@reelworks wrote:
The waterways here are mostly devoid of boats this year, I was out twice this week to test used motors and after two four hour runs on the normally busy river I only passed two boats, one was a police patrol boat, the other a work boat from one of the marinas down stream. Mine was the only truck in the parking lot at the ramp. Traffic here is probably about a third of what it was pre-covid. Stores are empty as well for some reason. Even supermarkets seem pretty empty lately. Last night the largest supermarket in town had one register open and no wait to checkout.
I never saw that on a Friday after work until the last few months.
I see dozens of Amazon trucks running up and down the street all day. I had four here all at one time just yesterday.
It is a literal zoo here, just east of Dallas. The amount of people moving to Texas is ridiculous. Expansion is in all directions.
Not here, the stores, dealers, waterways and even normally packed flea markets are dead. Every time I go shopping I can't believe where all the people went. This has always been a rather busy area, I've never seen it like this before. Even the supermarkets are devoid of people lately. (and devoid of product as well)
Paying for extra ad features seems senseless at this point, with 250 items on each account, and nothing selling at all, if every item accrued $1.99 or more in listing fees and it only gets one or two items to sell, then its still a loss. We never paid for any extra ads or features over the past 20 years or so, and things sold just fine.
I agree, paying $1.99 upfront without a sale is the way of Amazon. I don’t go that route. OOAK items don’t need to be promoted. Items where you only have a couple of competitors don’t need to be promoted. Item specifics and item presentation are key. Once these OOAK items are cashed in google and other search engines, buyers will find them if they need them. Item caching takes about 3 weeks to 45 days.
I run sales, 5% off across the board just to shake things up with the listings. Try regular promoted listings at 1% or 1.1%. I do that. eBay can have that 1% for creating a 2nd listing within the search results.
The items we're listing are vintage or collectible, only a small fraction of them are new inventory, but its always been the vintage items that kept this going. The new items can be bought anywhere. The top quality American made items are what buyers were after. I'd venture to guess that anyone buying or looking is finding items by a simple search, not browsing through highlighted ads or promotions.
What concerns me is how if I put an item up, often an item that's very obscure due to age, and suddenly there's a half dozen more listed just like it for almost nothing. No matter what it is, and its always stupid cheap. But when we try to buy up those items they can' t be bought, either the item is no longer available, or the sale goes through and its refunded almost instantly with the item and buyer being completely gone?
CL is dead too, not even scammers or phishing emails lately. I've got friends who usually sell a ton of things on CL all the time, mostly mowers, tractors, and furniture but all say they've had zero sales there all year.
I've personally listed dozens of bicycles and nothing has sold lately regardless of price. Last year I sold 30 bikes there. Shipping cost keeps me away from selling larger items on eBay. The bottom line is that the shipping charge will always reduce what you get out of any item. Higher shipping charges also means you have to raise the price even further since eBay will also be taking FVFs out of the shipping as well.
FVF’s on shipping are the least of our worries. I don’t list heavy items on eBay that are not highly profitable. I don’t mess with CL as I don’t have the desire to be in that close of contact with buyers. I can see your need to list on CL.
This weekend, personally, I had 300 items listed on CL, all items too big to ship, all items that normally do well here. (Bicycles, mowers, tractors, outboards, boats, etc.) But this year there's no buyers, not a one at any price and the few emails I do get turn into no shows. I had 14 enthusiastic buyers this weekend, each one called, said they were interested and never showed when they said they were coming. While flakes are normal on CL its been nothing but for three months now.
FB is completely dead, never once have I had a legit message or buyer there in 3 years. Nothing but scammers and hundreds of unrelated questions that don't make any sense.
Back in the day ebay was a great place to make money, but in recent years I do think its taken a major turn for the worse. The added fees, screwed up searches, and lack of traffic and sales now have made it pretty much a waste of time.
I think ebay has lost too many of the more serious buyers and collectors lately.
eBay is still viable. Granted, sales across the board are off on a lot of venues unless you are selling hot items. Needs, not wants.
Its only viable if it works or makes money. The four accounts I manage at work are to be closed in 30 days, they refuse to pay people to list items that just sit. It would be cheaper to haul them to the dump than to pay four of us to keep listing items online that suddenly stopped selling. Worse yet, the last and only bids we got back in April were all non paying bidders, each one bid, won, then immediately sent emails saying they either can't or won't pay. The sales were canceled, the items relisted, and now I see each of those 'bidders' are 'no longer a registered user'. I spoke to a few others who work here and they had the same thing happen with their accounts.
Auctions also sell better than Fixed price items, using only the period since managed payments began as an example, I sold three fixed price items, all the rest were all auction items.
