I discovered how I can increase sales.

[phanoto]

I noticed that many sellers are saying that their sales have decreased.

My sales recently decreased also.   Some items that in the past I sold at least one per week are now selling about one every 3 months.

I reduced the price on those items, but they still did not sell.  I continued to reduce the price several times and they still did not sell.

Those items had UPC numbers and it was easy for me to see all of the other sellers who were selling the exact same item and to see their prices. 

The seller who had the lowest price had good feedback and shipped quickly.  I lowered my prices to the same as the seller who had the lowest price and my items sold the same day that I lowered my price to be the same as the lowest on eBay. 

So, it looks like that just lowering the price of an item will not cause it to sell if some other seller has a lower price and the item has a UPC number which buyers can use to quickly see all of the prices on eBay. 

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

True, But thats why its called a race to the bottom on the boards. Thats another reason some sellers use UPC and some dont. Just saying 🙂

[richard1rst]

Are you here to make sales?

Or are you here to earn a living (i.e. a profit),

Believe it or not those two goals are frequently mutually exclusive.

If you are only selling off things you have hanging around the house just to get whatever you can get for them just to clear out your overcrowded closet then  the rest of this does not apply to you.

BUT if you are here to earn a living/profit

Your selling price should never be determined by someone else.

You don’t know where they got their inventory. A store’s bankruptcy sale, a buy out of a B&M store return bin, falling off the back of a truck.

You don’t know the condition of their product. Brand new and pristine in the box, new in a box but a badly shop-worn scuffed up box, new but out of the box/package and maybe itself a little scuffed.

If you do not, and can not, know these things then it is madness to arbitrarily match their price JUST for the sake of making a sale.. Especially if, at that price, you are losing money.

The key to making a profit is to expend some effort and do a little research BEFORE you buy the product. When I walk into a booth at a trade show and I see something I like the first thing I do is see who and how many others are selling the item on eBay and, most importantly, what they are selling it for. That determines whether or not I even buy it in the first place.

You never buy inventory just because you like it. You buy inventory based on whether or not you think you can sell it at a profit. If you can not, then don’t buy it. There are plenty of other items out there that are underrepresented and, as a consequence, HIGHLY profitable.

I don’t want to make this post any longer than it needs to be. But I can explain that last bit with the example of some Slippery Rock license plates I once had. If anybody is interested. My listing wound up as the first item on page one of Google. Huzzah.