Long 20hr stretches of no sales

[wilsonharborsales]

Has anyone else experienced this?  Lately I am doing long 18hr-24hr stretches of no sales, no offers, nothing … dead.  Then, all my sales will come at once in a 30 minute window.  Often I will see 5 sales in a 30 minute window, and then I am dead again for another 20hr stretch.  Is anyone else experiencing this?  

18,500 items for sale, 12% PLS, 99.7% FB, free returns, TRS+.  

[good2btru]

I don't know what TSR stands for.  I don't know what STR stands for.  I don't know what C2C stands for.  And I'm confused about promotional listings.  Is the AD fee the only fees I pay or what other fees are associated with these? please help if you can. 

[good2btru]

And why does it say Rising Star by my name.

[edenhallacademy]

Must have no bills or mortgage to pay

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@1funkydude I completely agree. So many small sellers look at these short-term data points and see patterns because our minds look for patterns... The fluctuations, as you say, are actually normal. 

There's no question that data is important, but it is far more useful for true retailers then for small resellers, particularly those of us selling long tail one offs. We rarely have sufficient data to really draw strong conclusions. This is one reason I spend very little time looking at all those nice graphs and charts that eBay provides.

[chapeau-noir]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@1funkydude I completely agree. So many small sellers look at these short-term data points and see patterns because our minds look for patterns... The fluctuations, as you say, are actually normal. 

There's no question that data is important, but it is far more useful for true retailers then for small resellers, particularly those of us selling long tail one offs. We rarely have sufficient data to really draw strong conclusions. This is one reason I spend very little time looking at all those nice graphs and charts that eBay provides.

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Yes, I look at them because I'm a data nerd, but that's about it. My little clothing and miscellany reseller biz is pretty simple.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@chapeau-noir  Back when Harry Temkin was rolling out all this data stuff, I said that it was useful...primarily for the retail type sellers on ebay. Much less useful for the small reseller. And I think one thing that has happened is many small resellers spend considerable time looking at this stuff, and much of it is just a waste of time.

It's a bit like some of the extra data Terapeak provides for various categories etc. For a lot of things I sell, the Terapeak response is that there isn't enough data to show trends. This is sitewide data. It's somewhat similar for the small reseller....ebay can provide us data, but interpreting that data for things like short duration trends is a fool's errand. I sometimes think this stuff should come with disclaimers, just as I've said PLA should come with a disclaimer that says: This is really not for resellers of long tail single quantity listings. 

[cardxcraft]

When you "look" at the data through statistical models, and not your eyes, patterns are revealed..bias is reduced.  

I agree, for my level of selling, it's not as useful.

[onefootflipper]

If you want relatively normal and frequent sales then you need to research your prices instead of guessing them. You have 1200 cassette tapes in your store with 90 percent of them priced at 12.99.  That could not possibly be correct.

You have about 60 pokemon cards listed, all with ridiculous $7.99 shipping (your competition all uses ebay standard envelope), all at either 7.99 or 12.99 and the few I checked prices on were all available from other sellers for under $2 shipped.

You have 1600 VHS tapes also with that minimum 12.99 price point and most of them are tapes that are essentially worthless ($5-$6 shipped from other sellers).

When you guess your prices you are only going to get sales when you guess low or if the market price shifts over time. On a media item $1 too high can be the difference between an item selling in 5 days and an item sitting unsold for 5 years. This is especially important since nearly all media has been trending down in price for years and is likely to continue to do so.

[cardxcraft]

100% agree with flipper regarding price research.  But, it's so important, if enough data pointa exist, to arrange price comp solds by date, beginning with latest date first.  This way you can quickly catch price trends, or current market pricres.

Actually, if you scroll on the solds page, their may be some graphs.  But, I still caution, because you need to compare apples to apples. Research, formerly Terapeak, is only going by data you give it, whereas you, the researcher, can quickly see if its a like or exact item match.  I digress.

[mgtracer1]

So what is the alternative?  your own website?  other marketplaces? 

[dolcetreasures]

Nothing here makes sense.

 

[turtles-trading-post]

Last weekend overnight I had 4 sales.  All of them outside USA.  It's not like they turned the Europe faucet on because my sales were Great Britain, Spain, Canada & Australia.   Go figger!

I never go 24 hours without some sales. But I have 6200 listings and my stuff is cheap.

[jg.mason]

20 hours, I'm on day five of no sales. The end of July into the beginning of August I had all kinds of sales then it slowed up until nothing the last five days.

So for the time being no one's buying what I'm selling, tomorrow it could be a different story.

[jg.mason]

I made a sale last night, all is right with the world. 😂

[blacktopautoparts]

@wilsonharborsales Josh, I have seen you talk about this on your YT videos and PPP podcast. I have gone a good 4-5 hours without a sale during the day and then at night, sales will shutoff around 8-10pm at times and then not come back on till 9-11 am the next morning. It is the strangest thing when it happens and I have just given up trying to figure out why this occurs. The best is when I have 4-6 sales hit within minutes of each other and then it is crickets afterwards. These past 2 years, I have seen some of the most strangest patterns on the platform and not sure what is adding to it.