It seems that fixed price items never get found, they don't get any watchers and no looks. The policy at work was to do 50/50, that way those bidding on auction items would often look at the other items list.
With no auction items, the fixed price items never saw any looks at all. We would move slower moving items to a fixed price listing and let it sit. If its a no sale after 6 months it got tossed or put on a different format, or listed as a lot of other items. None of which seems to work now.
I don't do any auctions, have not for a long time, like 5 years. I have noticed that your business model contains a LOT of policies. I like regimented. That is great but they are not working for you at this time and have not been for awhile.
Again, Points being, Free Returns and Same Day or 1 Day handling might help with the algorithms, Buyers are impatient more than ever before, handling time is critical for competitive items and parts. The first thing I look at when ordering a part is the lead time. Did that yesterday with a eBay purchase of a 4K-Display Port to HDMI cable.
Perhaps promote at 1% or 1.1%. Run some sales at 5%. Shake things up somehow
We tried doing 'sales' at 5% and 15% but it did nothing. The last was to cut all prices in half to liquidate everything but it did nothing, items that sell new for $2k listed at $400, items that listed for $10 selling for $3 and no takers.
This is boating, fishing, and motorcycle season, these are the main categories they deal with and have for two decades, now suddenly what they do is all wrong?
As a buyer, I did a few searches on a personal laptop. In searching for similar items, with many sellers, I find it hard to locate items by sellers who are listing solely BIN sales if I'm browsing a category. The BIN items only come onto the first page right before they expire every 30 days, mixed in with hundreds of Chinese items, unrelated items that shouldn't even show up, and a handful of ending soon items being sold auction style.
If I never see any of a seller's items, I never get the chance to click on 'Other items for sale by this seller' and I never know that seller exists.
We tried doing all BIN and got a sudden rash of emails from regular buyers who asked if we had stopped listing or closed up. My guess was that many sat and just browsed the vintage categories for potential buys. In the past, up to about a year ago, most buyers would buy multiple items, which often got them big savings in shipping. That stopped happening around March of 2021. Suddenly the regulars were mostly gone, many no longer even still listed on eBay. The remaining bidders who took their place seem to have been short lived. I've never seen so many former buyers listed as 'no longer a registered user' before.
Feedback also all but stopped about a year ago, before that feedback was at around 75%, now its rare to see a comment left.
The thing that bothers me most is when we list an item, often something that's on the heavy side, that will take $15 to ship coast to coast, and suddenly there's four more listed right after you list one, for $8 BIN with free shipping. They can't ship it for that much even if they got it for free. At work we have wholesale accounts and can ship through all normal channels at a discount, but we can't sell an item for less than it costs to ship. It would be cheaper to just crush it and scrap it.
I keep reading in other posts here from others with the same issues, a few have commented on lowering prices, a few have said the "Losses are part of retail". NO, losses lead to bankruptcy.
No business can sell for less than it costs to ship and item listed with free shipping and stay in business.
Shipping has gone up, shipping costs have more than doubled over the past 5 years, especially for larger items. For the most part we avoid larger items but do list a few on occasion but they rarely sell, most likely due to shipping costs but lately its hard to tell because nothing is selling.
Funny you mentioned display cables, I just bought one for here too, how an American seller can sell a new 6ft cable for $1.63 with free shipping is beyond me. The package label showed $4.shipping when it arrived. They had 400 available when I ordered, and zero left eleven minutes later. This was from a US seller in MI.
The cable which was listed as 'pre-owned' arrived still sealed in its original packaging, brand new with tags in a 1lb 3 oz , 6x8"x 3" thick bubble wrap envelope via USPS parcel post. I don't see how any company can sustain shipping 400 items like that at an obvious loss?
The cheapest I could ship the same item is $8.65, its too heavy for 1st class mail, and the next cheapest is a flat rate envelope. none of which would make selling it at $1.63 a possibility of anything but a huge loss.
The seller is a small American company that I've dealt with before, they've always been cheap but not like this. More so, selling a bunch of cables for cheap like that isn't going to promote larger sales, I was only looking for a cable and the person who is capable of searching out the very cheapest option will do the very same for every item they buy, so price leader type products do nothing to promote larger sales.
To be honest, I was expecting either a long wait from China or a canceled transaction but it arrived in 2 days.
I really don't see how they can do it? If I did sales like that I'd go broke. So would the company I work for. With most profit margins at 10-20% across the board these days on new items, price leader sales and big discounts just kill profits and make it all a big waste of time. 20 years ago profit margins were 100% or more, that's dwindled down to the bare minimum and volume is the only way to stay afloat, but that's gone now too.
