Curious About Quantities

[rei-npkrlma]

Hi fellow sellers.

I've been trying to figure out if having a higher quantity - for items you can sell repeatedly - of an item helps it get found in a search? 

I can always have more of the items I sell but sometimes I'm "testing the waters", so to speak, to see if there's an interest in an item. If it starts to sell, I up the quantity and it seems it begins to get more views when I do that. But that could also simply be because it sold.

I started to wonder this when I started getting the message that some of my items are low on stock. When I saw that, I was able to add stock to most items and they started to sell more.

So I guess in short , I'm wondering if anyone knows if it's better to have a higher quantity for buyers??

Hope this made sense - not sure how to explain what I'm trying to figure out. I'm a very small seller of low-ticket items so it's tough to determine just what helps and what doesn't.

[dhbookds]

What you are asking, I think, is whether lower quantity makes buyers think they may miss a deal by not buying now.

No real way to know........at one time you could "hide the quantity" or only show less than 10. 

I tend to believe it does put some pressure on buyers to buy......and unless the item is one people would buy in larger quantities, why NOT keep the quantity low?  As anything, may work on some, not on others.

[rei-npkrlma]

"I tend to believe it does put some pressure on buyers to buy......"

Wow, thanks - I hadn't thought of that angle! That sheds a whole new light on things. Plus I prefer to keep quantity low on items I'm not sure will sell. I give away enough as it is!

I just started wondering about this quantity issue with those low-stock warnings. One messages said something about increasing buyer confidence with more stock - wish I would have noted what it said word for word, but that's what got my head spinning. Thanks again!

[johnfduda]

I think it's convenient to keep the listing up there, so I do GTC. If you change anything in a listing it sometimes puts your item higher up in search so when you increase the quantity available that MAY be just the change necessary. I think having previous sales gives some credence to you and your item. Changing the quantity available won't alarm those who look at revisions on the listing.

Another thing I learned to watch is how many you can ship in one package, or how many will fit in a flat rate box. Once a multiple sells is no time to find out you can't ship that many.

[rei-npkrlma]

I've been paying close attention to this - when I have something that starts to have repeated sales, I'm increasing the amount I can sell and it does seem to give it a boost! Thanks for your feedback. 🙂

[cb-boards]

I've thought about this myself and to answer your question...I don't know!

On one hand, I think there is a scarcity value as you suggest and that some buyers might be inclined to "act now" before someone else does.

Other times I think that eBay's algorithims might give better visibility to items w/ greater quantities as that particular seller has more "stuff to sell" and therefore eBay will make more money off them so eBay increases their visibility.