ONE OF A KIND SELLERS - What can we do that will help us compete?

[vintageista]

I am basically a OAK seller, do not purchase in bulk, almost never have even 2 of the same item. For quite awhile now eBay has been concentrating on sellers who have multiple NEW items, so that sellers like myself are the dinosaurs of the site!

I do not have the capital, nor the space to store bulk buys. Personally, I find no creativity in selecting wholesale items and attempting to sell lots of the same thing, the first ones may sell well, but when someone jumps in and undercuts you in price, or the next best thing comes along, you will probably eat the rest, at least that has been my experience the few times I have tried it in the past!

Is there anyone here, that may also be an OAK seller found any successful tips they would care to share that can be helpful to other seller's in this position. I've been here a long-time (20 years) and tried to weather all the changes, not doing as well as times past, but surviving. If things get any worse, I can't survive much longer, this is the worse November I have ever had, started about Oct 15 and still happening!

Management at eBay seems to largely favor seller's of NEW & MULTIPLE items at the expense of OAK sellers, everything in their algorithms is set up to favor that kind of seller, are there any ways we can gain even a tiny advantage in this environment?

[gramophone-georg]

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@coolections wrote:

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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Happened to me again tonight... searching for a part for a customer's Porsche 911S and eBay search kept showing me unrelated things... like multiple listings of Chinese seat covers when I'm looking for a completely different part.

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@gramophone-georg

We can help you find it if you would like to disclose what the item is. If not just use the tools Ebay gives you to narrow it down. Most of it is on the left side of the screen when searching.

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Thanks for the kind offer. Found it already using Google. eBay's tools to narrow it down waste too much time. Unfortunately most other casual buyers who wander in to buy something likely leave never to return. They're looking to buy rather than learn how to operate AI that mostly lacks the I.

[goodluckselling]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

We can help you find it if you would like to disclose what the item is. If not just use the tools Ebay gives you to narrow it down. Most of it is on the left side of the screen when searching.

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Thanks for the kind offer. Found it already using Google. eBay's tools to narrow it down waste too much time. Unfortunately most other casual buyers who wander in to buy something likely leave never to return. They're looking to buy rather than learn how to operate AI that mostly lacks the I.

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Yet eBay completes more than One Billion transactions daily worldwide and more than 95 Million active users.  Click here to read the article

Good Luck Selling!

[coolections]

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@goodluckselling wrote:

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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eBay's tools to narrow it down waste too much time. Unfortunately most other casual buyers who wander in to buy something likely leave never to return.

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Yet eBay completes more than One Billion transactions daily worldwide and more than 95 Million active users.  Click here to read the article

Good Luck Selling!

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I doubt very many leave because of Ebay's search. The few who do leave that are that impatient it's probably best. Sellers would not want to deal with those folks as they are most likely problem buyers.

[robot-hands]

If you are not selling enough or making enough to cover the expense of storage...just stick to smalls.

Get more picky about what you source. I try not to source anything I can't get at least $10 out for every $1 in.

As you get better and better your ROI will improve and improve and you can either stick with smalls or start branching out.

Over the last 15 years I have slowly and methodically increased my product lines, reduced waste, increased my ROI per $ overall and increased my sales numbers and $ daily total. 

There simply in no way to do ebay fast because you won't earn the knowledge to enable you to keep doing it.

It'd sure be great if the regular cranks would stop poisoning threads and actually help someone.

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

PowerBuyer here and totally agree on the search. it's borked. There is no intelligence in randomly narrowing categories and not telling buyers. There is no intelligence in only showing some items and not showing others that totally match the search terms.

The reality is that most Ebay sales are likely commodity items in bloated categories. You could be a five year old and find an iPhone case (although it could be counterfeit). It's the rare vintage floral tablecloth in the thousands of average floral vintage tablecloths that are hard to find.

If search is so great why do we now have so many cancelled orders and so many buyers who come here to complain that Ebay didnt' show them the better options until after they checked out?

Anyone who says Ebay's search system is functional cannot possibly buy much here.

[fern*wood]

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@everything-from-trinkets-to-treasures wrote:

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@vintageista wrote:

I am basically a OAK seller, do not purchase in bulk, almost never have even 2 of the same item. For quite awhile now eBay has been concentrating on sellers who have multiple NEW items, so that sellers like myself are the dinosaurs of the site!

I do not have the capital, nor the space to store bulk buys. Personally, I find no creativity in selecting wholesale items and attempting to sell lots of the same thing, the first ones may sell well, but when someone jumps in and undercuts you in price, or the next best thing comes along, you will probably eat the rest, at least that has been my experience the few times I have tried it in the past!

