Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
I have approx 1500 items right now, give or take. I can assure you that I do NOT sell anywhere near 15 items/day. In fact, I don't think I've EVER sold 15 items in 1 day. Of course pricing matters too & I don't turn & burn. I don't even consistently sell half of that per day. Also, there are still plenty of times when I go 2 days with no sales, sometimes 3 days.
Also, keep in mind that getting to & maintaining a certain number of listings like takes a great deal of time, esp if you're a 1 person show. It took me years to get to the 1500. In addition to keeping up with attrition, you must also keep your listings from getting stagnant (>90 days with no sale per Ebay), so a lot of your time is spent ending/relisting existing items. Stagnant items have lower visibility. Also it makes a difference if you're a one-off seller of unique items or an MQ (multi-quantity) seller of a certain number of SKUs. As you said, lots of variables. While you're right that numbers don't lie, on eBay you can't really extrapolate them to a listings/sales ratio. Even back when I doubled my listings from 100 to 200 & expected them to double, they didn't & they certainly didn't increase 10 fold when I got to 1000. You aren't considering that you must keep the SEO algorithm happy for continued high visibility. To do that, you HAVE to CONSISTENTLY list new items (not relists/sell similars). If I go 3 days without listing new items, I notice the difference, if I go a week, it's a big deal & if you have a real life outside of eBay, it's VERY easy to go a week without listing. Above all else, you have to keep listing new items. But you gotta also maintain the old items, you gotta source, you gotta ship, etc. Also, be prepared that depending on the category, you'll need to Promote your listings & either send or accept Offers.
You're expecting the ratios to extrapolate based on logic & sales theory & organic numbers. Those things are not taking eBay's SEO algorithms into account. Which is what really controls your impressions & views, conversion rate, etc. I have worked in sales in another field, where we could accurately extrapolate the numbers, but there was no SEO algorithm determining visibilty/search results. You have to keep the algorithms happy in many ways, the biggest one being consistently listings new items, but there are many other "best practices" to keep the algorithms happy.
With 1500 listings, I consistently sell 2-3/day but as mentioned, I still have dry spells. When I get up to 2000 (which I have the inventory on hand, the only issue is time), I expect that to maybe go up 1/2 to 1 per day & I still expect the dry spells. I also have to promote at fairly high rates. I do know of clothing sellers who sell 10+ per day, but their ASP is around $10 (mine is over $40), they have MANY more listings & quality control is not their strong suit. I'd rather have 2 sales a day at my ASP than 8 at $10 a pop. In fact, my goals have centered around increasing my ASP, so I don't have to list as many items. Like someone else said, if I was suddenly selling 15 items a day, I wouldn't be able to keep up with the shipping.
You have sales smarts & it's good that you're thinking in these terms, but until you experience the maintenance & feeding of the algorithm, it's all just theoretical. There are so many variables & depending on what you sell, the variables vary greatly. But it's def smart to think about how much you need to make monthly & what it takes to get there. Most sellers don't start out that way.
@suitmandansellsny wrote:I appreciate the reply! Super good information.
Just to be clear, with the numbers you provided, you're saying it takes almost a year and half for you to sell out of your listed inventory?
IDK, I don't track it that way. As I said, STR is not important to me. I care about high ASP much more than I care about STR. That sounds right-ish, though it's probably longer. I regularly sell items that are 2-5 years old (2 just this week). My oldest items right now are around 5-6 yo, but it's just a handful. That's how clothing is though, it needs to find it's right buyer. 2 years is not an unusual time period for me to sell an item in, but there are a lot of variables & price is definitely one of those. If I turned & burned at $10 a piece, I'm sure I wouldn't have 5 yo items, but I have no interest in that biz model.
ETA: Just a clarification point, I have plenty of items 2+ years or older, but I do not keep them on the site more than 6 mos at a time usually without a relist/sell similar. Like I said, a listing is stagnant at 90 days.
@dietaryconsultant wrote:I watched a couple of good videos awhile ago on youtube on sell thru rate, listing/sales goals. Check out dailyrefinement or lindey glenn.
Not a diss, but dailyrefinement is def a churn n burner, who sells stuff for $10. Which is fine, if that's what you want to do. He also manages his time in fractions of minutes. I'm not willing to do that. Even when I was his age, I wasn't willing to do that. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not the type of seller I want to be. That said, I'm sure he makes a lot mo' money than I do. And Lindey has a B&M store now, doesn't she?
I like both of those sellers, so not dissing them but IMO QC goes out the window at the kinds of numbers that are involved there, since they both sell one-offs.
