Selling increase question - *positivity only please*

[estatesalequeen]

I imagine we all have times when we start to panic over lack of sales. I really want to know what others are doing that sparks the coveted Cha Ching.

What do you do to increase sales? 

Is there one thing you do that has worked consistently? or at all?

For me? It has been luck and a prayer. I am looking for more concrete ideas. 

Thanks!

[coolections]

For me it is I get rid of anything that does not sell at my profit point. So if I list something expecting at least $$ amount and very few watchers and no buyers within 30 days I remove it from Ebay and donate. The reason is I have no room for junk and if I leave it there it aides in lowering my sell-through rate. On Ebay low sell through is not a good thing for your standings. The other thing I do to increase sales is stay very competitive with others selling the same thing. I am always slightly below the average seller in price, and way lower than those sellers asking ridiculous prices. Once again it helps the sell-through and keeps me on top of best match.

[slippinjimmy]

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@estatesalequeen wrote:

What do you do to increase sales? 

Is there one thing you do that has worked consistently? or at all?

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List better quality* Items and more of them.

*quality = higher customer demand

[ifyouloveit]

Lately I have been doing quite well with making the buyer an offer. I price very competitively so there is not a lot of wiggle room, but I do quite well when I offer the buyer couple dollars off. Still hit a profit margin I am happy with, and I am making sales this way.

The other thing I do is move stale merchandise out. If it's been around for awhile, I'll get it out here at a great sale price, or throw it in auction. On these items that aren't selling, I am happy to get my money back or close to it as I would be donating them anyway.

If you open more than one account, you can switch up and put a slow mover on another selling ID, it helps too, I often sell those items.

Stagnant listings are not good on any selling platform, they just drop down in search results. Take them down, shoot new photos if the item is worth some change and you think it might be your photos or descriptions. Put it up again as a brand new listing with new photos.

Don't keep re listing or selling similar the same items more than a couple times, most of the time they just die.

That's my current strategy, working pretty well. As eBay changes, I change with it.

Good luck selling and sell lots and lots and lots!!!

[ifyouloveit]

PS Sometimes taking free shipping off and having the buyer pay it will sell it as well. I often do that before I fire sale it. Some buyers do not like free shipping, so I do play around with that. And International buyers fall off if they are paying the free shipping that's wrapped up into the item for the USA, then they pay on top. Switch it up 🙂

[chapeau-noir]

Consistently listing, every day if I can - that's by far the most important thing for me.

[estatesalequeen]

Are you listing new items daily or relisting/sell similar items you already have?

[gamersbaystore]

Promotional offers do often work to drive more sales for me, but not always. Things like percentage off sales, buy 2 get 1 free, and shipping/volume discounts, etc, can all help to bring more sales.

Sales have been incredibly slow for me this past few months, but the buy 2 get 1 free offer has definitely driven a lot more sales than I would've had otherwise. I am getting fewer sales lately, but more and more of them are for multi-quantity purchases.

A lot of people are buying 3 movies instead of 1, and I had one video game buyer recently who purchased 9 games all at once. Without that promotion, I doubt I would have gotten those sales.

Another thing that helps is to be proactive in listing new items for sale and diversifying what you have to offer. For instance, maybe not everyone is looking to buy a video game, but maybe I can sell them something else like a movie instead.

It also doesn't hurt to have a few really good deals to help draw more attention back to your other listings. Its what retailers call "Loss Leaders", items that are sold at a loss with the hopes you will buy something else. 

ebay does have a habit of ranking the best deals the highest. More traffic often equates to more sales, so its something worth considering.

[inhawaii]

Luck and prayers work for me.   😉

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Consistently listing, every day if I can - that's by far the most important thing for me.

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Same here. The more new stuff I list (new as in never been listed, not relists or sell similars) the more older stuff I'll sell.   Activity on the account tends to bring things up that had been languishing for a while.

I've tried to list at least three or four new items daily for the past month. It shows in my stats - I'm up 120% over the past thirty days, and up 4% over last year at this time - and probably 70% of those were sales of older items.   When the ground dries up and I can finally get outside I won't be regularly listing anymore until November, and everything will slide back down and I'll be selling only 10-15 items a month, unless I find the time to list more new stuff.

[jerzee908]

Are your shipping prices correct?

I seen a platter that is $30 or B/O, but the shipping cost would be $50.  I know shipping isn't cheap in a lot of cases and you sell items that need to be packed well, but that seems a bit high for shipping.

[gamersbaystore]

You really remove listings after just 30 days? Almost half my sales this last 3 months were for items listed almost a year ago. Its like well over 100+ sales.

I get what you're saying about sell through rates too, its not good to have really low traffic to sales ratios, ebay will rank you lower. As for the items that aren't selling, I would sooner drop the price than remove such listings.

Handling times too can affect visibility. ebay practically cut my traffic to zero when I offered 2 day handling, which seems really unfair.

[nuclearomen]

there is no book of guides, every seller does different things that are usually based off the type of items they typically sell... so for instance, looking at your past sales and what items did well or better over others is always a good thing to keep an eye on. Looking at other sellers selling the same or similar items, how are they doing, does it look like their items are moving or not and if so what are they charging, what is delivery method and time frame and cost etc... is also another good thing to periodically look at. Some people use terapeak research for items they sell or are thinking of selling. Or there is always the chance that what your selling there is just no desire or demand for at the moment. 

[femmefan1946]

I find that Promoted Listings have been good to me.

Still in the "anecdote is not data" stage, but sales have been up since I started using 1% Promoted Listings.

Interestingly, it isn't the promotions that are selling. I see many many (like 10x) the Views on PL as I see on non-promoted, but sales are still mostly the non-promoted listings.

So I'm apparently getting sales, but not paying for the promotion. Woot!

Again, anecdote is not data, and I'll have to do a comparison when I have a few more months of PL  to compare with 2019 nad 2018.

I've also been buying fewer books which have slowed to a crawl over the past few years (first started selling books in 2001) and moved to many more sewing patterns, particularly plus sizes.  On another account, I have moved to higher value/higher grade products and that has gone well too. So, I think the actual product being sold is important.

[chapeau-noir]

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@estatesalequeen wrote:
Are you listing new items daily or relisting/sell similar items you already have?

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I do both - usually about 8 new fresh listings and maybe 3-4 old ones that I revamp.  Sometimes I don't have old ones and I just list fresh ones, 8 or so, every day.