eBay

datemike1 · ‎01-28-2020

Thought I'd post some metrics to see how everyone else is doing this January. This will end up being the worst month of sales since I started selling on eBay 5 years ago. And before anyone chimes in and says well there is no demand, don't bother. I opened an Etsy shop end of November 2019 with the same exact listings and not only did I outsell my eBay account in December by about 30%, I'm currently at 55 sales on Etsy mtd and i'm outselling eBay by about 500%. Yes, i'm sure some people aren't selling because maybe the demand isn't there for their particular items, but in a very crowded sea of tv memorabilia, there is still plenty of demand it seems everywhere BUT eBay.

The issue is traffic. If you're wondering why your sales are down so drastically and haven't looked at your traffic metrics, I'd suggest you do so...

Impressions are down 55% this time period last year and down 63% compared to 2018. Page views down over 60% from 2019 and down 70% from 2018.

There simply aren't enough people shopping on eBay anymore. But, this decline in traffic is drastic. eBay has to be aware that this is an issue and their lack of action has me struggling to justify continuing on with eBay. I guess I keep hoping they'll get their heads out of their a$$&$ and start getting people back to shopping on eBay but I fear it's just too late.

datemike1 · ‎01-31-2020

Exactly @kim_y_buran . @sakic92710 there is nothing wrong with listing items at a higher price and waiting until the right buyer comes along, eventually someone will come along. BUT THAT ISN'T EBAY'S FAULT. If you are selling collectibles that only a select few will buy, fine, but don't come here complaining that about how eBay is doing something wrong. It'll take months if not years to find the buyer willing to pay those prices, and if that's what you want to do that's your decision, but don't blame eBay for that decision. Lest you forget that most buyers search from lowest price to highest price, meaning your listings will by default be at the end of the user's search results, assuming the user even makes it to the end of the search results, which statistically they never do. That's also not eBay's fault. That's your fault.

You come here complaining about slow sales, well if you want to sell in more volume, lower your prices and take better pictures. You're not going to sell in volume at your current price points and with those product photos. That's a fact. And you've been given a lot of advice as you say over and over and over again that you continue to ignore. So keep ignoring it. But shut up about it.

If I go to the doctor because my foot hurts and the doctor tells me I have a broken bone and need to get it fixed so it stops hurting, i'm probably going to listen to them and fix it. You on the other hand decide, well this doctor is an idiot and doesn't know what they're talking about, so you go to 10 more doctors and they all tell you the same thing and you're like, ehhhh what do these stupid doctors know, screw them, morons. But you keep going to doctors to complain about the pain in your foot and they all tell you the same thing and you don't listen to them and don't fix it and keep complaining about the pain, wondering why the pain still exists. This scenario seems ridiculous but that's exactly what you're doing by continuing to come here to complain about eBay and your slow sales.

A lot of us sellers who are suffering super slow sales have no control over it because the shoppers just aren't there for us so there is nothing we can do to control our situation. Myself for example, this will be the worst January yet. But on Etsy, I've outsold my eBay account by over 500% with the same listings and prices. So I know the market is there, they're just not on eBay anymore. I can't control that. You CAN control your fate by lowering your prices and taking better pictures, yet you refuse to do so, instead choosing to spend your time blaming eBay rather than actually making changes and changing what you can control.

That said, I have no doubts now that you'll continue on with your dismissive attitude and keep your head in the sand, blame everyone else but yourself for slow sales. That seems to be working well for you, right?

datemike1 · ‎01-31-2020

@keziak that's fantastic! Congrats on finding the right formula! Question, you say you're up 64% i'm assuming in number of sales, correct? Does that correlate to the same increase in revenue for you? Or have you had to lower prices to get to that sales result? I guess if you're doing auctions you really can't control the final prices unless you're using a minimum.

keziak · ‎01-31-2020

@datemike1 wrote:
@keziak that's fantastic! Congrats on finding the right formula! Question, you say you're up 64% i'm assuming in number of sales, correct? Does that correlate to the same increase in revenue for you? Or have you had to lower prices to get to that sales result? I guess if you're doing auctions you really can't control the final prices unless you're using a minimum.

Hmm, good question. It may well be the # of sales. I also look at the dollar amount for sales in 31 days and it's up a lot. I was below the $20K minimum to generate a 1099 for the last two years and I am determined to turn that around in 2020. I'm off to a good start.

