How to increase traffic in my bookstore?

[fishzlot]

I don't think it is fair to need to promote books for extra fees just to get additional traffic.  I don't feel as though I am getting the views that I should.  Is anyone else having the same problem? Not able to generate views?  Or is book selling just generally dead, dead, dead on Ebay?  I was once able to get more sales than this but my store is struggling and I don't know why.   Could they "refresh" my store or something?   I believe my books are competitively priced.  And I have special books that no one else has.  If unique listings cannot sell it makes me wonder if any of my books can sell.  I've been dropping prices.  I really don't know what else I can do.  Any suggestions to generate more sales?  With over 550 listings, I should be able to sell more than a couple books a week.  I have NEW books and I can't seem to sell them.  I just dropped all my audio books down as low as I can possibly drop them.  Suggestions, please.  HELP!  I'M FOUNDERING!  Could there be something that Ebay did to foul my sales in some way?  Some changes to the system or something?  I'm looking at a lot of my listings and it says ZERO views.  That can't be right!   You'd think out of millions of eBayers SOMEBODY would have looked at a NEW book listing!

[2013grotz · Accepted solution]

The problem you have is that book sales are generally going to be about 90-95% disposable (people get them to read and then give away or donate), so you'd have to price rather cheaply to be competitive (hint: Yours are NOT).   To a certain extent, this also includes BRAND NEW books.  For instance, I put up a brand new copy of 1984 by George Orwell and it ultimately sold for about 40% less than original sticker after quite a while.  To wit, no one in the market these days cares that much about NEW anything with physical media unless they're a collector looking for impeccable examples.

Then from looking through your stuff, you have a lot of niche items that only would have appeal in very specific regional areas.  For instance, "History of Dauphin, Cumberland, Perry, Bedford, Adams & Franklin Counties, PA" or "Juniata County One-Room Schools 1799-1958 Pennsylvania" is going to be 100% guaranteed to have no interest to anyone outside that area and then maybe not that much interest even within that area.   Let's not even get into the campaign button of the local PA politician.

Correctly gauging demand from buyers and not getting wistful about what you have is a definite requirement, which most people who claim "poor sales" in here definitely is deficient of.  Age doesn't predicate demand.  "Special" or "unique" doesn't predicate demand.  "New" doesn't predicate demand.  And Ebay isn't obligated to force buyers to click on your listings (how "view" counts are generated).  

That said, I do notice that you have formatted your listing titles all wrong, which made finding your items in searches difficult.  Mind you, they were all there , which I need to point out to diffuse all the "tinfoil hat conspiracies" that keep getting posted in here about ebay hiding people's items and other things.  You want your items to be seen, make sure all the criteria to be seen is met (i.e. no one is going to buy your item if it's 3X the cost of the others, if they have any smarts about them).

Anyway, suggestions:

1) Reformat all the titles of your listings.  Author and Title are first and foremost of concern.  Eliminate fluff words at the front and use the rest of the "secondary title" if you feel like it.  "Anointed with Oil : How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America by Darren Doc" won't be found by your buyers, but "Darren Dochuk Anointed With Oil" will do you a lot better.

2) Evaluate all the stuff you have and the kind of demand it's going to have from buyers.  A very large number of the listings I saw would be better off donated to Historical Societies or local libraries in the area, as you won't find much demand for those kinds of things outside of the areas those books target.

3) Think very seriously about removing sentimentality and think about what you are offering as a BUYER.  Don't guess on your prices, research.  For instance, the book I cited in #1 is rare on the site, but someone else has it for $2 less than you right now and only 3 copies of the book have actually SOLD off the web site in the last year (for around $8-9).  So even if you fix the title on it (first order of business), you'd still need to lower it to about the same as the other seller before buyers will start noticing it.

And that's assuming they actually are looking for *that specific book*.  That's often the problem with any kind of physical media.  It's going to be slow selling simply because of that very fact.  But yeah, if you're looking for a good amount of sales output on your items, you'd do very well to shift away from media.

[onefootflipper]

Don't take this as an insult.

Your books are not competitively priced at all. 

It doesn't look like you are doing any price research at all on your books. It looks like you are just arbitrarily coming up with prices. I came to this conclusion by checking multiple books of yours that I knew would likely have other copies available. Time and time again I saw you priced at $10-15+ on books that other booksellers have for giveaway prices of $4-$5 shipped.

