Scavenger Life Episode 274: We Don't Care About eBay Watchers

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Each of us runs our own store using different techniques. One thing we do is ignore if a listed item has watchers or not. All we do is research the item, list it, and then wait for the right buyer. Every year or so we go through older items to see if they can be tweaked, but we know our items are long tail so just need time.

Why do we ignore the number of watchers on an item? What if an older item has ZERO watchers? Shouldn’t that tell us that we’ve done something wrong?

Let’s look at the numbers.
This week we sold 35 items.
11 of those items had zero watchers.
Most of those items have been listed more than a year.
So that’s more than 25% of our sold items with no watchers, selling at full price.

If we had stared at the number of watchers, fretted and second guessed ourselves, then we may have ended up selling items at a fire sale because we might think no one wanted our stuff.

We have a healthy amount of items with large numbers of watchers that haven’t been bought in over a year. If so many people are watching an item, why doesn’t someone pull the trigger? Who knows. What we do know is that someone will eventually buy it. And as long as items are selling each day, it doesn’t really matter what item it is.

This week we mentioned the following links in the podcast:

Shane sent us this article about “fast fashion”. Some companies are putting out new clothing lines every other week, creating a huge stream of unwanted clothes. The US is sending millions of tons of good clothes to the landfill because of the lack of demand.
The eBay 2016 Fall Seller Update is out . Make sure you read it. Takes about ten minutes but keeps you up to date on the small changes eBay is making. These updates come every Fall and Spring.

Hope you had a good week. Happy Labor Day, Trash Elves.

Our Store Week August 28-Sept 3, 2016