Variations question

[bjpack]

I have hundreds of CDs that I am going to be listing and I discovered the variations feature. The Ebay help was not that helpful but I did figure out how to do a listing where I vary the name.  I noticed that my listing  does have the drop-down available that shows all of the CDs but the quantity shows as 1 and then says "1 available/0 sold."

Is the quantity supposed to represent how many of each variation (doesn't seem to make sense as these can vary) or should my quantity be the total number of CDs in the listing? When I created the listing, Ebay did show a quantity of 6, the total number included in this particular listing.

Also, will each CD disappear or be marked 'sold' as they are sold? I did review previous messages on this and see there are many associated glitches but it would be helpful for me to know what is SUPPOSED to happen.

Thank you.

[bjpack]

Also, I did see many posts citing that this may be a violation. I am okay taking the risk and if it is pulled, it will be a lesson learned for me. I am still curious about the answer to the questions. Thanks again!

[nobody*s_perfect · Accepted solution]

The "Quantity available" refers to the quantity of the specific variation item that has been selected. Not to the total quantity offered in the whole listing.

When a variation is sold out, the entry will still show up on the drop-down list but it will be grayed out and show (Sold).

[cynthealee2]

I would group them either my artist or Genre

And keep the price the same for each CD 

Nothing drives the buyers madder than to see 1.99 price then click into the listing and see the item they actually want is 9.99 and the 1.99 is for something different.

[rpalma]

I think this is an example of what you mean:

323977731998

I think it's iffy from ebay's perspective, but it really is a great way to sell cds and possibly get multiple purchases from a single buyer.

If you do variations, they will go out of stock individually and the quantity is per variation.

I agree you should have them all the same price.

You can delete variations as they sell (edit the listing and remove the variation which will delete the photo as well). Possibly the complaint from customers is about differentiated pricing and that "out of stock" variations show  up (or used to) in search, so if you had one Beatles cd and they are searching for that, your listing might show up even after the cd had sold.

If you are going to do this, fileExchange is your friend.

Also, you know you can list by UPC and ebay will fill the info and add a stock photo, right? Because that is going to be the quickest way to get listings for relatively low value items.

The other option is to list them individually (NOW due to 50k free listings from ebay) and create a marketing promotion (NOT promoted listings) to encourage multiple sales.

I have tried this and the sell through rate isn't great, but I have had some multiple purchases. I will end this when the free 50k listings goes away. I've put the shipping costs relatively high to discourage individual purchases but still have people buying a single cd when they could pay a little more and get 4.

[bjpack]

Thank you. My initial plan is to have separate auctions by artist using the variations to allow for each separate CD. That is a great idea for when I get to the point where I have fewer CDs per artist.