You don't always have to have the lowest price on ebay to make sales.
3-pack of limited edition spam.
Many other listings for $30 + free shipping.
I'm selling them for $40 + $12 S&H and having regular sales.
Why do you think that is?
61 comments
3-pack of limited edition spam.
Many other listings for $30 + free shipping.
I'm selling them for $40 + $12 S&H and having regular sales.
Why do you think that is?
ed8108
·1 year agoYou already know the reason why
This is not rocket science, my friend
coastaltechsolution
·1 year agoIt's because he is so handsome ðŸ˜
jasoheat_0
·1 year agowhere do most of your orders come from ? probably hawaii as spam is so loved there ( been there many times over the years ), in which case its probably convenience of having it arrive quicker than from other states , as delivery would take quite longer .
inhawaii
OP1 year agoGreat question.
Actually NONE of my spam goes to Hawaii.
It all goes to the mainland.
Apparently there are lots of collectors out there.
johnrj1226
·1 year agoJoe Batten has a clue or two or more on how to make it happen that can be applied to on line selling with a bit creativity and thought out side the box.. It is up to you to figure out what trips the triggers of positional buyers/shoppers of the stuff one wants to peddle. Signing up to be an eBay seller doesn't automatically say I R A SELLER.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UQocU5jTfA
sakic92710
·1 year agoSimple answer : when they search, they don't see everyone's listings so they might not see the cheaper options. Being a nice guy has nothing to do with it, I'm afraid. Being handsome doesn't attract the buyers either (pointing at myself. 🤣 🤣 ). I've seen ****heads make a lot of sales & have 100% FB. 😛 Being a 'nice guy' only gets noticed on Marketplace. lol
12345jamesstamps
·1 year agoImagine eating something 3-5 years in a tin can....
inhawaii
OP1 year agoHawaii is the #1 consumer of SPAM.
SPAM is kinda gross, slimey and gelatinous right out of the can, but I don't know anyone here who eats it right out of the can.
Popular SPAM dishes here:
1) SPAM musubi. A small block of compacted rice with a piece of fried spam on top. Sometimes covered with a little bit of teriyaki sauce. Wrapped with "nori" or seaweed. Kind of like a SPAM sushi. So popular they are even available at 7eleven stores here.
2) SPAM and fried egg sandwich.
3) SPAM corn chowder. Corn chowder with small cubes of fried spam.
This was recently unveiled at all Jack in the Box restaurants here...
toomuchstuffagain35
·1 year agoI like Spam 'sandwiches' on saltines with either thin sliced cucumber or shredded lettuce for added crunch.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoThe 7-11s in Honolulu have an amazing assortment of great options - my friend and I fly in there for the marathon and arrive at like 11:30 pm and once we get off the city bus, start looking for something to eat. Even the ABCs are closed then but 7-11 is open and they have spam musubi, teriyaki bowls, etc.
And yeah, you're not supposed to eat the gelatinous stuff on the outside. Just like when you buy a lump of scrapple in that pink wax paper in comes in, you don't eat the paper.
12345jamesstamps
·1 year agoYou never know what you get in a tin can?
44012
·1 year agoPerhaps there was a glitch and your competitor's Spam was not on the same page as your listing as they scrolled down and down and down........
inhawaii
OP1 year agoIf we can blame ebay for slow sales, why can't we also "blame" them for this as well? 😉
44012
·1 year agoI wish I had a glitch like that......my dad loved spam. He served in the Pacific in WWII. I think that is where he found that staple food. It just looks kinda weird. I always remember a can being in the cabinet by the stove.
ittybitnot
·1 year agoYou forgot about how handsome I am.
@inhawaii
That has to be it... Spam is Gross and disgusting....all that gelatinous creepy crap that is in the can. They are likely only showing YOURS in the ever misfunctioning search filter of lowest to highest that has been broken for a few years now. You make sales on gummy pickles, you get shown in search even if you are selling cans of itty bitty weiners in some sort of juice. More power to ya, dude!
mtgraves7984
·1 year agoSpam is Gross and disgusting....all that gelatinous creepy crap that is in the can.
