Offering Free Shipping & Returns

[goldrushfinds]

Does Ebay give 'extreme' preference to listings which offer both free shipping and free returns? If it is not the case, then they are giving ridiculous preference to certain buyers for unknown reasons. The algorithm is making my head explode. Some sellers are selling loads of particular brand name shirts, for far higher prices than competitors. Also selling shirts with poor sell thru rates like wildfire. This is not a fair playing field. 

[goldrushfinds]

Fashun - 

'SEO' - You made me look that one up. 'Search Engine Optimization', now I know what it stands for. I was not a Harvard Business major & as a matter of fact, I never went to Harvard (shock comes over the forum). 

[goldrushfinds]

Magic -

May give it a go. Kareem Abdul Jabbar over and out.

[goldrushfinds]

luckythewinner -

You may be right, but profit margins are mostly just to slim in clothing. Particularly in an area like mine, where rarely does one find a really high value clothing item. Now those folks to the west of me in the San Francisco Bay Area are in the Honey Hole. I see sellers from that area daily listing used clothing item finds in the many multiple hundred dollar category. I can only dream. 

[goldrushfinds]

adrhdi0 -

I do worry about more returns though, since it is free for them. 

[goldrushfinds]

Chapeau - 

You are right in the fact that clothing takes a long time to list and is painstaking. Sales fell thru the floor once they banned the sale of used underwear (just kidding, but it was true that some people fetched high prices for some prized ones). 

[phamtdu_67]

thanks for your suggestions and input

[gjs_16]

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@goldrushfinds wrote:

Does Ebay give 'extreme' preference to listings which offer both free shipping and free returns? If it is not the case, then they are giving ridiculous preference to certain buyers for unknown reasons. The algorithm is making my head explode. Some sellers are selling loads of particular brand name shirts, for far higher prices than competitors. Also selling shirts with poor sell thru rates like wildfire. This is not a fair playing field. 

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Eaby definitely gives preferential results to listings that meet certain criteria, Free shipping and free returns are just two, there are many more... TRS+ is another, powerseller helps, number of photos, conversion (yes, literally how many purchases vs listing views vs pageviews), DSR's, all these criteria and many more go into a complex and often confusing algorithm that determines actual rank in the results.

No, it is not a fair playing field, at least I don't believe it to be.

[chapeau-noir]

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@goldrushfinds wrote:

Chapeau - 

You are right in the fact that clothing takes a long time to list and is painstaking. Sales fell thru the floor once they banned the sale of used underwear (just kidding, but it was true that some people fetched high prices for some prized ones). 

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LOL - I remember the underwear and stinky shoe sellers!