WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE THESE ONE CENT AUCTIONS??

My biggest question was why someone would want to waste the 30cents on the listing fee just to make 1 cent!!!  SO I looked into why and found out - and the answer was actually quite interesting.

I first though that this was a quick way to get your feedback score quickly elevated - but that is truly only a secondary benefit.  Here's the real reason for these auctions:

To bring BUYERS into SELLER'S eBay STORES.

Yeah.  I was surprised too, but it makes sense.  Here's how it works:

When you go to one of these auctions, you see that the auction is only available to "PRE-APPROVED" bidders only.  This is only half true because you will find in the item DESCRIPTION a link that allows you to click to have "INSTANT APPROVAL".  When you click on this link, it actually is NOT giving you instant approval, but it is actually A LINK TO THE SELLERS eBAY STORE.  You can then buy the 1 cent auction in the store - which only costs the seller TWO 2 CENTS for the listing fee instead of the 30 cents.  THE SELLER HOPES THAT YOU WILL ALSO CONTINUE TO SHOP FOR THE REGULAR PRICED ITEMS IN THE STORE WHILE YOU ARE THERE.  And that's it!!!  This is the secret behind the 1 cent auction.  Much more simple than I expected.  Yeah, you get an easy extra feedback, but the seller hopes that you will spend some more money while you are there.

It's the same as when a retail store buys a SEMI TRUCK full of one item and advertises it for REALLY cheap.  They hope that you will drive down to the store and buy the cheap item and spend some more while you are there.  Quite a good idea actually. 

You can see though, this is truly only beneficial if you pay the $15/mo to have the store and you have enough items to for the buyers to buy once you are in the store.  Since I sell on eBay as a hobby, this was not beneficial for me, and thus the 1 cent auction was of no use to me. 

Well, I hope that I didn't disappoint you with the answer to the 1 cent auction, but I hope that I have been informative.  Have a great day and good luck!