How do I compete with sellers who aren't afraid to lose money? (Rhetorical question)
I expect people to produce counterfeit copies of valuable items and sell them for a profit. I don't like it, but I understand it. What I never expected to have to compete with on Ebay is Goodwill's garbage can. I can't figure out how thrift stores, corporate & "mom & pop", can afford to peddle $2 junk on here & eat the $3.92 per item it costs to ship it via media mail. The vast majority of this stuff I don't care about because I would never try selling it online anyway. It's too common & virtually worthless. Problem is they are dumping HUGE quantities of it on the market & effectively pushing ALL online media prices into the toilet. This seems entirely limited to MEDIA items, particularly DVD & Blu-Ray movies. This does not totally wreck the hard media market, it has the ultimate effect of slowing it to a crawl. Not only are these sellers losing money on every transaction, I am certain they are enduring substantial returns since they are definitely not checking or cleaning this junk before blowing it out the door. And I know they are getting vicious feedbacks because I've read a lot of them & they are often hilarious in their naivete. This is even more confusing considering stores like Goodwill's brick & mortar stores are RAISING the prices of DVDs & even VHS TAPES!! inside their physical stores. In many cases they are now selling media for higher prices in their physical locations than in their EBAY STORES!! WHERE THEY HAVE TO SHIP & PAY FEES!!! I know it seems a little silly, but it seems like they are more interested in suppressing prices & preventing OTHERS from making a profit than generating a profit themselves. But, once again, this practice is strictly limited to the MEDIA business. I'm no economist, but it seems like they should be doing things completely opposite of what they are now. In every other category other than media, they are primarily selling their PREMIUM donated items online & making the buyer pay the shipping costs. That makes financial sense of course. In the media domain, however, they seem to be emptying their dumpster on here AND absorbing the ever-increasing shipping costs just for the fun of it. Perhaps there's a way to profit selling an item for $2.68 w/ free shipping & then paying $3.92 to ship it, but I just can't make the math work. If I could, I guess I would be doing better. It feels like the world just wants me to throw in the towel & get a job. Maybe I will have to surrender & give it what it wants.
krazzykats
·2 years agoTry volume pricing. Buy 2 DVDs get 25% off, Buy 3 get 30% etc...
onefootflipper
·2 years agoThe impossible to beat on price sellers are also doing that.
We are talking about a category that has continually seen a huge year over year drop in total sales volume. Drop is actually worse since a large part of that sales volume is shipping cost and media mail went up this year.
Terapeak "DVD" in the DVD blu ray category, Sold 110 million dollars last 365 days. Sold 165 million dollars the 365 days before that. Sold $210 million the 365 days before that.
Entire sales category dropped by 50 percent in 2 years. And it is never coming back.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoReal businesses have to face costs of disposing of their unsold merchandise.
Some times it is cheaper to take a loss on Ebay than pay for disposal.
I have some DVDs and CDs which I listed which I would not list today, but as long as I have available listings in my store which I do not need, I will keep up.
I know they are effectively worthless. I would not consider buying any more.
I mentioned it before. My wife brings home DVDs from the local library. I refuse to get off my butt to put them in the player. I find where they are being streamed and we watch them online. I do not have to get off my butt. Probably could use the exercise, Some of you know how things are between old married couples. She does what she wants, I do what I want and some how we avoid major conflict.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoThe longer I have been full time the more I have drifted away from media and video games. The majority of items in both categories have prices that are constantly drifting downwards and the competition to source video games is insane.
Just get out of these dying categories now. Stop looking for them, start looking at other stuff. Sure if a great video game lot falls into your lap then take it. I would just ignore the DVDs completely though.
To those that suggest things like promotions or sales or other strategies will help sell these items the real truth is that media sells pretty much 100 percent based on price. There is no "premium" DVD buyer out there looking to pay up for Quigley Down Under from a "better" seller. If you search solds on pretty much any media you will see that the solds are always clustered at or below the current cheapest one on the site, with very few exceptions. Price a DVD $1 too high and it will never, ever sell, and why would it as there are likely 100 of them available between that one sitting at cheapest and yours at $1 higher than that.
As for price wars, some of the big guys are indeed using software to automatically adjust their prices to be the best.
As a smalltime or 1 person operation media is one of the single worst things you can specialize in. Your competition is playing by a completely different set of rules. They likely get their inventory for free, their labor may be near free because they might be receiving government money just for employing the people that they employ. They pay less ebay fees if they are a charity, they pay lower media mail shipping if they have a presort account. They are being paid to include advertisement inserts that are illegal under media mail rules but they are never held accountable for it because they are charities.
Now combine all of that with the fact that the amount of media available "in the system" continually goes up every year, while the amount of it sold continually goes down every year.
Go ask everyone you know how many DVDs they bought this year. I bet the most common answer is going to be zero.
stainlessenginecovers
·2 years agoTo answer the question:
You don't.
