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So I was going in to promote some new listings today and noticed an odd trend on my promoted listings graph. I do promoted listings, but I usually only add new listings to promoted listings every couple of months. My theory is that I want all of the items that would sell within 90 days without promoted listings to sell and not be charged the PL fee. So after 90 days I add a bunch of new listings that haven’t sold. I usually get a good boost after that in sales.
So I’ve listed a bunch of items this month but have NOT added anything to promoted listings. Now take a look at the graph and notice the big spikes in promoted listing impressions. This month I’ve only been listing on Saturdays and Sundays – most of my new listings go live on Sunday. Every time I’ve done my listing uploads, I get a big spike in promoted listing views, even though only my old items are promoted.
So That means my new listings are giving my old listings a big bump in views, but ONLY on the actual day I’m listing.
So instead of adding any items to promoted listings, I’m going to space out my new listings over the next week at around 5 a day and see what this promoted listings impression chart does. If it stays high all week then that is concrete evidence that listing daily improves your store visibility.
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This is great info, and seems to line up with what @annaesthetic23 mentioned in this post where she discusses some of the things she learned from eBay corporate through their Up and Running conferences. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to your sales after spreading out the listings.
There seems a lot of evidence that listing at least a few new items every day is one of the best practices to increase sales. Like you, I have a habit of not listing for a few days and then doing big batches of new listings on the weekends, but I think it’s worth the effort to try and correct that.
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So I have listed daily for two weeks. My sales are up, but strangely, my impressions and overall views metrics are down. I am no longer getting spikes in PL impressions, and the impressions I am getting are lower.
I still get FAR more impressions from promoted listings than I do organic impressions. So I decided to add all the recommended items (174 total), to my Promoted listings campaigns.
Hopefully adding these items to PL gives me a boost in sales going into the weekend. I’d LOVE to crack $1500 in sales this week. This morning I’m at $900 and 23 items sold.
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Anna mentioned not allowing more than 2 or 3 days to go by without activating a listing, so I’ve been employing scheduled listings for this (because I also tend to complete listings in chunks). I have just under 200 items in my store and before this I would have at least one 10 day streak per month of no sales. After 30 days of daily listing, I haven’t had more than 3 days pass without a sale. So now I can estimate that I need to roughly triple my store to get to the daily sale mark, which also coincides with what Jay and Ryanne talk about (getting to around 500 items is when the store starts to take off).
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As my own little experiment, and a sort of personal scavenger’s revolution, I have listed at least 3 items every day since February 1st, and more often between 5-10. Prior to this, I would list inconsistently — 4 days one week, 5 the next, sometimes just 1 new listing on one or two of the days and then 30 new listings on another day. 3000+ item store, mostly focused on one niche (trading cards). I sell at least 50 items even on slow weeks. It’s very rare that I go a day without a sale, but maybe once or twice a month I have a slow day of just a few low dollar sales — less than $100 total. Usually I will have a $500+ sales day on one (or more) of Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
I’ve noticed since I’ve started listing every day that the low days are not quite as low. My two lowest sales days this month are February 1st ($100.16) and February 22nd ($106.59). Every other day was at least $150 in sales. I have also been sending watchers to offers every day the last few weeks, something else I think I’m going to try and continue.
Like you @retro-treasures-wv my listing impressions and page views are down from last month. Impressions down 25% and views 16%. I have never looked at these numbers before, so I wonder how much of that is normal decrease from January to February. I would bet if we had the data that these numbers would be up from the same period one year ago.
I have never used promoted listings, so that might be the next experiment to play around with.
Unrelated to numbers — it feels very satisfying to list every day. Focusing on listing every day has allowed me to build up a nice backlog of listings with pictures done, so all I have to do now is the research and create the listing, which are the parts of listings I enjoy most. I’ve also tackled some death pile / “I don’t feel like taking pictures of that or researching it” items. I don’t think those listings are perfect, but they’re done and I can always mess around with them at another time if they don’t sell.
