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Competitors specify free shipping but require minimum purchase

I have some posts that in very crowded, low margin, high volume space.  Some of my competitors offer free shipping but they specify in the description fields that they require a minimum quantity or else they will refund the purchase.  I charge flat shipping so I don't lose money on low quantity purchases as I understand requiring a minimum quantity is not allowed and cancelling orders for that reason results in defects.  However this results in my listings to appear lower in search results than my competitors who follow the aforementioned free ship + minimum quantity practice.

 

Am I doomed to lower search results, or do I have to leave myself open to a loss on low quantity orders?

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Re: Competitors specify free shipping but require minimum purchase


@mathman87vw4 wrote:

I'm trying whatever I can to get more visibility and it's not working.


Are you using GTC (Good Til Cancelled) fixed price listings?  If so, are they more than 90 days old?  GTC listings slowly lose visibility as they age, and by 90 days you're probably off the first page.  Now this applies to listings WITHOUT a sale/sales, but if your listings are for single cards, then that caveat doesn't apply - single product listings close with the sale.  🙂

 

You can try changing your headings, adjusting prices, running promotions (if you have a Store)... but nothing works quite a well as simply ending those 90+ day listings, let them 'rest' for a few days, then repost them as new listings (I believe eBay calls it 'sell similar' - I don't use eBay's listing tool so I'm going on what I read here). 

 

When I do this at work, easily 20% of what I relist will sell within a week, many withing just a day or two.  Not bad when you figure that I can end batches of listings with ease thru SixBit, and then schedule them for reposting (as new listings - dropping off the 90+ day no-sale-tail) a few days later with just a few clicks.  As long as my PC is running and Windows is running (after a power-outage or Windows update, the system is running and Windows is running at a login prompt), my listings will be posted as I scheduled them, and any sales data will be updated into the database as well.

 

Best Match search results are affected by a lot of things, both increasing and decreasing visibility.  The more you learn about those effects, the better you can deal with hitting more increasing activities and avoiding the decreasing ones.

 

-Bob.

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