Good thing is, many don't know how to search for 'cheaper' so just keep doing what you do.
dhbookds
·2 years agoTo me........your sell thru rate looks good..........422 items in 90 days.........presently you have 335 listed, so I would guess the free shipping and/or acquisition price is what hurts........ that many sales to me means that many of your prices do compete and as such I might try a small shipping fee and see if sales hold up.....or raise your price $1 or 2........or charge full shipping with a discount for 3 or more......... in other words, experiment a bit and see if you can't get more $, even if a bit less volume........
cardsforauction
·2 years agoI just looked at some of your items, and I think if you want to compete you will have to lower prices. Maybe offer a 20% sale off the regular price promotion? Just a thought. You can compete, but it's tricky like you mentioned. Maybe offer the items in lots so the shipping is better. You won't be able to compete with $2 junk offers but you maybe can get a few sales if you get a good following of buyers. You could create an online personality for example "Crazy Mike's DVDs" or something like that, create graphics / logos or some cool website. If your unhappy on eBay you could sell direct from your website or both. So many things you can try. eBay is a good place to sell when the market is good. Good luck!
yuzuha
·2 years agoThe simple fact is that DVDs have been MASSIVELY overproduced, and with the advent of streaming services there are fewer reasons than ever to want to buy a physical DVD.
My local thrift store has massive tubs of DVDs for 10 cents each. Whenever I go there, the tubs are always full because there are more DVDs than there are people who want to buy them, even when priced at only 10 cents.
capricornmedia
OP2 years agoI completely agree. That's exactly my point. Even with a massive shipping discount (which I'm sure most of these sellers don't have), it is not financially sane to sell this overproduced, largely unwanted, common junk online. If they can't get rid of it for a dime in a physical store, why in the world would they post it online? Some pawn shops will still give you a quarter. That should be infinitely preferable to losing a few bucks on every item. I wouldn't sell stuff this cheap online even if i could ship it for FREE myself. It still takes time & labor to list it, ship it etc. And that's if everything goes well.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·2 years agoSpot on...
It's also important to note that Goodwill stores are regional hence why you see different names upon them, "Goodwill of Philadelphia" etc. Whilst the operate under the Goodwill charter they also operate independent thereof unlike say The Salvation Army. For example where I am its Goodwill AVBI as not only do they have money go to the charter but they also locally work with folks with vision problems helping them towards employment which is the national charter.
Indeed streaming services have vastly impacted DVD / Blu-Ray sales and that trend will continue. I know for example large broadband providers and satellite TV providers are all moving towards stream services directly. There will literally be libraries of tens of thousands of movies and shows available with Basic provider subscription free to watch with commercials within 2-3 years time max, might be much sooner. Roku is resulting in broadband providers unable to retain normal TV services, people just want the broadband internet as there is just incredible amounts of free TV through Roku. Thus the response of said providers will be gigantic free w/ commercials streaming services with Base subscription.
Video game providers are looking towards similar, they more and more are seeing the resale of pre-owned video games as a pox in profits. They'd rather sell new even at the expense of putting places like Gamestop under. That's been an ongoing discussion whereby storefronts would sell "cards" to consumers with activation codes on the cards and said businesses could of course still sell legacy media, collectibles and such evolving their sales models. It's essentially already a "done deal" because most of the larger game sales chains are failing short of Walmart and Target.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoThe charity media seller's only pay 2 percent ebay fees and they have 5 digit presort media mail accounts that allows them to have a break even point on the DVD of $1.81 lower than you can have.
In addition many of them also earn money placing various promotional advertisements inside their mailings even though that is against the rules of media mail.
The solution is to ignore DVDs entirely, sell something else.
capricornmedia
OP2 years agoYes, I never wanted to sell DVDs at all. I used to sell video games until the market got so ridiculously crowded & now you can't find them reasonable. When you do find them, they are priced higher than online prices because every yahoo thinks he has a "rare collectible" game worth $500. Similar to what you will encounter in sports cards. Like so many former video game sellers, I've been herded into movies by necessity & that has presented an array of problems I never imagined. I think I need to learn a trade!!
itscalledapostingid
·2 years agoMega sellers of media aren't paying the same shipping rates as you.
They are negotiating big discounts with carriers and/or using logistics services like UPS mail innovations to mail DVDs, CDs and books at extremely discounted rates.
capricornmedia
OP2 years agoYes, I understand that. There's one particular mega seller on here that I get in price wars with all the time (when I happen to have the same stuff they've got). I won't mention their name but they're probably the biggest on the site. I will beat his price by $1.00, then he will undercut me by a nickel, & so forth & so forth. That's capitalism & competition & I can deal with that. You can obviously tell that huge store is trying to MAKE MONEY just like the rest of us. If they can't peddle stuff for 2 bucks with free shipping, then nobody should. Even if they're getting the stuff for free. The packaging labor alone would be a nightmare & the inevitable disputes & returns would be worse yet. It's not just the Goodwills that are doing this. I've seen "thrift" sellers with less than 400 feedbacks doing the same thing. I doubt they're getting a bulk discount. I know they're making money somehow, but it's obviously not by selling DVD movies for 2 bucks on the internet.