Relisting items

[green-night]

I'm curious as to opinions on this:  

All of my listing are BINs and GTC.     After a month or so if I don't have even so much as a watcher I will cancel and relist the item with maybe a few tweaks.   Speaking to an eBay rep tonight he swore up and down to me that was a bad idea and that canceling and relisting like that drags you down in search and it is better to just revise the listing than it is to cancel and relist.   

[mynewfindstore]

Well let me tell you my evidence on "sell similar" versus relisting.  We have 30 day FP listings and most of them were relisting using automation.  This used to work just fine for most of the items.  We did promotions and markdowns but last year, our monthly income kept falling.  In January, we were down around 2 grand under what we should have been selling for the amount of new listings we were putting up daily.  So I started asking other sellers what to do and got some advice....everything that was ending on any given day, I would manually end, sell similar and not just list them as they were....I changed all the titles and prices.  Well guess what, as of now, we are up 2K.  Hope to keep it that way but it would be nice to know if the search is going to change with GTC.  

I think I started doing this almost two months ago....it also helped me catch errors in listings and make sure all the titles and item specifics were correct.  I made sure the title keywords were in the right order as well.  2K doesn't lie....it helped!  Will it continue to help I have no idea!  I would really like to know!  We don't have very many variations listings, most are single items.  Keeping the GTC data might not help that much in most cases, especially if there are no watchers.  

[coolections]

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@green-night wrote:

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Why is 'sell similar' important?   Wouldn't canceling a live listing and relisting it also qualify as a 'new listing'? 

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Because it is NOT new. When you choose to sell similar it is no different than starting all over with a new listing. You are just using a current listing that could be anyone else's current listing similar to what you want to list.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

If you have something on your watch list if it's been relisted it says "the seller has relisted this item" with a link to the relisted item, yes?

A sell similar breaks that 'link' to the new listing.

[kensgiftshop]

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@myjunqueyourtreasure wrote:
I think the rep was wrong as relisting it (assuming you use sell similar) would make it a "new listing".

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I've tried relisting and sell similar, and the only difference I've found is you have to delete the unsold listing if you choose sell similar.

I've always heard sell similar is better, but I don't notice any difference, but one more step that isn't needed..

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

mynewfindstore,

My take is: you say you revised things like prices, titles, caught errors ,checked item specifics, etc. I suspect those factors made the difference, not the ending and the use of sell similar. Once the dust settles on the GTC change, I think you might find that if you just let your GTC listings run , but review and revise the titles, etc, you might find that it was those actions will continue to help your sales The advice to review listings and revise them rather then let them stay as they are indefinitely is advice I've heard from many successful sellers. With GTC you can just keep the listing live and make the changes as your schedule permits.

[mynewfindstore]

There are some of my items that have been selling that have been in our store for well over a year....the changes I made to those listings were not significant, sometimes the price change was only 50 cents, yet they were seen and purchased.  Also, some of those older items now have watchers when there was no interest previously.  I guess I can try just letting some run but I have caught most of the errors now and fixed most of the titles so the order of the keywords is optimal.  

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I've seen sellers state that revising a listing can produce a bump in Best Match....don't know how true that is, but it stands to reason that at least some revisions would provide a bump. Also, item specific changes and additions can have an impact. According to a recent article, quoting an ebay exec, more buyers are using the left side filters in search. many of which are tied to item specifics. If a buyer uses a certain filter to conduct hie search, and you don't have the item specific that matches that filter, your item won't show up in his search results. So, adding an IS could get you a sale because now your listing is showing up in the filtered search. There are so many variables these days....

Personally, I would not do what some sellers do: make revisions just for the sake of getting the (supposed) bump. But when I see things that can be improved, I'll improve them. I do think its helped me with sales. So, best of luck with your sales!