@ittybitnot
Agreed. It reminds me of souse, which I'll never eat, either. 😶
pikabo-icu
·1 year ago@mtgraves7984
You have to scrape that off lol.
They used that to oil their boots and rifles during WW2 and then ate the solid stuff.
go-bad-chicken
·1 year ago"You don't always have to have the lowest price on ebay to make sales."
In my business it pays to not be lowest price. My strategy has always been to be somewhere in the middle and or a little higher close to the top, with regards to price. But not the highest priced that a prospective buyer might see.
iamalwaysright
·1 year agoI agree and do the same thing. In the spectrum of pricing, I try to never be lower than the average selling price nor am I the highest priced. I'm always around the 60-70th percentile in pricing.
Unless I'm intentionally selling at a loss for drawing buyers in, and that's usually with inventory I don't care about. I tried doing massive sales for my typical products to draw in crowds and it doesn't make the impact that I expect.
redlinear
·1 year agoYou were seen and cheaper wasn't seen.
Now there's a new question: Why was that?
zamo-zuan
·1 year agoThis is something I mentioned for years (and you among several others said I was crazy lol)... Cheapest price has NOT been the primary factor since 2018. Promoted sales algorithms by design are built around showing buyers select choices of listings in order to provide incentive for them to pay more. Even if you may not be promoting yourself, competitors who promote at around the same price will be shown with your listings - and since they are promoting they will have less profit margin so it's more likely they'll be higher priced than yours.
You can see it yourself by searching for your own listings with a variety of keywords (and doing so in different browsers/incognito mode/different eBay accounts and NOT your own).
The goal of the algorithm is to "spread the wealth" while increasing eBay profits.
There's 2 major problems and side effects of this:
1- Prices go UP for customers which makes eBay less competitive against other marketplaces.
2- It no longer encourages "healthy competition" for sellers, as providing sellers with better listing features does NOT mean you will get more sales. Meaning you are no longer rewarded by the algorithms for actually taking good care of your buyers and giving them a positive experience with their purchase.
Ironically, it benefits sellers who do not have the best or most competitive listings the most. Because they'll still get sales, when if the algorithm actually considered best prices/shipping/buyer experience, the top sellers of the category would get much more traffic.
There's a reason the top seller market share had plummeted on eBay. Because the shift went from "a strong marketplace" to "strong ad revenue".
simply-the-best-for-you
·1 year ago@zamo-zuan I don't disagree with your point, though I do disagree that it hurts the marketplace, however, at least all of my examples, especially the really crazy ones where my item was $100 & I saw one for $4.99, were years before PL's. This has always been a thing to some extent. At least since the more modern search engine.
zamo-zuan
·1 year agoOh, that type of thing did happen before PL of course. But there's a ton of evidence of how it did hurt the market in different ways.
eBay's niche used to be the prices. In other areas such as shipping, customer service, etc, eBay could never compare. But they basically those advantages away. It's hard to say what eBay's niche really is now as a marketplace. And in areas like customer service, the algorithms used to reward you for taking good care of your sellers (especially when sales history was a top driver of impressions so you could focus on happy repeat customers), nowadays they've created an atmosphere where it's almost working against you because you're just going to be taking losses, while still being at the whim of the algorithms.
Another (possibly better) example, I mentioned the top seller market share. It used to be visible in Terapeak. It was > 40%. Within the first few months of their change of strategy on PL's, it plummeted to just above 20%, and I had been reporting the changes on here. It wasn't long after that until they removed the ability to see the marketshare at all.
