lower shipping prices, but Merchants need to get their margins. We see Sell Rates drop as shipping increases, but at what point does shipping become “too high” to buy? Free shipping has the highest Sell Rate. Products still sell very well when shipping prices stay at or below the $3 mark. Sell Rates drop dramatically and continue falling when shipping is more than $5. So, keep shipping less than $5 to sell in volume.
How to maximize margins with Starting Bids
Starting Bids can be set for all products. Previously, we started all auctions at $1, but we understand this is not the best price for all items and now empower Merchants to set the Starting Bid for each product.
Shoppers still need to driven to compete to win the best deal on the product, so we recommend being mindful about setting a Starting Bid that leaves opportunity for auction competition. Also, this is not the same as your Target Price, which is the price we sell the product at in our Buy Now catalogs.
