Best Listing Methods For Smaller Sellers, Slap It All Up Or Trickle It In
What does everybody use for listing strategy, slap it all up on the day you get the items or trickle it in. I used to just slam them up. However with more competition im looking for the best angle of attack. To change things up i currently i have scheduled listings set to list 2 per day in the morning around 7 am and 9 am everyday, as long as i have product of course.
30 comments
christworks
·1 year agoGood topic.
For context, I care for an elderly parent (and everything that comes with that) and help my sister a couple of days a week. She has a lung disease and we've been waiting to get on the transplant list, now we are going in another direction. With all of this going on, there are days that I am unable to follow my schedule.
Generally, I list 8 to 12 items every day. If mom is having a bad day or there are a lot of household things I need to get done, then I may not list but a few items. Sometimes I don't list for a day or two if there is a lot going on. I am consistent about ending and relisting/sell similar every day. While those listings may not go "stale" for 90 days, I have it far better end and relist, then allow eBay to renew. There is no sense in wasting free listings, and if you let eBay renew, you eat up a free listing and don't get the benefit of the search boost that comes with listing a "new" item. I've also found that while listings that are ended and relisted may not be the ones that move, but something else older will end up moving. Of course, all of this is antidotal. There is no way to prove whether these specific actions help boost sales because there are so many factors beyond the control of a seller that does have an impact. I do agree reviewing older listings from time to time is a good strategy. Sometimes you will find you made a mistake, maybe listed it in the wrong category, photos are wrong, or you are missing keywords in your title. Sometimes the market changes, and you need to adjust your price.
The big picture for me is to be doing something with your selling account. It isn't brain science. It is in eBay's interest to promote sellers who are engaged with their business. The reason is that eBay wants buyers to have a great experience - so they will come back. eBay's business model depends on repeat buyers. It doesn't matter to them whether they buy from you or me, as long as they are buying here and not over there, if you know what I mean. Engaged sellers are more likely to follow through on what they are supposed to do. Things like ship the right item, pack it well, and ship it on-time.
Engaged sellers are also motivated...to make money. eBay loves sellers who want to make money. Monday is the language of business. You don't have to be a big dog. They are happy for you to take a small part of the pie. Just be consistent and be engaged with the items you sell. Respond to offers. Send out offers. Respond to customer messages. Be proactive and send messages to buyers when needed. Don't cancel orders!!! One of the things that has flabbergasted me since I started posting here more are the number of sellers who cancel orders, often for the stupidest reason. When you cancel an order without the buyer asking (and no, telling them you don't have the item they bought and asking them if they want to cancel does not count), you are giving that buyer a bad experience right out of the gate - and have nothing to show for it. Not only did you lose the sale, eBay also lost the sale.
I do believe listing regularly helps. I don't think it necessarily has to be every day. From the A/B testing I've done, there seems to be a tolerance of about 2-days built into the algorithm. In other words, if I list for five days, then miss a day, then list a few more days, I don't go a day without a sale. If, however, I don't list for 3 days or more, I'm probably going to see my sales drop off. It doesn't mean there won't be any, but there won't be as many as normal. Of course, if all you list is junk nobody wants, that's a whole other ball of wax.
As far as how much time lapses between buying and listing, it depends. Because I do most of my sourcing from yard sales and estate sales, there are times when I source very little. Right now there are not a lot of estate sales, because the companies here don't normally run them in the middle of the summer when people are traveling. The hot weather has kept many from having yard sales. In the winter, it is cold, sometimes snowy, plus we have the holidays. Combined I have about 4 months or so out of the year when my sourcing is limited to thrift stores and our bin store. I still buy things, but nearly at the amount I need to keep my store growing and fully stocked. In my buying seasons, I always put things back. I keep about 5 to 6 months worth of inventory on hand so I always have things, even when I am not buying. Right now I have around 1,200 items put up, and another 100-150 or so personal items I can fall back on, if needed. I know it is a lot, but right now I am doing very little sourcing, though that will pick up after Labor Day. I'll have September to early November to source, then I'll fall back on my backlog for the winter. By the time I get back around to yard sale season, I won't have much in back stock. I take full advantage when I'm at a big estate sale and there are cheap prices. I have filled up 5 IKEA bags and went back the next day with 5 more.