You have to search every single book when listing it and if you ever expect it to sell then you HAVE to be the cheapest on ebay for the condition. If you see that book available for $6 shipped or less then it is trash, donate it back or try to put it in a lot, it will never sell at a price worth the trouble. Charity booksellers have cheaper media mail due to commercial presort rates and almost no ebay fees so they can price below what you can just ship the item out and break even on.

You also have tons of obscure "looking for a buyer" titles, but I feel like overall you have those priced too high. That rare buyer that needs it may never surface and people aren't going to impulse buy seemingly interesting obscure books for $30 when there is an endless choice of those for $10 shipped or less.

[onefootflipper]

I never fully explained WHY you have to be absolute cheapest if you ever expect the book to sell.

Books are a category in a slow decline. The AVERAGE*** PERSON purchases fewer and few of them each year and more and more of them make into into the secondary market each year as people declutter and inventory builds up in the warehouses of megabooksellers. Meanwhile the mega specialists will post their book cheapest shipped on ebay basically every single time. 

Thus, if you post 3rd cheapest it is far more likely that your book will still be sitting there a year from now, except now it will be the 9th cheapest instead of the third cheapest as the price will have eroded slightly and more copies will have come to market. 

This is also true of DVDs, Blu Rays, disc based video games from 21st century consoles and most other physical media. There are always exceptions but as an overall these categories are all sliding back in average price continually. It is unlikely any given title will ever recover once its slides back to a price point that only the charity sellers can even sell it in the first place.

***I know YOU buy hundreds of books and DVDs and YOU are the exception. The exceptions don't overcome the statistics though as the statistics include the exception people, and indeed the exception people are the ones buying most media in the first place. 

[trdrjon1]

There is not much profit for the little guys anymore.  Looks like ebay wants more money just so they can profit from your book sales.  Try listing in groups depending on the book title, that might help.

[onefootflipper]

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@trdrjon1 wrote:

There is not much profit for the little guys anymore.  Looks like ebay wants more money just so they can profit from your book sales.  Try listing in groups depending on the book title, that might help.

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Promoted listings don't work well for media, most people search for exact titles and buy based on price.  Giving ebay more money still won't sell books over market value.

[coolections]

I went to the thrift store the other day. They must have had over 1,000 books. $1 each. The library lets you check them out and read them for free. I would guess there are also many online options to read for free. Unfortunately, unless you are practically giving them away, I doubt your sales will pick up.

[2013grotz]

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@onefootflipper wrote:

***I know YOU buy hundreds of books and DVDs and YOU are the exception. The exceptions don't overcome the statistics though as the statistics include the exception people, and indeed the exception people are the ones buying most media in the first place. 

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I thought I'd add to this example:  If you ever sat in an economic class, you're basically looking at supply and demand.  Most people would rather stream their stuff off the Internet (and that applies to books too with e-readers) than lug around all those texts. 

The thing of this since so many people are ridding themselves of these things that the supply is far outstripping the demand.  Hence the price goes down.  As I'm one that actually likes having the media in my hand, I usually try it and then spin it off onto my ebay, or if it's a rare thing that actually has demand, I'll just resell it.  If I really wanted to throw all in on media, I could buy a ton of it literally for a few pennies a piece if I go to the right places that don't have Ebay Pricing Syndrome.   The mega-sellers are doing it too.  That's how depressed demand is right now compared to supply - and like was said it's only getting worse.  On both sides.

Again (because I seem to be repeating this lately), you compete by lowering your prices if you want buyers to see and click on your stuff.  Goes for anything, media included.  You either make the choice to be competitive or quit selling that kind of item.

[2013grotz]

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@coolections wrote:

I went to the thrift store the other day. They must have had over 1,000 books. $1 each.

To add onto what I said before, I find them in most outlets where I'm at for 25-50c, readily.  $1 is a good end-buyer price point for them, though, if they're going out the door at a good clip.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I don't have time to say too much, but I don't think price is the main issue here. First, do understand that a little while ago ebay stopped counting views by "bots"...as a result, many of us saw a decline---sometimes rather steep---in the number of views we are getting. So, a low view count for many things---especially long tail items (such as your local history books)---is pretty much the new normal, and is actually more accurate than the old numbers (which included bots)

Just a couple quick thoughts:

1. Photos. We now have 24 free photos for each listing. You are using one. 1 photo doesn't tell me much. For example, you have a book on early architecture Upper Allen Township. You have a photo of the cover. I  can not tell from the cover whether the book has illustrations, whether it is hardcover or softcover, does it have a lot of detail or is it more of a quick survey.