The top seller market share is quite important to marketplace health, as it's basically the "ceiling" of how good a seller could do. The "best sellers on eBay" were suddenly making half or less of what they did before. That trend continued for years. Nowadays we can't see the market share numbers, but there's still other indicators (such as numbers of sales and feedback) and we still network personally with all the other top sellers of the products in our category. Every top seller in the country in these categories are a shadow of their former self.
For clarity and transparency, if you take our old "normal average monthly sales" over the last 13+ years... Our current monthly sales are 16% of that number - in APRIL which is the busiest month of the year in this category. Our record low - even during Christmas/New Years week (these types of auto parts do not make good holiday gifts! lol, it was always our worst week of the year) - we had NEVER went below 40% (not even during major technical issues) until this year. Now below half of that is the norm.
The worst part? This isn't just affecting us. The top seller market share drop isn't affecting just us, it's the marketplace and the strategy of the algorithms. It's been a slow decline ever since 2018 when they first started the PL focus under Wenig.
A "spread the wealth" strategy might work to pick up some hobbyist sellers and pad their "active seller" numbers, but the amount of success they could really attain on eBay has become more and more limited. The eBay marketplace used to be strong enough to sustain legitimate businesses built around eBay, and that's become less and less true each year that passes.
I hope that explains what I'm referring to a bit better!
slippinjimmy
·1 year agoThe people that buy from you hope to visit Hawaii and think maybe you'll let them stay at your house when they are there.
On a serious note, the world is full of people who simply don't price compare. Every time I go to Costco I see people buying stuff that is available at the discount grocery store right around the corner that would save them 20 or 30%.
pickapaper
·1 year ago@iamalwaysright wrote: "I wish ebay would plaster this title on multiple pages all over the site. "
We went to an estate sale one time that had a big sign posted that said "NOT EVERYBODY SHOPS ON EBAY!"
(Pardon the yelling but that is the way they had the sign.) I'm not sure if they were trying to justify their prices or what, but it certain got people's attention.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoMmm...great made as musubi. I always have it after the Honolulu marathon.
I grew up eating Spam - in those days it was just really cheap funny-meat in plain-looking cans.
pikabo-icu
·1 year ago@chapeau-noir
Me too.
My mom was poor.. REALLY poor..
I recall once being out of food for a while save for some saltines & peanut butter.
After a week of that had some fried spam and it was the best tasting thing EVER!
That said, we eat it occasionally in fried rice, fried on a sandwich or with eggs..
Not often but occasionally.
@inhawaii You are correct..
I don't always buy the cheapest listing.
I read descriptions, FB, look at quality of the item (coins) and a few other things.
I have been known to pay more to buy from a seller I've purchased from before, to support them too.
chapeau-noir
·1 year ago"Hunger is the best sauce."
simply-the-best-for-you
·1 year agoBeen saying this for years. 2 main reasons, besides you being such a nice guy 🙂 Some people buy the first one they see, the algorithms determine what they see. The other big reason is that some ppl value time over money. I'm one of those people. I'm not spending 1/2 hour researching to save $3 or driving to 3 stores to save $5, it's not worth it for me.
onefootflipper
·1 year agoYou have a great photo and probably built up a great spot in the search rankings before the prices on the item started falling, thus you kept getting the sales even as others were cheaper.
luckythewinner
·1 year ago1) buyers may not be good at finding the best deal on eBay
2) buyers may use filters or keywords in search that eliminate the best deals from consideration
3) buyers may be biased against a seller (name, location, feedback score, etc.)
4) buyers may be biased against a listing (spelling, terms, pictures, return policy, etc.)
5) buyers may be attracted by your sense of humor
inhawaii
OP1 year ago... whatever it is, i'm not complaining. 😉
campanaelia
·1 year agoEbay's search results doesn't always show buyers all the results.
I have found right after making a purchase they show me cheaper ones.
iamalwaysright
·1 year agoI wish ebay would plaster this title on multiple pages all over the site.