If you’re struggling to list consistently, or have large death piles, I think there’s enough evidence in this thread and other posts that developing a system where you list every day is an important step. Even if it’s just 2 or 3 listings a day for a few weeks or a month. I’m going to stick with it for now and curious how it will affect my numbers next month or three months down the line.
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If you’re struggling to list consistently, or have large death piles, I think there’s enough evidence in this thread and other posts that developing a system where you list every day is an important step. Even if it’s just 2 or 3 listings a day for a few weeks or a month. I’m going to stick with it for now and curious how it will affect my numbers next month or three months down the line.
And a bit different than sports cards, when selling things of varying size/weight style it pays to have a system to deal with the new listings and getting them into inventory. I have a bin setup in my listing area.
I keep a bin of unlisted items next to my desk. I list them and move them to 2 large bins for “awaiting photos”. After I photograph I have 3 large bins for listed by uninventoried items. Then I list 5 or so items a day from the photographed items. On the weekend I deal with the listed but inventoried items. The large things go on my large item shelving and all the smaller “binnable” items get placed in numbers bins that go on my normal shelves.
Having this process flow system is IMPORTANT to be able to list consistently rather than in a big dump. I can jump in at any station and do work and it stays neat and organized and I have enough room in the uninventoried new listings so I can just deal with that once a week – usually sunday and it doesn’t impede my listing and/or photographing.
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And a bit different than sports cards, when selling things of varying size/weight style it pays to have a system to deal with the new listings and getting them into inventory. I have a bin setup in my listing area.
This is definitely a key, and I am just at the beginning of seeing the effects of what it’s like to have a listing area that is consistently clean and organized.
I have had an extremely organized inventory system with the individual cards — by sport and by player’s last name — since I had less than 500 listings in my store. It was a problem that was easy to solve and the basic system has worked for me ever since.
But my storage of larger items (some autographed items and occasionally other niches I am interested in like books and media) has always been more haphazard, just pile it all on shelves. And the same for to-be-listed items. It was always a priority to get the main tasks taken care of — shipping, buying new inventory, creating new listings — than it was to keep the eBay room clean. Or even to keep piles from building up on the desk that I use for listing, shipping and photos of larger items.
But it got to a point over the last year where it was too much mess. Always stepping over things and constantly shifting piles around or not quite knowing where something was. I realized that I was making enough profit every week that I could afford to slow down a bit, and think through my processes more and organize my space better. This was also when I decided to try and follow through with listing every day, which has been a success so far. I’m not all the way organized yet, but in a few more months I will be.
It is a WORLD of difference having a clean space versus a messy space. This is probably obvious, but it’s really difficult to grow your store and keep your inventory well organized and keep your space tidy. But this is some of the best time I have spent on my eBay business in the last year. It’s made it so much easier to stick to my goal of creating at least a few new listings each day, and inspired me to think about how to adapt these systems if I start buying and selling in other niches or move to a larger space beyond a bedroom.
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Since this podcast ended I looked for another one and found https://www.dailyrefinement.com/ I do not agree with all he says but I gave some of his info a chance. I too would list items live in batches. For example, if I went to garage sales on Saturday I would photograph and list all of the items that Saturday and Sunday. Stuff would sell. I would not have any items to list for the rest of the week. After listening to this new podcast he feels strongly about listing every day even if it is just a few items. He preaches listing all of your items as drafts and then listing from drafts every day. So I started to do this, at first 1 item per day. I am up to 4 items per day. I have not had such great sales as I had in the last few months. I started this in November and though the sales were good due to Christmas but they have kept up. I have to evaluate how many drafts I have to determine if I can move to list more items per day. I can see the sales building. Of course, you have to build up your drafts with the inventory. But it seems to work. besides, it is less work for me. Here is my process
- Get items
- Photograph items
- Make listing
- Add photos to the listing
- Save as draft ( I do all on my iPad/iPhone)
- Every day list the required amount of listings
It works great because if you go on vacation you still have drafts saved up to cover those days. My big issue is getting more inventory to keep this up. He mentions if you list 10 items per day you can see a certain level of returns. He says this is because eBay likes consistent people.
I have not looked at my impressions for me the increase in sales is good enough. I am not sure how many drafts you can have.
Marc
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