2. Same book: Your description does not answer any of these questions either. 

3. Same book: Nor does your Item Specifics section. In fact, I think there might be more than one Upper Allen Township in PA....but you don' tell me the county it is in.

Now, IF I am already familiar with this book and I am looking for this exact book, maybe that is enough info. But what if I don't even know the book exists, but I would be interested in buying it if I did? You provide too little information about it.

Which brings me to my next point. I would suggest improving your listings first, but then I would strongly suggest trying Promoted Listings Standard at the minimum of 2% (at least to start). The advantage of this is that buyers might not be searching for the book, but with PLS, ebay will try to show it to people who might be interested in the topic, even though they aren't searching for it. And they might very well buy it.

You have some good books, and some hard to find books for which there is a small but very real market.

But you need to present them better. 

I'm not saying this is great, but here's an example I'm selling, and within the last year or two, I think I've sold 2 or 3 copies of this book, in the $40-$50 range if I remember correctly:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165717907326

No, it's not a quick seller, but it will eventually sell. In fact, I am hoping to list similar books soon, because people do buy these types of books as gifts, especially around Christmas.

[onefootflipper]

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@2013grotz wrote:

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@onefootflipper wrote:

***I know YOU buy hundreds of books and DVDs and YOU are the exception. The exceptions don't overcome the statistics though as the statistics include the exception people, and indeed the exception people are the ones buying most media in the first place. 

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If I really wanted to throw all in on media, I could buy a ton of it literally for a few pennies a piece if I go to the right places that don't have Ebay Pricing Syndrome.   

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When I was working on diversifying categories I bought hundreds and hundreds of DVDs at an average of 25 cents. I absolutely got lucky and managed to break even on them from about 10 of them. However I now have hundreds and hundreds of DVDs that nobody wants. 20 years ago I would have thought I was the richest man on earth to have that movie collection, and now I would likely happily exchange a $20 bill for all of them.

[1786davycrockett]

You definitely should visually separate the title from the author's name in your listings.  Right now, many of your listings simply look like "run on sentences," which are unnecessarily  hard to read.  It is not necessary to separate the title from the author's name by using the word "by" -- instead, skip a space after the title, then add a single "-" symbol, then skip a line, and add in the author's name -- for example:

The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck

See the difference?  Both the title and author's name are visibly separated, and easier to read & pick out.

And please use capital letters for the author's name, as well as the titles of the books -- "lilan jackson braun books" just doesn't cut it.

Many of your books are simply just too specialized to be quick sellers.  You might consider selling several  similarly-themed titles as lots.

More photos -- more details regarding each book (even if it's just a scan of the table of contents page), especially the more specialized items.

And, like most other booksellers, the magic word is "patience" -- sometimes it takes years for that one customer to find your books -- don't give up!

[d.amber]

I was selling some of my extra books at half price books about a year ago and a kid before me had a ton of DVD's they were trying to sell.  When they gave him the offer, he was shocked.  My books got a higher offer then his DVD's but then I only deal with Sci-fi and Fantasy and children-young adult books.

I did find that some of the original art work on covers of the more classic fantasy series will sell but you still have to look at what has sold and for how much and price your item correctly.

On pictures, show the back cover and spine on used books. 

If it matter, my son will hunt for certain books dealing with Myths and Dragons that he could not get through the library and found them on eBay and bought them. Some were pretty high priced too.  So there might be a buyer out there but you have to wait for them.

Good luck 

[chapeau-noir]

Optimise your listings (as suggested) and understand that you're offering many special interest books (which is good - the competition is less than if you had a bunch of, say, best sellers) which may need to find their buyer. I actually think you're doing pretty well for a bookseller in this market - I know it's thin gruel to hear that, but I used to sell books (usually special interest, also) and still do on occasion, and I know how the market has so drastically changed down through the years.  But special interest books will always be a better bet...but your listings must be optimised because they need to be easily found.

[allen1853]

To answer your question without getting ponderous or jejeune, try using the simple promotion tool, not advanced. You can promote for a minimum of 2%. Might work. Check your Hub for the "Send Offers" tab. It rarely works but I always discount at least 10% to a watcher or follower. Be patient with your narrow niche books. They will ONLY sell on a site that reaches the World. That one buyer is out there somewhere but will never visit a brick and mortar bookstore. Most importantly, diversify. Media is dying. Good luck.