Right place at the right time. Randomness is a beautiful thing sometimes. I'd like to also point out all of the grumbling threads we see here about someone complaining their prices are much lower than their competitors, yet they don't make any sales. It's nice to hear and acknowledge these types of posts. There's two sides to every coin.
meme6253
·1 year agoBecause people with bad taste buds love Spam?
campanaelia
·1 year agoI never had spam, what does it taste like?
iamalwaysright
·1 year agoCheck your email folders 😉
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoDelicious, fried in bacon grease!
tools*
·1 year agoI thought Spam was predominantly bacon grease. Fried in itself?
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoIt's actually pork shoulder and ham. The only time I eat it anymore is once in a while as Musubi. However, I have installed some software on my PC to provide bacon.
 
redlinear
·1 year agoI want a keyboard with every key like that!
simply-the-best-for-you
·1 year ago@campanaelia Hey, there's 2 of us 🙂 I've never had it either. I had that horrible Red Devil spread stuff though & I always imagine it tastes like that, so I never tried it & now I don't eat meat.
tools*
·1 year agoI ate Red Devil Deviled Ham, and probably liverwurst, as a child. I also liked Vienna sausage in a can (1970's).
I've been a pescetarian for 42 years, so no sausage or steak for me.
toomuchstuffagain35
·1 year agoIt's Spiced Ham (hence the name) and it tastes what it sounds like.
It's good fried.
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoI always thought it was “special hamâ€.
chariot_badges
·1 year agoWhen I was a mere lad, I remember that my father (a WWII Naval combat vet) would not allow "that stuff in the house."
He was on a ship that was damaged in combat and bobbed around for two weeks waiting for either another attack that would finish them, or a tow for repair. During that two weeks the crew lived off of spam and powdered milk.
He said he could smell it in his sweat, taste it on his skin. He said he deserved a Purple Heart for that ordeal.
He and mom got into quite a heated argument about it once. He absolutely put his foot down ... it was not to be in the house. Period. I suspect the smell of it made him nauseous.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoNauseous and probably a whole bunch of bad memories.
chariot_badges
·1 year agoYea. PTSD existed long before it was known as PTSD.
I grew up with a severely damaged human. He woke up the house once, screaming in the middle of the night. I was probably eight or ten.
He told me that night that "The people that I've killed sometimes speak to me. Not always kindly."
He did his work up close and personal.
"I still can still smell his last breath."
Poor dad.
wri-8727
·1 year agoTwo weeks of Spam. Whew, that's tough:)
My father was in the Army and spent the winter of '43/44 on Kiska Island, (after narrowly escaping being shot by the Canadians!). Then he spend the winter of '44/45 in the Ardennes. Yet it only dawned on me later in life why he loved nothing better the a comfortable chair in front of a the fire.
gottasellemall69
·1 year agoTastes like Kevin Bacon.
dolcetreasures
·1 year agoIt’s very popular in South Korea. The absolute best kimbap I ever had, had pencil shaped slices of fried spam in it. Delicious, albeit extremely unhealthy.
pickapaper
·1 year ago@inhawaii
Because you are in Hawaii which always sounds better than Kansas or Wyoming or Delaware. You have over 4000 feedback with 100% positive so buyers feel confident buying from you. And because you are such a nice guy.
tools*
·1 year agoThey can't know that he's nice until they do business with him. But Hawaii does have its appeal.
Maybe I'll start pretending I'm in Hawaii. Or Tahiti?
inhawaii
OP1 year agoYou forgot about how handsome I am.
pickapaper
·1 year ago@inhawaii
You forgot about how handsome I am.
Well, since I don't know what you look like, I had to leave that off. But if you say you're handsome, I believe you. I always believe everything I read on the internet. 🤣
inhawaii
OP1 year agoOver the interweb, i'm extremely handsome.
In real life, that's a different story. 😉
tools*
·1 year agoThere's got to be a joke in there somewhere.
iamalwaysright
·1 year agoPickle Spam?
fbusoni
·1 year agoProbably because you keep your porch light on at night?