Trying to stay positive
Slow sales day, promoting at 5% this month, down from 9%.
eBay does not rule in my favor this year
8700 listings today, my goal is to hit 10,000 listings maybe by May
Then I will spend more time setting prices and fixing small details
Ready to kick back soon and stop spending my entire days sourcing and listing
Dealing with rude customers lately has made me dread making sales, so I hope that feeling passes
9 comments
isaiah53-57
·2 years agoOK, dont want to poke more holes in your bubble, but when I look at one of your $15 games with $5 shipping promoted at 9% here's what I see:
-You have a game you are likely $2 into(hopefully not more)
-Your total FV & Promotional Fees are approx around $4.75(thats 32% of your selling price)
-Your Store Subscription Fees are $60(?) a month which adds another .50 cents on avg to each item sold
(given you are selling around 125 items a month).
-Shipping is likely $4
So your net after shipping, acquisition cost and Fees is $8.75
Of course then, you have to account for shipping material, office supplies, gas, wear and tear on assets, taxes, phone/internet, storage, returns, loss, breakage, etc, etc, etc...
So after you subtract all the above from the $8.75 net after shipping, item cost and fees, you are looking at more like $6 profit?
But most importantly you have to account for your time to make sure you are using it wisely. If you are like most people here, if you average out all the time it takes you per sale to source, research, clean/repair, take pictures, create listing, manage listings, pack/ship, travel time, log-in, create promotions, read emails, answer questions, handle returns, call ebay, accounting, taxes, store product, retrieve product, deal with site problems, deal with printer problems, etc etc etc... You are likely looking at 25 min per sale on avg?
So you made $6 in that 25 min on this item - Problem is, when selling here, you don't make $6 EVERY 25 min - The lion's share of the time you spend working on this site, you aren't selling anything at all and therefore making no money at all during that time..
If you were to truly account for every minute, every hour you spend working on selling here and avg it out over the number of sales you make in a year, I'm sure it would BLOW your mind...
And based on the amount of profit you are actually making, where does rent/mortgage, health insurance, car payment, food, vacation, savings, etc etc etc come into this scenario?
I wish you the best of luck and good health...
retrogames10000
OP2 years agoI have just been promoting all of my items at 9% for the entire year. Trying to build a business and stay profitable within that.
I'm not very profitable after all so I will just promote less and hope for the best this year.
At some point maybe I should be spending my energy trying to make my own website
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoTry reducing the percentage and see if it makes any difference to what sells.
EBay suggestions are always good for eBay. For sellers not so much.
BTW- "choice" listings are not allowed.
You can have "variation" listings.
And in my opinion, it is not worthwhile selling anything for less than $9.99.
On those $1.25 Monopoly pieces.
You pay a flat service fee of 30c before the 13.25% selling fee kicks in. And then you are adding a 9% PL feed to that?
So there's 25c gone from your gross immediately. Then 13.25% of your $5.55 shipping fee plus 9% is another dollar.
And that's before the 13.25%+ 9% on any sales tax. Never mind the actual cost of packing supplies.
Over $1.55 to sell a $1.25 piece.
Some things are not meant for mail order sales.
And as a rule of thumb, buyers hate to pay shipping.
If you can't see your way clear to using Free Shipping*, put most of your shipping cost in the asking price and make the Flat Rate slightly lower.
EG The price of the Monopoly piece is $1.25. Shipping is $5.55 (to 90210).
Total $6.80.
Would it be more attractive at $3.95 + Shipping of $2.85?
Or at $3.40 +Shipping of $3.40?
Or at $6.95 with Free Shipping?
In any of these choices, combine and discount shipping cost.
(Free Shipping then becomes - Buy a Second for only 99c!)
*which means the cost of shipping is included in the asking price.
stainlessenginecovers
·2 years agoYes- be prepared to spend about $100,000 a month to 'compete' with ALL the others selling the same.
retrogames10000
OP2 years agoI have a pretty good system to find my items, I basically use a bin system and each bin is sorted by time.
I've found its better not to put too much of the same thing in one bin, a little of this and that instead of 200 of one thing, when I have more time I will start consolidating bins made a long time ago but nothing is selling extremely well anyway
stainlessenginecovers
·2 years agoWHY in the world would you do it that way? Alphabetical order would be about the 'only' right way.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoLast week was pretty bad for me, during the normally strongest sale period of my sales year.
But bounced back over the weekend, including a sale on my almost dormant account where I added a dozen listings and one sold overnight.
(On all my accounts, my products are long-tail. Another sale this weekend was listed in 2022.)
Apparently there was a football game last weekend that disrupted normal selling patterns.
It helps to keep monthly totals and to compare year to year.
That is. How were your sales in Jan 2023? In Jan 2022? In 2019? (We skip 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic surge in online shopping making those outliers.)
I only use Standard Promoted Listings at 2% . Only on higher priced items where the 2% won't hurt my bottom line. And only on items that have been listed for "too long".
I find PL brings eyeballs, but it is not the PL items that sell. A somewhat higher percentage of non-PL items sell than those promoted.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoIf you are heading for 10,000 listings I hope you have a systematic way to locate your items.
Worse than the awful customers, the feeling of worrying that you will not find what you sold can be a killer.
Good luck
12345jamesstamps
·2 years agoI only promote my high end items....nothing cheapie....and usually around 15-20 %.
I just need to have my item show up under someone's else page. And the buyers look at my other items.
High end items take forever to get sold so I lose nothing while promoting them.
"Repeat Buyers" help me through slow periods of time....plus free shipping domestic gets me lookers.