In listing auctions I chose a minimum and wait to see if I get that or get bid up. If no sale then I either get rid of the books, move them to the store, relist or relist using Best Offer. All the tactics have worked but no guarantees. Sometimes I move a lot out of the store after some months, lower the price, and auction it. Sometimes that works, too. But to answer you question the prices I am generally getting are on par or often higher than leaving the lots in my store. I am way down on those lots right now. This is important because my storage facility is way too small to accommodate a lot of boxes of book lots. The overall increase in money I attribute to getting more on site by pushing auctions hard.

datemike1 · ‎01-31-2020

@keziak wrote:
@datemike1 wrote:
@keziak that's fantastic! Congrats on finding the right formula! Question, you say you're up 64% i'm assuming in number of sales, correct? Does that correlate to the same increase in revenue for you? Or have you had to lower prices to get to that sales result? I guess if you're doing auctions you really can't control the final prices unless you're using a minimum.
Hmm, good question. It may well be the # of sales. I also look at the dollar amount for sales in 31 days and it's up a lot. I was below the $20K minimum to generate a 1099 for the last two years and I am determined to turn that around in 2020. I'm off to a good start.

In listing auctions I chose a minimum and wait to see if I get that or get bid up. If no sale then I either get rid of the books, move them to the store, relist or relist using Best Offer. All the tactics have worked but no guarantees. Sometimes I move a lot out of the store after some months, lower the price, and auction it. Sometimes that works, too. But to answer you question the prices I am generally getting are on par or often higher than leaving the lots in my store. I am way down on those lots right now. This is important because my storage facility is way too small to accommodate a lot of boxes of book lots. The overall increase in money I attribute to getting more on site by pushing auctions hard.

Hey, if it's working now, keep milking that until it's dry. Seems like you've found a good niche. It seems there are some categories that are still growing on eBay, this seems to be one of them. My frustration is that my niche seems to have a growing audience everywhere but eBay. And I haven't really figured out why my Etsy sales are so much higher selling the same items at the same price points but eBay, after 5 years of continued growth has just declined so drastically. I'm averaging 3-4 sales per day on Etsy, I sold 8 yesterday on Etsy, but haven't had a sale in 6 days on eBay. And it's becoming more clear I may have to give up on eBay, but the problem is, what if shoppers come back to eBay and i've left? I'd much rather stick it out and have a booming store on both eBay and Etsy, but that's not happening right now. And it'd be one thing if my sales were down 10% vs prior years, i'd attribute that to just the normal fluctuations of business, but being down 85% from last January is just too significant to attribute to a downturn. This isn't a downturn, this is an abandon ship.

keziak · ‎01-31-2020

Do you have just this account or other accounts on Ebay with more listings? The first question that came to my mind is whether you only ever have 50 or fewer items up and pay no listing fees. In that case you aren't on the hook to ebay except for final value fees.

I have a Premium store with a hefty monthly bill. My Fixed Price sales are such that I ask myself all the time if I should downgrade to a smaller store and keep up the auctions even though they would cost more (15 cents right now). The problem is that I have no clue which books will sell so it's hard to say "just list those and get rid of the rest".

sakic92710 · ‎02-01-2020

I tend not to listen to people who talk down to me. Do you?

sakic92710 · ‎02-03-2020

Sold the Carter autographs, etc. yesterday. Much higher than your LOW price suggested. I don't think I'll be accepting your advice on pricing. lol Good luck to you, though.

datemike1 · ‎02-07-2020

I didn't say you wouldn't sell that stuff, I said it'd take a long time to do so to find the right buyer and that's not eBay's fault. And that's fantastic that you sold it! And even though you think i'm rooting against you, i'm not, i'm just trying to get you to see that you need to be more flexible in your estimation of what "value" something has. But, you did in fact lower the price on that autograph and low and behold, it sold. So you can flaunt that it sold all you want, but the bottom line is the advice you've been given by multiple sellers turned out to be correct. But ask yourself, pricing these items so high at first and then lowering the price months later, is that really serving your hope for selling in volume? How much sooner would you have sold that autograph if you hadn't priced it so high? Since you have item's that have difficult to pinpoint values, would it make more sense to use the auction with a minimum price?

