Revising a slow listing
When revising a slow listing, is it better to end the listing and start from scratch or revise the existing listing? No customer action on this listing for a very long time. Thank you for your reply.
17 comments
When revising a slow listing, is it better to end the listing and start from scratch or revise the existing listing? No customer action on this listing for a very long time. Thank you for your reply.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year agoIt is more likely that there is too little customer interest than a problem with the listing if you are reasonably competent in describing your item and in your photographic skills.
Some items sell slowly, either due to lack of interest, price or product quality.
rosachs
·10 months agoSome items sell slowly because they take a long time to use up. But the 'customer interest' angle is true as well. I had a customer when I was selling shoes who was a regular. Same pair of pumps, same color and size, same time each year. Fortunately for me, this was also a popular shoe, so I always had a pair or two in stock, especially after her third purchase.
The hardest email I had to answer after closing my business in 2008 (my consignment clients all pulled back their inventory due to the recession) was an inquiry from this customer... did I have even one pair left in her size? She was a college professor, spending a lot of time on her feet and walking - the shoes she wanted were the most comfortable she'd found in years and she really didn't want to start the search all over again. 🙂 My client did have an affiliated online site where she could probably find them... just not at my price point. On the other hand, due to the shoe wars at the time, she would get a one year return/replacement warranty with my client. Not sure what she decided, but I hope she found what she needed.
I think that's the part I like best about the inventory I've chosen to sell over the years - meeting people and sharing stories. I'm not a good face-to-face conversationalist, but I can hold my own online. Been doing it since high school -- 1974-1976. 🙂
-Bob.
pickapaper
·1 year ago@edtrade1
Many people on here use "posting IDs" (rather than use their selling account to post), so you won't see anything listed if you click on their "view listings". The seller you asked about above (inhawaii) is on sick leave right now so has put his listings on time away. When he's back, he has cool things for sale.
inhawaii
·1 year agoI don't believe in reviving slow listings.
I haven't done in 25 years.
If someone wanted to buy it, they would have bought it.
If there are truly changes that need to be made, fine, but making changes to a listing just because it hasn't sold, to me is ridiculous.
I am in the minority.
I know many sellers swear by it.
edtrade1
OP1 year agoThank you for this information. Why do I not see items for sale when I click on your “View listing� Just curious if I may.
inhawaii
·1 year agoUnexpected injury/illness.
Still in the hospital.
My store is set on away.
Hoping to get out soon.
P.S. Did you know I was voted "best seller on ebay" in 2010? 😉
edtrade1
OP1 year agoI pray to Our Lord Jesus Christ for your recovery. Congratulations on your “best seller on ebayâ€. If I may, I'll follow you; maybe I can steal an idea or two.
boomersbiz46
·1 year agoI respectively do not agree with your logic. If no one looks at my listings for a year, then all of a sudden a new viewer looks, I may get a sale. You just never know who is out there. It doesn't hurt to keep a lot of old listings in your store....just every day delete 10 and wait a few days , and relist them with a revised title, pictures, specifics,price and description....to me it is part of what I call "work". LOL.
Remember there are new viewers all the time, plus not everyone is on EBAY all the time....so you never know who might see your "new refurbished listing". I am an optimistic person! I just sold some silverware that is been on ebay for about a year.. WOW. So you never know who is out there and what they are looking for.
IMHO
We all just need to keep on, keep on.
rosachs
·1 year agoNot sure if this helps but...
My experience is to end the stale listing and repost it as a new listing. No connection to the old listing as eBay's Search algorithm will see the connection and take the age/performance into account when determing placement of the new listing. You don't want that.
Updating/changing the title is good. Updating/changing the description is also good. Reviewing pricing and adjusting if you can is good as well.
eBay Search looks at a lot of parameters when putting raw listing selections into the displayed order - the more listings that qualify for display, the more these 'sorting parameters' are needed. And there are a LOT of them, many never revealed or confirmed.