selsa84
·1 year agoDepends on value. If it's items that I plan to sell for 150 or more I trickle a few on each evening. If it's lower like 20 to 50 I'll throw it all on spaced out throughout the day.
gloryglorygifts
·1 year agoI actually do both. When I joined this community 8 or so years ago I read a post that said that you should work on your listings every day to be seen so that's what I started to do. Some days I add a few and others I'll be adding a bunch in a category. I do notice that the ones listed in bunches get immediate followers, which is probably the competition, but I've also seen a bump in sales too. So, I think that both work depending on what you sell. I'm one that believes that working on it daily does increase visibility. (I'll also send offers out to customers, change up pictures and descriptions too.) I'm a full time e=tailer, but ebay is only part time and only my responsibility. My website is handled by others and WAY less work than this site as far as maintenance is concerned.
mr_lincoln
·1 year agoHi @americantrucksource
You have sold 159 items in the last 90 days. Is that typical for what you sell? Your account has been around since 2003, have you been selling that entire time?
For myself I have kept track of the number of sales and total dollar amount for each month in every year that I have sold. I celebrate the completion of 10 years next month. I know my best selling months and worst selling months.
As to trickle or slam dunk it may depend on category too. For example, most of my sales are on weekends because I sell a lot auction style ending on weekends. For auto parts - Buyers may plan to do the parts install work on weekends and want to purchase early in the week so they have the part in time to do the work. You might find that the slam dunk approach works great Monday and Tuesday and maybe Wednesday but Thurs thru Sunday gets less action.
If you trickle list you might benefit from keeping track of impressions and general activity over a long period of time to see if it is affective and increases your sales.
gator08041971
·1 year agoAs a low volume smaller seller, I tend to keep my listings to around 50-60 active at a time, especially this time of year.
During the winter I ramp the number of listings higher when I have time. But that's what I'm doing. I'm not selling as a main gig though. Its more of a supplemental part-time thing, though I have been busier this past year than the previous few which is good. I sell stuff every week, get deposits every week, so not minding it.
But everyone is different.
reallynicestamps
·1 year agoI'm of the trickle school, but I have enough listings now in my Store constantly renewing that there is something "About to Close" or "Newly Listed" every day.
I do all my scans immediately and leave them on my desktop as a silent nag to get them Described and uploaded.
I've never paid for timed uploads since I sell internationally and even just in North America there are eight time zones. --Newfoundland to Hawai'i.
gurlcat
·1 year agoNot to try to change your mind or anything, but if you're talking about scheduled listings, it's free now. Apparently it has been for "a while" but I just learned it a couple weeks ago.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year ago@americantrucksource
Looks to me that you are selling parts for vehicles that are 20 years old or older.
It is unlikely that many people will be looking for one of those parts on any given day,
If you miss someone who wants the part, you may have to wait weeks or months before someone else wants to buy the same part.
This buyer is likely to do a refined search which is not going to get a large number of matches. And Ebay is unlikely to keep the buyer from finding your listing.
It is in your interest to get these items listed as quickly as possible. Having it available when there is a buyer overrides the varied folklore of how Ebay decides what to display, we all choose which of the stories we believe and no one can make a convincing enough case as to what the facts are.
inhawaii
·1 year agoPart time seller here.
I have a full time job.
I have literally 100 items that I still need to list.
I'm comfortable having about 300 active listings.
It gives me a few sales a day.
I list when I get the energy to do so, usually few items a week.
mam98031
·1 year ago@americantrucksource
These are GREAT questions and so darn useful. Thank you for starting this conversation.
