eBay

suebqb1 · ‎06-28-2016

In the last 3 months I have had over 70 watchers on my items( 1-3 people per item) but they are not buying .When I do make a slae 90% of the time it was not something being watched.I have my prices so low now that i only make 3-5 dollars profit per sale and sometimes just to get rid of stuff I make between 2-3 profit. I do have a few high end items wher I make 50.00-100.00 but those are few and far between So I guess the main question is.I am I putting the items on to long that they forget me?Are my prices still to high ? I am a top rated saller with a store but the last couple months are very depressing with watchers and no to not many buyers. Suggestions please.

timemachine777 · ‎07-01-2016

@slippinjimmy wrote:
@timemachine777 wrote:
@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
Well at some point if they're luring customers away, sometimes they must be luring them to your listings. I just wish they'd stop doing it after someone has bid. I don't mind so much if they only have something on their watchlist.

To me it's like renting a store in a mall, and then having mall management going up to all your ~~customers~~ windowshoppers and telling them that they know where you can get the item your looking at for less at another store, either in the mall or at another mall down the road. No matter how I look at it, it's a slime ball move on eBay's part. They shouldn't be in our business like that, and more sellers need to let them know it, if they want it to stop.
Until someone actually buys something from you they are not "your customer" they are just a consumer looking for kicks or looking for something to buy from someone.

Since you don't like this marketing eBay does I assume you ask YOUR buyers if they were referred to your item by eBay and if so you refuse to sell to them because it's not fair to the sellers of the similar itrems they looked at but did not buy.

I consider anybody that's reading my listing or browsing my store, a customer. I own B&M's, and when people come into my stores, they're my customer, not the shop next door, nor anybody else at the moment, until they leave. Window shoppers are those that scan the search results.

swenson8781 · ‎07-01-2016

It used to be said a long, long, long time ago, that if you got up to 10 watchers on your item it would sell very soon. I think those days are long, long gone! lol

Either way, I have many watchers too. And they don't buy, or haven't yet. BUT, don't despair, watchers do serve very valuable purpose, as usually if you have several watchers on an item it will improve the search status of that item. Which, in turn, will increase your chance of an actual buyer coming along and buying your item.

So, if you have watchers, for whatever reason, that too, is something to be thankful for! 🙂

slippinjimmy · ‎07-01-2016

@timemachine777 wrote:
@slippinjimmy wrote:
@timemachine777 wrote:
@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
Well at some point if they're luring customers away, sometimes they must be luring them to your listings. I just wish they'd stop doing it after someone has bid. I don't mind so much if they only have something on their watchlist.

To me it's like renting a store in a mall, and then having mall management going up to all your ~~customers~~ windowshoppers and telling them that they know where you can get the item your looking at for less at another store, either in the mall or at another mall down the road. No matter how I look at it, it's a slime ball move on eBay's part. They shouldn't be in our business like that, and more sellers need to let them know it, if they want it to stop.
Until someone actually buys something from you they are not "your customer" they are just a consumer looking for kicks or looking for something to buy from someone.

Since you don't like this marketing eBay does I assume you ask YOUR buyers if they were referred to your item by eBay and if so you refuse to sell to them because it's not fair to the sellers of the similar itrems they looked at but did not buy.

I consider anybody that's reading my listing or browsing my store, a customer. I own B&M's, and when people come into my stores, they're my customer, not the shop next door, nor anybody else at the moment, until they leave. Window shoppers are those that scan the search results.

So when they leave without buying they are fair game for the next store.....oddly enough that's exactly what's happening on eBay, they look, they leave, they buy elsewhere (and eBay wants to try to make sure that elsewhere is another eBay seller not a completely different site).

the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth · ‎07-01-2016

The point is that watchlists were created for the convenience of buyers. No matter how sellers try to spin it, they are for buyers. If sellers don't like it they should stop watching the watchers and stop whining about who or why the watchers are watching.

You cannot control the behavior of others, only your response to their behavior.

The watchlist has been around for a very long time. Sometime around 2000 if I remember correctly.

and hey, I just noticed yesterday that I can now watch more than 200 items at a time. Wonder when that changed? I think it's awesome.

suebqb1 · ‎07-01-2016

I feel like I opened a can of worms. Bottom line looks like watchers really mean nothing and views mean at least they looked at your stuff. So I should be greatful if 1 in 20 watched items turn into a sale.Most of my sales do not come from watched items.So I will keep my prices where they are and hope for the best. 95% of all my toys are bewteen 8.99 and 7.99.The rest are all over the place price wise to what others have sold an item for..Thanks for all the advice and the information.

timemachine777 · ‎07-01-2016

@swenson8781 wrote:
It used to be said a long, long, long time ago, that if you got up to 10 watchers on your item it would sell very soon. I think those days are long, long gone! lol

Either way, I have many watchers too. And they don't buy, or haven't yet. BUT, don't despair, watchers do serve very valuable purpose, as usually if you have several watchers on an item it will improve the search status of that item. Which, in turn, will increase your chance of an actual buyer coming along and buying your item.