My employer moved the company across town the first of this year. To make the move easier, we ended ALL our eBay listing (and those on just about every other venue we use) so that we could move stock without having to worry about where it was when it came time to ship it. As things were unpacked and placed into the new facility, a lot of the location information changed - Rack A, shelf 3 was not the same at the new warehouse as it was at the old. That info was updated as the inventory was reposted.
What we found was that stock that had been listed for years suddenly started selling again! And the more time between when we ended the old listing and reposted the new listing, the better results! Not everything was worth reposting (I've been there 12 yrs now and some of this stock was posted before I started), and in a few cases we found we have more/less inventory than we thought we did. More is fine... Less leads to cancelled order due to no stock. Not fine.
Update titles. Update descriptions. Update/Add/Re-sequence pictures. Update/Add Item Specifics. Make the new listing as 'different' as possible from the old, within reasonable time constraints. If the algorithm thinks it really is a totally new listing, it will get better placement than if it thinks it's just a quick rehash of the stale old listing.
Not a guarantee, mind you, but I've had decent success doing so over the years.
-Bob.
edtrade1
OP1 year agoThank you for this information. I can see ideas I can use. Also, why do you feel SixBit is a good tool to use?
rosachs
·10 months agoThat's a dangerous question for me - I could ramble on way longer than anyone would be willing to read. 🙂
The basic points I like, and I use the mid-level SB (there are four interchangeable levels with easy up/down movement), are the long-term data retention (10G SQL can hold a lot of data!), keeping my data on my machine - things like suppliers and purchasing info especially, and the ability to easily manage multiple eBay selling IDs (I currently have three) from one application. The ease of data entry, functional use of snippets and presets, and the ability to quickly and easily record where I stored something, when I bought it, from whom, and for how much (and how many if applicable) have saved me more hours than I can remember.
Everyone has their own method of managing their eBay and other venue activities. SixBit has a good deal of flexibility that can accommodate a lot of that. Maybe not everything, but enough to save me more than enough time to offset the monthly fee. At the peak of my consignment activity, my SixBit fee was running about 1 cent per listing or 5 cents per sale. The time saved meant more inventory, more listings, more sales in a day/week/month. And that meant more income.
I have a strong dislike for the minutia of selling on eBay, especially when I needed to report that info to my clients. SixBit kept track of all the little details, which I could then export to Excel, reformat a bit, and provide to my clients in the format they preferred. And I didn't have to spend much time doing so, regardless of volume.
Automation can help almost anyone, but only if the automation can provide what that person/entity needs in a format they can use. SixBit was that automation for my needs, starting way back in 1999, when I started getting serious about selling online and needed that automation. And I've been happy to work with people new to eBay or even new to selling, offering what advice I could from my own experiences, and helping them find for themselves the automation they needed.
I started on what would become eBay in 1997, and it took me two years of trial & error to find the automation that worked for me. I had even begun to develop software for myself - I'd been designing & developing applications since 1978 and thought it would be easy. When I found what is now SixBit, I realized it was far more effective to use John Slocum's software than to write my own - and our screen layouts were eerily similar. The rest was... day to day. 🙂 History takes a long time to create.....
-Bob.
gloryglorygifts
·1 year agoEnd it and use sell similar to list it again. You get better placement that way.
As others have said, it is good to do some research and see if you are ballpark with the competition in pricing and shipping.
Good luck to you!
edtrade1
OP1 year agoThank you. This is what I did. I tried to improve the title and some of the description. Will see what happens.
bonanza125
·1 year agoIf you are not getting any action from potential buyers I would suggest you research the current market value of whatever you are selling. Chances are your prices are high and nobody is interested in paying that kind of money. You can also look at what sold. If there is even a demand for the item.
edtrade1
OP1 year agoGood advice, thank you
onefootflipper
·1 year agoIn that particular case I would just start over.
edtrade1
OP1 year agoThank you I will