For myself I try hard to make sure my Titles are structured in a way to be easily read and full of information. I never [or rarely] have more than 3 words in the title in all Caps. I try to start my titles with the most important words. I think like a buyer and have words in the title that the buyer might search by with as little wasted space in the title as possible on words that don't matter.
While I don't think it is still an issue, there was a time that Google search did not like titles with more than 3 words in all caps or duplicate words. So since I'm old school I still run with that because a large portion of our traffic comes to us via Google.
I also use the ISBs [item specific boxes] to my advantage. The Ebay search engine searches the titles and the ISBs, so I can add more information that might be searched for by the buyer. I add my own boxes as needed, depending on what I'm selling.
Pictures are very important too. Clean and crisp pictures. And this does affect the search returns as the search engine likes those clean and crisp pics too.
I review my listings that qualify for offers to be sent on a regular basis. Of course I get mixed results, but I do turn enough of them into sales that it makes it worth it. I also do not give some huge discount to get the sale. They are all reasonable so that I still profit from them unless it is just something I really want to just get rid of.
A steady flow of new listings is a positive thing to do. I have an issue with that just because I don't bring in new inventory but every couple of months or so. But I do this as much as I can.
I will also run a Markdown sale every couple of months with 10 to 15% off of select items. I never do all of my items.
To get my listings to re-index, which can help items sell too, I use the Bulk Editor to change something on all my listings. I typically use my handling time for this update. Moving them back and forth between 1 and 2 days. It takes about 24 hours for all them to re-index.
This process does NOT cause them to appear as new listings, but just as revised which does raise them in the search returns. For sellers that think they need to end listings to repost them helps instead of just letting them roll over and relist on their own [GTC listing, good til cancelled]. That can be costly. Especially if you have sales on one of those listings. You lose all that history which is a boost in the search returns.
Besides many sellers don't understand the difference between Relist and Sell Similar. There is a distinct difference. To relist just takes the old listing and post it exactly as it was originally created. Meaning if it was a fixed price listing with a quantity of 5 and you sold 2 of them. The relisted listing will list as a quantity of FIVE. So be careful with that.
A Sell Similar creates a new listing from some other listing you have. You can tweak it and change what you need to and then post it.
Hopefully someone finds at least some of this info helpful to them. I'm sure I forgot something, but it is a good start.
meme6253
·1 year agoI find it best to list something daily & more than just two.
gurlcat
·1 year agoI agree with the 'trickle' strategy, especially if you intend to do systematic end/sell similar on old listings (whatever you consider old; allegedly eBay considers 30 days old but of course that isn't officially stated anywhere). I try to keep it around 5 per day. Sometimes I forget and then it's a real slog to play catch up.
chapeau-noir
·1 year ago90 days and it's considered 'stale', stated in one of their webinars, though there are caveats to this - it would not apply to multi quantity listings, for instance.
30 days is just enough to get the URL in general search as it takes anywhere up to 30 days for web crawling (surprisingly).
mam98031
·1 year agoI can see where that 90 day rule of thumb could work on certain items and not on others. For me that wouldn't work but again for others it may be a good idea.
For me, I've sold countless things I've had on the site for a year or more. Sometimes I really get lucky and for some reason one of the patterns I carry that hasn't moved for awhile goes viral or something and then the patterns fly off the shelves from all sites I sell on.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoObviously, it can't cover everything, but that's the general parameter the talking heads on the podcast gave.
gurlcat
·1 year agoHuh? This necklace I listed 2 days ago (actual new listing, not a relist or end/SS) is showing near the top of general search results, not as a sponsored listing, with just the search term 'erickson beamon necklace,' and this is with me logged out.
chapeau-noir
·1 year ago30 days is just enough to get the URL in general search as it takes anywhere up to 30 days for web crawling (surprisingly). This means one day, or it can mean 10 days, etc. It depends on a number of different factors (site indexing, is Google going through one of its agonising core updates, etc.).
