Sales are FINALLY up!

[Anonymous]

I've taken the advice of other sellers here and jumped on the 'sponsored, promoted and couponed' bandwagon.  Apparently, during this BidenCession, it's not enough to just list an item and hope for the best.  According to the knowledgeable futurists, its not going to get better anytime soon. 

President Biden's destruction of the US economy means that brick & mortar places are struggling, discounting, couponing, email marketing and driving web traffic using every available tool.  Customer acquisition and retention is at an all time high, and throughput is almost as important as bottom line P&L.

I've tightened up my sources, set old stock as loss leaders, push coupons and discounts about every 4 hours, decreased handling time and increased return times.  I'm also speed listing using the new tool, decreasing keystrokes, multi-branding, and using the same info multiple times as a sort of cut and paste to keep customers on target.  eBay is sucking more money from me, but there's little we can do, eh?  Complaining is just spilt milk under the bridge.  Let's get on with it!

[donsdetour]

glad you are getting sales and still making a buck doing it...

[Anonymous]

Emphasis on 'a buck'.   A single buck.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

I like your inventory.

[meme6253]

Glad Your Sales Are Increasing, But Please Do Not Blame Biden, Everything Happening Now Was Handed To Him On A Silver Platter By The Former Administration, Where It Was Sitting On The Back Burner Getting Ready To Explode!, & Explode It Did, These Things DO NOT HAPPEN OVERNIGHT!, Look At Past History

[donsdetour]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Emphasis on 'a buck'.   A single buck.

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yep that the way: now if you can do it with all the risks;  say 10,000 times you be doing ok.......

[donsdetour]

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@meme6253 wrote:

Glad Your Sales Are Increasing, But Please Do Not Blame Biden, Everything Happening Now Was Handed To Him On A Silver Platter By The Former Administration, Where It Was Sitting On The Back Burner Getting Ready To Explode!, & Explode It Did, These Things DO NOT HAPPEN OVERNIGHT!, Look At Past History

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who is in power at the time of decisions is always to blame no mater the cause...

American politics it is...

[ckimodog]

Congrats on your sales improving!  Wishing you many more!!

[Anonymous]

Who else would be taking all the risks?  Isn't that the way capitalism is supposed to work?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@Anonymous  Just glancing at your mens clothing section, and never having looked at your store before, I'm curious: have you been doing this all along, or is this one of the changes you've made? I'm talking about offering a couple shirts together, and, for dress shirts, throwing a tie in with the shirts? Your average price for two dress shirts and a tie is  (I'm guessing) highly competitive, and of course is clearly the result of the fact that, as you note, you get these items for free as one of the benefits of owning a dry cleaning business.  

I like the idea, and, while I don't get shirts for free, I have quite a few ties here , and when I finally start digging out some of my dress shirts, I like the idea of offering a shirt and tie combo (I know this is fairly common in the retail clothing sector, or at least it used to be).  Do you feel it really helps you make the sale? 

[juice_1212]

My sells are up as well. But I've done none of that. Haven't changed a single thing I do year in and year out. It's well known the summer is a slow season and sells pick up in September. Sounds like you're spending money when it wasn't necessary.  

[inhawaii]

I'm glad your sales are up.

It may or may not have been attributed to your  participation in promoted listings. 

Just as many sellers will tell you that PL is a waste of money.

But if you signed up for PL then your sales went up, that must be the reason.

Congrats! 

[Anonymous]

I started my eBay journey way back in the 90s with another eBay account called 'thetieguy'.  At that time, I was exclusively selling ties.  Then along came Casual Friday and, eventually, Casual Every Day, which almost entirely killed off the tie market.

I don't actually get the shirts for 'free' as they have the built-in value we've added for the cold water laundering & pressing service, which is about $4 per shirt at cost.  The ties we kick in are about $2-3 each, even the 'high end' ties, as we are including the value we've added, not the actual item cost.  For some reason, around here, there's TONS of JZ Richards ties floating around, and we have way more than our share.

With an 'all in' cost of $10, we should sell them for around 100% markup/50% profit - so eBay price of around $20.  But then we include the shipping as a 'free' within the listing, because eBay bumps the listings with 'free' shipping into their own category, and often to the top of the search list.  So that means a listing price of around $29.

We've just recently added the 'sponsored' bump up, plus a 'coupon price' bump up, and are sending custom price reductions of 10% every 4 hours or so to whomever has clicked on the item.

All in all, sales are up, profits are about the same, and we're getting rid of many 90 day or older items by recovering the cost+shipping into a breakeven category.  As the old saying goes, "I am less interested in the return ON my money, than the return OF my money."

In the current recessionary client, it seems that more automation, higher throughput, and increased sales volume of any type will bail us out of the sizable hole dug by remarkably stupid democrat policies and choices.  I have at least 300 shirts waiting to list, and around 500 pairs of jeans cataloged and ready to go, as well.  Clothing sales are just simply slower in the summer.  Rolling with the flow for almost 14 years now...  LOL

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Thanks. An interesting approach. When you mention "more automation" it sounds like part of that is ebay's new listing tool?  I use a third party listing tool---SixBit---so haven't really used that to list, but I've used it to revise, and at least for that purpose, it seems fine (especially as ebay has made improvements to the tool). But I've seen a lot of people who are very unhappy with the new listing tool, and I've been unsure how much of that stems from the usual resistance to change and how much is due to actual problems with the tool. So you feel it is an improvement over the old tool, and saves you time?

And you also mention, in your original post...mutli-branding. Just what is that? 

[Anonymous]

Yes, more automation is the new listing tool plus all of the pre-built templates, which save a bunch of keystrokes per listing.   I have all 50 templates filled up with every variation I can think of, given my current stock.  I do not like the table refresh mode which takes a few seconds to reset the tables every **bleep** time I click on them, but what are ya gonna do? 

"It's not a bug, it's a feature." said eBay's engineers.

I built the HTML to give my mobile listings a little more color and interest a week or so ago:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/234690712677  Getting the 'look' I want using the balance between browser, mobile browser and app is tedious.  Last month, I tried almost nothing in the Item Description field, and almost everything in the Item Specifics field, just to make it easier to build each listing, but it ended up looking stupid on the app.

It's a constant play between the 'progress' eBay wants to force on us and the reliability and repetition to which we've grown accustomed.