And lest you think I'm not aware, you did in fact lower some of your other prices as well because after viewing several of your listings I got one of those marketing emails from eBay saying some of the item I recently viewed had recently lowered the prices, like the star wars toys I believe you cut the price in half. And that's great that you're taking the advice. Just don't continually discount what other sellers are telling you in an attempt to HELP you. You view it as a bunch of sellers ganging up on you... no, that's not the case. You come to these message boards to complain, but complaining without either offering suggestions for solutions or being open to suggestions for solutions from other sellers is just complaining and that's really boring and unproductive. If you want to just complain then say that so others don't waste their time attempting to help you find solutions. But don't come here and beat your chest that "you were all wrong!" when in fact you did take our advice and then sold items after you lowered the prices.

sakic92710 · ‎02-07-2020

Actually, I was referencing your advice that the Carter autos sell for $24.50. This is why I said you were way off on your pricing.

datemike1 · ‎02-07-2020

@keziak sorry for the late reply, I only have this account on eBay. In late November, after a horrendous August, Sept and October I opened an Etsy shop with the same listings, so I have both accounts, but only one on eBay. So yes, you're correct I only pay the eBay FVF's plus the $7.95 for the lowest level store subscription. I don't have an issue with the fees, my issue is trying to figure out why there is such a drastic downturn in impressions and views when my Etsy shop pretty much took off right away. I keep the store subscription because I need the ability to put my store on vacation when i'm away and unable to fill orders but I don't want to lose the thousands of watchers my listings have, which i'd lose if I had to end the listings while I was away. I also advertise on social media and used to use the eBay storefront page as a landing spot, but after the way eBay has been nosediving, the advertising I did in January and this month I used my Etsy shop as the landing page, not only because Etsy is just easier to use but because Etsy only charges 5% FVF (what they call a transaction fee) plus $.20 per sale (what they call a listing fee). Their managed payments is essentially the same as PayPal, 3% plus $.25.

I've never actually had to pay to list items on eBay for the listings that are over and above what they give for free. If you have to pay $.15 per listing rather than a big store subscription fee, you could easily figure out how many listings you'd have to pay for each month and compare that to what you're paying for the store. That would inform you if you can downgrade and not take a financial hit. If you don't list to the maximum number of free listings you get with your subscription, then i'd suggest you def downgrade, but to what I couldn't tell you. The basic store works for me, but since I average 13-14 listings, I don't have to worry about needing more free listings.

keziak · ‎02-07-2020

Yes, the issue of what size store is an issue I think about a lot. I am nervous about cutting back from 600 to 250 (I think that's right) because I don't know which 350 to discard. OTOH, it's annoying that I can't seem to maintain more than 600+ listings. Presumably I would get more sales if I got more listed. I will have more sources of inventory when the library book sales start up again this Spring.

Right now my sales are heavily skewed to auctions. In January I was way up over what I made in January 2019. I want to keep this up but sources of inventory are low right now compared to what I"ll be able to get 2-3 months from now unless I get ground down by the book sale madness and stop going.

datemike1 · ‎02-07-2020

January ended up being the worst month I've ever had since the very first month I began selling on eBay 5 years ago.

12 sales on eBay.

67 sales on Etsy.

January 2019 I had 64 sales on eBay, none on Etsy because I only began selling on Etsy in November after the poor eBay sales Aug-Oct.

Click through rate and sales conversion rates were lower but the impressions were less than half from the prior year. And that's what's killing my sales right now.

It's really frustrating to not see eBay making any efforts to drive more traffic right now. Or to know that there aren't any plans to do so in the future. So I guess that's just going to be the reality for now.

datemike1 · ‎02-07-2020

What's the difference price wise between the store subscription fee for 250 listings vs 600 listings? If you downgrade to the 250 free listings and you still list 600 per month, that would mean you'd be paying $.15 for 350 listings, or $52.50 per month. Is the price difference in those store subscription fees more than $52.50 per month? If so, it makes sense to downgrade, not only for the savings there, but as you said, in months you don't have enough sourcing and can't list 600 you don't have to worry about unused listings and you'll only end up paying for what you use. I'm not horribly familiar with the higher tiered store subscriptions, so if the only reason you're paying more for the store is for the additional listings and there are no other tangible benefits to you, then it makes sense to downgrade. If you see yourself using all of those listings in the next few months then maybe wait to downgrade.

datemike1 · ‎02-07-2020

I just looked up the store subscription fees, if you downgrade it'll be $.25 per listing above 250, so in this case if you list 600 per month, it'll be an extra $87 in listings fees, so that wouldn't make sense. It looks like the only way it makes sense for you to downgrade is if you're only going to list 250 per month, or 250 fixed price and 250 auctions.

keziak · ‎02-07-2020

Another approach is to have 2 Basic stores, which adds up to less than a Premium. But then I would have to jettison 100+ listings and not list more than 500 total, and pay more for auctions (if not in collectibles which I can sometimes use). Also, I do not have listings stored off ebay so it would be a lot of deleting and relisting.

My goals for 2020 are to increase my store listings (which is hard) and push auctions. If I can replicate January most months I will reach my income goal. But some months are going to be leaner than others.