Getting No Views on my Ad?

[garlicbreadben]

I don't know what is wrong with my ad, I clicked "sell similar" from someone else's ad who had dozens of bids, there are quite a few of these items listed that are currently having bid wars for SIGNIFICANTLY more (some even more than $100 more expensive) than I'm selling it, and mine is straight up not even getting views or watchers. Is there some new algorithm thing on eBay preventing mine from showing up in searches?

http://ebay.us/Ksk8PH?cmpnId=5338273189

 For example, since listing mine this guy has sold 14 of the same item for $50 more than my starting bid price: https://www.ebay.com/itm/353127277680

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Just taking a quick look: Your feedback number is low, your ebay ID is not one likely to inspire confidence in buyers, and your no return policy also does not inspire confidence. There may be other factors, including the fact that many bidders wait till the last minute to bid....so you may yet sell this. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Oh, and, this is just me personally, but I LOVE the kitty...reminds me of my beloved Mrs B.. I don't play computer games, but....if you included the kitten, I think I'd buy it! 

[garlicbreadben]

You are probably right about the name, which I needed to change anyways. But I guess the problem is not that people are not buying it, but it isn't getting any views in the first place. You would think with a high-demand item that is having plenty of bid-wars on a bunch of other listings it would at LEAST get viewed? On its previous listing, it ended after a week with 8 total views.

[fashunu4eeuh]

Price is just one factor. When buying a pricier item, shoppers want to know that if something goes wrong they are not stuck with a problem. So a No Return policy may work against you in this case. 

Same goes for experienced vs inexperienced seller. You haven't sold much, which makes you an unknown quantity. Buyers have to take a chance on you. At that price point, shoppers may want a track record to give them confidence. 

Another possible factor is the auction format. Gamers want their items fast. They have plenty of fixed price listings to choose from. So why would they bid and be forced to wait when they can get it in just a couple of days? Maybe they pay a few dollars more, but there is no uncertainty. Or better yet, they go to Target and pick one up for $299.

You have a lot of competition to deal with. How are you going to set yourself apart from that crowd? That is the question you have to answer.  It can be difficult to get established on eBay in the beginning, but i wish you all the best. Good luck.

[garlicbreadben]

Again, this would answer why it's not selling. I'm wondering why there are no views in the first place. 

[fashunu4eeuh]

Oh, and one more thing. The reason these gaming units were selling like hotcakes on eBay was due to their scarcity. But Nintendo has since restocked multiple stores and the supply is expected to meet the demand. At least for now. This makes your job selling even harder. I have included an article that just came out about it. See below. That is one of the problems jumping on the band wagon—you have to get in early enough to catch the craze.

https://www.tomsguide.com/amp/news/where-to-buy-the-nintendo-switch-mario-red-and-blue-edition

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Are you getting good impressions, but few views? Or are you not even getting good impressions?

I notice your first photo looks like a stock photo...better to have your own photo showing the contents of the box (UNLESS the box is actually sealed). In the kitty photo, you have doctored the image to white out I assume a price tag....much better to remove any affixed price label....the white out could raise questions in a buyers mind....

This is a very competitive market. using the term "nintendo switch red blue mario", I see 897 listings, only 77 are auction. So fixed price seems to be popular. If a buyer filters by free shipping that reduces the number to 452...still a lot of listings. If buyer filters by "accepts returns", that's 174. And filtering by free returns, gets him down to 80. So, you might do better with Fixed Price, and accept returns and maybe even free returns. (I don't know if that's a good idea with electronics though....I don't really sell in that category) And I also don't know what your profit margin is here.....obviously if you paid $1.50 for this, that's one thing, if you paid $150.00, that's another.

Also, looking at some of the current auctions that have a lot of bids....I see one that started at $9.99, another at $20 something. If you want to sell on auction, you probably need to give the buyers a sense that they might be able to get a bargain....starting the auction low does that, but also carries the risk of selling too low. Again, how to set your price depends on what you paid for it.....

[garlicbreadben]

The doctoring is to cover the serial number. How do I check impressions vs views? Does impressions mean the amount of times it has shown up in a search but not clicked on?

[chapeau-noir]

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@garlicbreadben wrote:

The doctoring is to cover the serial number. How do I check impressions vs views? Does impressions mean the amount of times it has shown up in a search but not clicked on?

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Yes - impressions is the number of times it has shown up in a search.  Views is how often someone has clicked through to look at your listing.  If your listing comes up in many impressions and few or no click-throughs, it will slip quickly down in ranking due to lack of relevancy, which is an important metric.

Your ID name doesn't bother me at all - it's just an ID and I actually like it.  But the stock photo and generally competitive market is probably making people pass your listing by.  Also, sellers can have followings, previous customers, social media presence, etc. which boosts their views.

[chapeau-noir]

Sorry - forgot to answer your other question:   Check your seller hub under the performance tab - https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance - you'll see listing impressions under 'traffic.'

@garlicbreadben 

[jayjaspersgarage]

"Yes - impressions is the number of times it has shown up in a search."

Impressions is a useless statistic that cannot guarantee your listing was ever "impressed".  People browsing never see all the results of searches on many computer screens and obviously on phones.  Imagine being number 300 in a list of results not to mention your item is on page 30.  Fairly useless if the user prioritizes results by 'lowest price plus shipping' first like I do on most searches.

To the OP, stating no returns is not a thing because ebay's MGB policies means anything is open to being returned.   As one person's post stated if your intent was to flip something that was "scarce" for a week in December and you were late to the frenzy cycle you may have just missed the boat and set a competitive price to churn it along at a break even or small profit point and move on to the next craze. 

[readabouthorses]

One thing that might have impacted views is that you make multiple revisions after you've listed it. Every time you revise your listing has to get back in line to index again.

While it is good to make revisions if you see something you missed or something that is wrong, it is much better to have everything correct before you hit the list button so you don't have to revise.

P.S. Also love the cat.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

"Impressions is a useless statistic that cannot guarantee your listing was ever "impressed".  People browsing never see all the results of searches on many computer screens and obviously on phones.  Imagine being number 300 in a list of results not to mention your item is on page 30.  Fairly useless if the user prioritizes results by 'lowest price plus shipping' first like I do on most searches."

If a buyer does a search and you are on page 30 and the buyer only looks at page one, that does not give your item an "impression".  The link to your listing must be on the page the buyer looked at. If you have a lot of impressions and very few views, it means you aren't getting the buyer to click through to your listing. If you have a lot of impressions and a lot of views but no sales (for a multi-quantity listing), it means you are getting the buyer to click through to your listing, but you aren't closing the deal when they look at your listing. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

As chapeau noire said, you want to go to Seller Hub and Traffic Report----I'm not sure if this has rolled out to everyone yet, but Traffic Report now includes a good bit more info than it did a year ago, and it might be worth taking a look at the stats for this particular listing...