@benn46 wrote:But if you start over with a brand new listing, the new listing first appears at the top of the search queue when buyers search by "newly listed". If I understand correctly, a revised listing doesn't "jump" to the top of the listing queue. Isn't that a consideration?
My primary consideration when deciding between revise and cancel/relist is age. I manage some 4500+ listings for my employer, been there 8.5yrs now. Company policy when I started was "list - eventually it will sell". This is not always true.
A few years back, I was able to show my boss that these very old, very stale (some were 3+yrs or older!), very improperly-priced listings were only doing two things: using up one of our included Store listings each month, and making our sell-thru rate smaller and smaller even tho we were selling more and more.
eBay has stated that 'freshness' is a consideration in Best Match. That's why new listings hit the top of the list, regardless of price or seller experience. Which then also means that 'staleness' is a consideration in Best Match, which would be why old/stale listings sink to the bottom of the list and are seldom seen and therefor seldom sold.
Now, I'm talking here about listings that haven't had a sale in a few months as well. If you have a listing that is making a dozen sales a month -- just keep adding inventory and keep it running! No real need to revise or cancel/relist -- those monthly sales will keep the listing percolating towards the top. Best Match loves listings that make sales!
We use SixBit as our eBay management tool at work (I've used it personally since '99). This means I can select all listings more than 120 days old with no sales in over 90 days, then select all the Items (the records that we create our posted listings from) related to those listings and put them in a separate folder. Now I go back to that list of Listings and end them all. This takes maybe 10 minutes. Very little work on my part, most of the work being done by SixBit.
Now I can go back thru that separate folder, as time permits, and determine what should be updated & relisted, what should be sent to the retail store sales floor, and what should be trashed. I generate a report of the trashed inventory and have one of the pullers get it all and dump it. I also generate a report of the sales floor inventory and have one of the pullers get those and pass them over to our retail pricers to be put on the sales floor or trashed. This leaves me just the inventory I feel should be reviewed, updated, and relisted.
Once a month, about an hour to get started, then a few more hours over the next two weeks to handle what was ended. We continue to list new inventory daily, but the relistables are repriced (if current selling price is not profitable, these would be sent to the sales floor also, but that is determine as each one is reviewed, not in bulk fashion), the listing updated if needed, Title keywords reviewed/refreshed, and the inventory scheduled for reposting (SixBit has a built-in scheduled posting ability so we can post when things sell best, not just when we're in the office).
It's a bit of work - but that's why we use automation (SixBit). It lets us keep our data on our machines (we keep a rolling six yrs of sales data on file and the associated inventory data to match), let's us review it when we want to, and in ways we want to, we can create new listings using our standardized template to speed things up or make updates to older inventory quickly to get them back on site and sold. SixBit also tracks all sales, payments, tracking numbers, eBay fees, and profitability. I have always been a big fan of automation -- I developed business software applications from the mid-70's thru the early 2010's.... it's amazing what you can make these machines do if you don't tie yourself down to just thinking inside the box. 🙂
Age of listing. Time since last sale. Value/Investment. These are the key points we use to determine if an older listing should be trashed, sold elsewhere, or ended/refreshed. Generally, the only revising we do is to keep in sync with every-changing Item Specifics.
-Bob.
