The answer to this really depends on the product you are selling, and you need to take all the selling factors into consideration before making a decision. Obviously it would be ideal if you could cover all your costs within the selling price of your product, but if you're selling e-books for a cent or two each you're obviously not going to be able to do that.

But the only investment into that e-book will be the amount of time it takes you to write it. There are no physical costs involved - you don't need to buy it in multiples and you don't need to stock it. It's safely stored on your computer and you can send out as many copies as you like without it costing you anything.

A tangible product will have a unit price, but it may be sold at a slightly higher price than the e-book. You will also need to figure postage and packaging costs into the picture, although postage is usually paid for by the customer - unless you decide to offer free postage of course. Overall you could find the loss taken on each product will turn out to be the same, even though one has a higher price than the other.

We've talked about looking at these low priced eBay sales as a form of advertising; you're not going on eBay to make money, for more details visit to www.auction-words.com you're offering several products that are extremely low in price in order to attract the attention of the niche customers you're after. It's those valuable follow up sales and sign ups to the newsletter you send out informing people of your latest (and higher priced) products that is the ultimate goal to aim for.

What you are essentially doing is offering loss leaders as bait to attract new customers. Loss leaders are a form of promotion in which you'll take a hit on that first sale in order to obtain bigger and more profitable sales later on. In short, it's a trade off - lose some money now to earn more in the future.

The best way to keep tabs on your eBay ventures is to set yourself a realistic budget to stick to. Make sure it's an amount of money you and your business can afford, for more details visit to www.auction-professional.com and set it aside to pay for your eBay listings and associated fees. It should also cover the cost of buying any tangible items you want to sell.

In this way it's much like setting a budget for advertising; you might have a hundred dollars set aside for the purpose, but you just need to decide how to spend it.

Obviously the cheaper the selling price, the cheaper your listings and final value fees will be, but you should still keep tabs on what you are offering for sale, and how successful each product is. If something isn't performing as well as it should be, try tweaking the title and the price a little, and if it still doesn't draw in the customers you should think about dropping it and replacing it with another product that has more potential.