eBay

sevenhillscomics · ‎10-18-2022

Hello all, I have a question. How do those of you with a store handle your finances? I shut down my store yesterday as i'm having a hard time paying the $22/mnth payment. I dont get many sales a month, and i'm wondering where i went wrong. A friend of mine told me that after a sale, i need to pay myself then the store. So as an example, if i sell a figure for $25, but i actually paid $15, i should give the 15 back to myself and use the extra 10 towards the store. This sounds crazy to me. I suppose i feel like since my sales are so bad, i need more inventory so i keep buying as much as i can. Need advice. Thanks

donsdetour · ‎10-18-2022

if not making money with store it is a good thing you got rid of it.

Book keeping is really important to each listing. it can and will tell you fail and gain.

Necessary over all to the winning game to sell on the Internets. My opinion of course,,,LOL

aqeeqsouq · ‎10-18-2022

@sevenhillscomics

The $22/month that you are paying to ebay is for Basic Store subscription fee (Yearly renewal) ??

("Winter Is Coming")

lamber9347 · ‎10-18-2022

Just a couple of things for you to consider. You had 13 sales from Oct 1-Oct 16th, so almost a sale a day. That's not bad in comparison. However, many of those sales were for items under $5.00 and that's why you aren't seeing much of a profit. Unless you got all those items for free you won't show much profit at those prices. Something to keep in mind.

You mainly sell comic books, which is a somewhat limited base. I'm not familiar with comic books so cannot offer advice on your prices but perhaps you should speak to other comic book sellers to get a better understanding on their success.

You have a lot of inventory-- a lot. It's difficult for a buyer to see everything you have with so many listings. A buyer can easily get bored looking and decide to leave, or get interrupted before purchasing, which is not what you want. You may want to consider taking some down or alternating items to get them more visibility and entice your buyers more efficiently. Best of luck to you....

nobody*s_perfect · ‎10-18-2022

@sevenhillscomics wrote: .... A friend of mine told me that after a sale, i need to pay myself then the store. So as an example, if i sell a figure for $25, but i actually paid $15, i should give the 15 back to myself and use the extra 10 towards the store. ...

That sounds crazy to me, too. If your purpose in selling here is to make a profit, then you need to put more than $15 in your pocket after selling an item for which you originally paid $15!

@sevenhillscomics wrote: ... i feel like since my sales are so bad, i need more inventory so i keep buying as much as i can. Need advice. Thanks

If you have inventory that isn't moving, then purchasing more, similar inventory is not a good strategy. You need to figure out WHY your sell-through rate is so low. Either there is no demand for your items, or your prices (including shipping) are too high. Do some research looking at other sellers' SOLD items like yours.

I would recommend that you drop the Store subscription, and remove all but 250 of your listings. At least then you won't be losing that subscription fee each month.

femmefan1946 · ‎10-18-2022

Start up costs are a killer.

Dropping the Basic Store was a good idea. The subscription will be a monthly expense and at the moment you are not covering the nut.

You already have 250 truly FREE listings without a Store, and while the more you have the more you are (likely to) sell, the other 126 listings would cost you $44.

My first suggestion is to use your Titles better.

You have 80 free keystrokes and should use all of them .

What year was Supergirl published? Is it bagged and boarded? Certified ? Grade? Certifier?

Even if that info is in the Item Specifics, put it in the Title and again in the Description.

The items you have listed at the moment can be moved, as they time out, to your Unsold List.

Start with the ones that are not getting Views, because while they vacation on the Unsolds, you can tweak them.
Having 250 Free Listings and a backroom with 125 more ready to go, means that once you are down to 250 Active Listings, you can close the poor performers and use Sell Similar to relist from Unsolds. This is manual but really not onerous. The poor performers then go to the Unsolds for the future.

New Listings is a popular Search, along with Lowest Price. Best Match is the default but we can't easily tweak that.

As you start getting more reliable sales, you can reconsider subscribing to a Store.

I hope that is soon!

sevenhillscomics · ‎10-18-2022

yes.

sevenhillscomics · ‎10-18-2022

thanks to everyone for your advice. Some of you brought up some things i hadnt thought of, and as a result, i came up with more questions.

1. impressions. For this last month, i have just over 212K impressions for the last 30 days. What is a good number to have? I have nothing to compare my results to.

2. the 20th of this month, i'm supposed to go up to top rated seller status. Does this help with more people seeing my ads?

3. Should i look at selling something other than comics?

dbfolks166mt · ‎10-18-2022

You already have 250 truly FREE listings without a Store, and while the more you have the more you are (likely to) sell, the other 126 listings would cost you $44.

I have never had a store and seldom hit the 250 limit these days but when I did generally within a few days I would get a notification of an offer for an additional 250 free listings. Not sure if they are still doing that or not.

aqeeqsouq · ‎10-18-2022

@sevenhillscomics

@sevenhillscomics wrote:
yes.

I suggest that you downgrade your current Basic Store subscription into "Starter store subscription" after your annual Basic subscription been ended.

("Winter Is Coming")

nobody*s_perfect · ‎10-18-2022

the Starter Store subscription gets 250 free insertions per month, the same as non-stores. So that subscription only makes sense for sellers who want some of the other Store perks such as organizing their listings into categories. For this particular seller, even the low-cost Starter store doesn't seem to be worth the investment.

As to when to downgrade, there is an "early cancellation penalty" if you cancel an annual subscription before the final month of your one-year commitment. But in this case, the seller would be so much better-off without the store, that it would probably be worthwhile to pay the penalty just to unload that $22 per month commitment.