gurlcat
·1 year agoWeird, I don't know what you mean by "web crawling" but I've never had trouble finding my items in search results immediately (or just about). I just ended/SS'd this one, and it took 2 minutes to show up in search. 10th from the top of 'laurel burch earrings' with Best Match sorting.
gator08041971
·1 year ago@gurlcat
I think they were referring to world web searches, like Google. Yes, your eBay listings can eventually show up on web searches. Without using promotions. But that can take a lot longer to propagate across the search engines and web. And even longer to go away if ever.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoYes - it's one of the reasons eBay went to GTC because broken URLs on web searches were a problem - the listing would end before its URL was indexed, leading to frustrating search results, but difficult to say exactly when the index happened so 30 days is good.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoSlapping, slamming...good grief - at least no one is 'throwing up' listings.
Looking at my metrics on the old Omniture, I found that about 45% of my buyers visited my store every 1-3 days, and another percentage once a week. Our stats are nowhere near as good as they were with Omniture, but that told me that I should be keeping up new listings on a near daily basis - it can be 10 listings one day and 2 the next, but @pls-consignments is correct, most search engines reward consistency and engagement.
pls-consignments
·1 year agoI'm a firm believer that the current algorithm rewards seller effort (CONSISTENT, DAILY ACTIVITY) as it results in both sales and ad revenue for eBay, even if it's just a few listings or tweeks each time. To me, it's similar to driving by a small, family-owned B&M store that's closed when others are open, or randomly closes at odd times. It's not worth the effort to try and be there when or if it's open.
redlinear
·1 year agoFor unrelated items, trickle (submit as you go).
For related items it depends on what's out there already in the way of competition AND just how much related ya gots.
dhbookds
·1 year agoAgree with the trickle theory......but also agree ...if it ain't listed it can't sell.....
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoI have no proof of this, but we have been trying to make sure something is listed every day for a while, and since we only work in the warehouse M-F, we've been accomplishing that by just scheduling some listings to start on the weekends. That used to be a paid feature and I wouldn't have recommended it now, but it's free (at least most of the time?) now and I can't absolutely confirm it helps, but I think it does based on our sales. There's a lot of other factors that are driving our sales higher, but I did notice a small but noticeable increase in at least our sales over the weekend when we started doing that.
cityslickercreations2004
·1 year ago(For context: I purchase cosmetics by the box which can be 50- 300 pieces.)
I know there are sellers that believe listing daily helps the algorithm see your listings.
My experience has been listing new items seems to help my sales but I can not prove it.
Frankly, I subscribe to the mind set of "if it ain't listed, it ain't selling."
However, I do check my seller hub for listings that are getting ready to renew.
I use that opportunity to update those listings.
a_c_green
·1 year agoJust my $.02... I have always thought that a steady flow of new listings was better for visibility than to list many things simultaneously and then go days with no further activity.
soh.maryl
·1 year agoWould've gone for the "slap it all up" plan, because if it isn't listed, it won't sell; however, I see the point of your method also.
And, in the end, does it really make a lot of difference. Haven't sold for many years, just wondering.
a_c_green
·1 year agoOne other point I haven't seen mentioned yet (though I cannot swear that it's still in effect) was that if you were a Saved Seller on other buyers' lists, they would get an email whenever you had new listings up.
I don't think eBay sent out those notifications on a daily basis, and in a quick look just now I could not find any past examples in my email (couldn't think of any exact phrases to search for), but I remember seeing those in the past, and every now and then they would have useful info. (My only complaint back then was that those alerts still ran a day late, and sometimes I'd follow a link just to find out that the darn thing sold yesterday, shortly after it went up.)
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoThey must, because we have several regular customers who buy things (or message us with offers, which we never accept because we let things ride a few months before accepting offers) right away after they're listed. And the items are not consistent enough to think that we're just matching saved searches they've set up. I can only assume they're seeing a lot of notifications of things we've listed. I guess they could just be regularly checking our store, but the timing makes me suspect that's unlikely.