So, if you have watchers, for whatever reason, that too, is something to be thankful for! 🙂

Actually that's true for some sellers, and I'm one of them. Every time one of my items hits 10 watchers it will sell. I have a cast iron cat that I just sold a week ago for 150.00 and as always, I was able to predict when it would sell. I had another one that sold on March 31 after hitting the 10 mark also. I've had a lot of items reach the 10 mark and everyone of them have sold without going beyond that point, yet I also have had a lot of items with 9 watchers go unsold. This is another reason that caused me to look into eBay controlling our actual sales. I have a few posts about this issue.

slippinjimmy · ‎07-01-2016

Watchers are living breathing humans who for any number of possible reasons took enough interest in your item to find it and mark it. That's better than a bunch of views which could be 'bots, errors in the view count or people who accidently clicked on your listing and then backed out 1 second later.

Watcher and view counts rarely predict if an item will sell but for sure listings with no watchers and no views rarely sell. I have some items which are priced at the very peak of "fair value", getting a bunch of watchers on those leads me to think there is definite interest but something (usually price) is holding back buyers from clicking the buy button. Reduce the price a bit and you might turn a watcher into a buyer.

cartooness · ‎07-01-2016

I've read everything I can find on Markdown Manager, but have never seen this: they encourage MM for watched items. Is this common knowledge?

Cartoons...because pictures speak louder with words.

slippinjimmy · ‎07-01-2016

It's common knowledge to some!

Put an item on sale, watchers get an alert (unless they have them turned off) it MIGHT stimulate them to buy.

timemachine777 · ‎07-01-2016

@cartooness wrote:
I've read everything I can find on Markdown Manager, but have never seen this: they encourage MM for watched items. Is this common knowledge?

I use to call eBay advanced selling team to pick their brains until I learned that many of these guys are pushing deep discount practices and FS. Whenever I asked about the fact that I had a lot of items that would end with some watchers, and what could I do to reduce the number of unsold watched items. The answer most of the time would be to use mark down manager until the item sold. Example: 30 day listing for 30.00, after you have a few watchers and lets say 2 weeks left. 1st do a 10% markdown and then every 3 or 4 days add another 10% or 15% off, until it sells. By doing this, you train buyers to wait you out. You appear desperate.

timemachine777 · ‎07-01-2016

@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
The point is that watchlists were created for the convenience of buyers. No matter how sellers try to spin it, they are for buyers. If sellers don't like it they should stop watching the watchers and stop whining about who or why the watchers are watching.

You cannot control the behavior of others, only your response to their behavior.

The watchlist has been around for a very long time. Sometime around 2000 if I remember correctly.

and hey, I just noticed yesterday that I can now watch more than 200 items at a time. Wonder when that changed? I think it's awesome.

I just bookmark an item I'm interested in or researching.

timemachine777 · ‎07-01-2016

@slippinjimmy wrote:
Watchers are living breathing humans who for any number of possible reasons took enough interest in your item to find it and mark it. That's better than a bunch of views which could be 'bots, errors in the view count or people who accidently clicked on your listing and then backed out 1 second later.

Watcher and view counts rarely predict if an item will sell but for sure listings with no watchers and no views rarely sell. I have some items which are priced at the very peak of "fair value", getting a bunch of watchers on those leads me to think there is definite interest but something (usually price) is holding back buyers from clicking the buy button. Reduce the price a bit and you might turn a watcher into a buyer.

I don't put much credence in the views or watches because of all the bot views. I use to take screen shots of my inventory pages and noticed a few times where my views showed up lower on a few items on the later screen shot. That's impossible. You can lose a watcher but not a view. Even traffic reports never matched the views on the "my eBay" sell page. I use to also use a view counter on each of my listings and they didn't match either. eBay's "my eBay" page was always way higher. I think a lot of the eBay data is flawed badly.

suebqb1 · ‎07-02-2016

I just have a standing buy 2 get one at 50%. The number of buyers have in creased very little but views are up .I am guessing by the holidays that will in crease sales because people know I offer it all the time.I started doing that 2 months ago.Not sure until September if it will work out or not

timemachine777 · ‎07-02-2016

I did a quick scan of your inventory. Right off the bat, your doing 3.3% per month on avg in sales. Do you normally keep about 200 items for sale every month and sell 7 per month? If so Check you monthly transaction totals under your seller dash board and see if your monthly totals are in the same range month after month. Check out your competition that sells only plush toys and see what their 90 day percentage is and check out everything about their listings, and search results using keywords.

Also the scrolling inventory app could be hurting you with mobile device customers. eBay has had a really big problem with these people being able to view or buy items that have third party javascript, and even lots of HTML. Some CS reps have told me that eBay may do away with listing designer next year due to this issue. Their opting for more clean text only, CSS script and basic HTML