Is there anyone here, that may also be an OAK seller found any successful tips they would care to share that can be helpful to other seller's in this position. I've been here a long-time (20 years) and tried to weather all the changes, not doing as well as times past, but surviving. If things get any worse, I can't survive much longer, this is the worse November I have ever had, started about Oct 15 and still happening!

Management at eBay seems to largely favor seller's of NEW & MULTIPLE items at the expense of OAK sellers, everything in their algorithms is set up to favor that kind of seller, are there any ways we can gain even a tiny advantage in this environment?

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If you are selling ONE OF A KIND who are you competing against?? One of a kind usually only means there is one and no others....no competition for that item...which means if there is a buyer for it they would and could only buy yours

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The verbiage was called out and corrected in post one.  I hope any poster that complains that buyers are the ones always harassed on this board read this thread.  This seller was repeatedly chastised over their incorrect use of a word/phase, even after it was easily clarified.   This is an equal opportunity bashing board.

[coolections]

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@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:

Anyone who says Ebay's search system is functional cannot possibly buy much here. 

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I disagree because I buy plenty on Ebay.  I suppose that is why Ebay search is so easy for me. I just searched vintage floral tablecloths and Oh' my, thousands to choose from.

[mybuyingside]

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@goodluckselling wrote:

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

We can help you find it if you would like to disclose what the item is. If not just use the tools Ebay gives you to narrow it down. Most of it is on the left side of the screen when searching.

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Thanks for the kind offer. Found it already using Google. eBay's tools to narrow it down waste too much time. Unfortunately most other casual buyers who wander in to buy something likely leave never to return. They're looking to buy rather than learn how to operate AI that mostly lacks the I.

---

Yet eBay completes more than One Billion transactions daily worldwide and more than 95 Million active users.  Click here to read the article

Good Luck Selling!

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@goodluckselling,

We've covered this article and your misunderstanding of it before, yet you are misquoting it again.

eBay DOES NOT complete a billion *sales* transactions a day.   That would be 365 billion transactions a year, and yet the GMV for the whole site is less than $18B a year.  How many cents per sale would that be?  Also, there are something like 1.4B listings on the site.  If a billion of them were selling every day, we would be over the moon, not complaining of slow sales.

Please go reread the article and this time understand that they are talking to data center people about *computer* "transactions" NOT sales transactions.

[pauyo_43]

Anyone wonder why the OP isn't on this thread anymore?

[coolections]

@fern*wood

Posters just let the OP know that her items are not one of a kind as her title suggested. Maybe she did not intend it to read that way but people are taking to way too serious. She'll be back with another no sales topic later.

[fern*wood]

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@coolections wrote:

@fern*wood

Posters just let the OP know that her items are not one of a kind as her title suggested. Maybe she did not intend it to read that way but people are taking to way too serious. She'll be back with another no sales topic later.

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Actually her title reads "one of a kind seller" and aren't we all that in reality...

Nice little touche' in the end there too.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

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@coolections wrote:

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@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:

Anyone who says Ebay's search system is functional cannot possibly buy much here. 

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I disagree because I buy plenty on Ebay.  I suppose that is why Ebay search is so easy for me. I just searched vintage floral tablecloths and Oh' my, thousands to choose from.

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I believe that's exactly what dog said.

[castlemagicmemories]

I think one of sellers have excellent opportunities here, IMO because they provide the unique and interesting, maybe hard to find or get, items.  But that may not work well for clothing sellers due to so much competition.  Perhaps checking prices for what items are being sold for would help, running sales and mark downs periodically, changing up titles and pictures, listing something new every day, would all work to the OP's advantage.

I have read about clothing sellers diversifying and putting effort into following vloggers and generally putting more and different efforts into what they were doing~staying abreast of trends and what is selling and what is not, moving stale inventory out,  and they have increased their business significantly so it can be done.  

[jewelbiz]

OP has more than 16,000 positive feedback and has been here on eBay since 1998.

She asked a question she obviously knows the answer to better than 99.99% of us!

[abfabvintage]

Dear Vintageista: I have commented on your posts here before.  I have you as one of my Best/Saved sellers for ages. You have wonderful items, great pictures, good titles, and have been doing this a long time. I, too, lost my eBay seller mentor many years ago and have found "sometimes" coming to this Forum for ideas and help in the past was helpful, but that was back when. Please do not get discouraged and continue your long voyage through ebay if you can.