High goal 5% ??

[sakic92710]

It is just me or does it seem selling 5% of what you list would be a huge achievement?!!  I consider it quite pathetic.  5% for me this week would close to 35 sales.  I have 14.  0 today and, if the past 3-4 weekends are any indication, I'm not expecting much more over the next 2 days.  Compared to this time last year - down over 85%.   Must be the junk I post for sale.  Good thing I don't sell for my health.  I'd be in the ICU.   Good luck to us all.    🙂

[wastingtime101]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

Compared to this time last year - down over 85%. 

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Last year was an oddity as people were stuck at home because of Covid. Compare 2021 to 2019 and what's the sales difference?

This is a slow time of year in general for several categories as the weather warms up and people spend more time out.

[katzrul15]

Had never looked at it based on number of items - I track and set goals for total dollar sales and net/net.  If we achieve that in 5 items or 50 items, I guess that is how it gets done.  Would prefer it be less items, but ultimately, just benchmark to try to hit a specific $ range.

I will add that each month, I do remind myself when closing out the prior month, that if I get to next January 2022 and we made for 2021 what I wanted to make, I still made "goal". 

Most retailers lose money or break even until they hit the *magic* months (4th qtr).  If for some reason we do not make goal until November going into December, then I guess we do not.  But we do not depend on the revenue from our selling accounts on here and Amazon to live.  It helps pay for 2 that are in private colleges.  If we had to have "steady" weekly income here, we would have given up a long time ago.  Just too hard to predict/control.

[inhawaii]

250 active listings.

I average about 5 sales a day.

Is that 2%?   I'm bad at math.   LOL

[2013grotz]

I can kinda relate.  I've been averaging selling about 10-15% of my stock and having to either give away or throw out the rest in order to clear listing for other stuff.  It's frustrating, especially when I can search sold items and see several items like my unsold ones go out, often for more than what I'm asking for mine.

[chapeau-noir]

That's an interesting question, and I think it depends on how one looks at it - I sell about 20% of my stock every month, about (I'm a quite small seller, and this includes both the sites I mostly sell on right now).  But I rotate it so every year it ends up being about 80% of my stock by year end - I'm a mostly clothing seller so I work seasonally.

So I guess it depends if one goes monthly or has a longer (quarterly/yearly) calculation. 

[wahlstreetmkt]

One stat I would normally hear is 1% of your number of listings a day. Obviously this won't always be true because of your prices or maybe what you sell is more of a winter thing vs now getting into summer. Although can potentially make that less of an issue if you sell internationally.

In any event...using that as a guideline, 1% of 100 listings would be 1 sale a day on average. So 5%+ or 5 sales a day would or could be tremendous.

[luckythewinner]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

It is just me or does it seem selling 5% of what you list would be a huge achievement? 

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From my perspective, selling 5% of my listed items in a week would be huge.

I don't even sell 5% of my listed items per month. 

[yuzuha]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

That's an interesting question, and I think it depends on how one looks at it - I sell about 20% of my stock every month, about (I'm a quite small seller, and this includes both the sites I mostly sell on right now).  But I rotate it so every year it ends up being about 80% of my stock by year end - I'm a mostly clothing seller so I work seasonally.

So I guess it depends if one goes monthly or has a longer (quarterly/yearly) calculation. 

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This is how I've always looked at things. I don't sell commodities-- I sell wants rather than needs, so a lot of my stuff is fairly long tail and takes the right buyer to come along. Still, by the end of the year, I've sold a pretty good percentage of the things I've listed throughout the year. Trying to look at it on a monthly scale wouldn't do me any good.

[pjcdn2005]

What percentage would make you happy?

[southern*sweet*tea]

On this account I have 450 or so listings. Some months I may sell 15 items. Other months I may sell 50 items.  I average around 25 items a month.  That's around 5% I guess.   Of course, I sell long tail stuff, so it has to sit until the right person comes along. It may take a while, but everything eventually sells...well, the paper stuff and books do.

[coolections]

I only list in blocks at a time. But have never only sold 5% of what I list. I would be embarrassed at that and probably chalk it up as a waste of time and effort. Fortunately I typically sell around 70 % of what I list.

[2013grotz]

Above, I was talking about in total terms.   In my world, if I could manage 5% of listed items a month, that would be cause to celebrate...  It is frustrating in a lot of ways though to see several of my like items go out in "Sold Items" for more money and wonder why mine isn't going.  In my world, it'd just be nice to see all my items sell eventually.