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RANK.
Where do you fall? Sometimes sellers sort of tell stories like “I listed a bunch bottlecaps, and I sold a bottlecap in my store I have had for years! How funny!” No, that’s not a funny thing – it’s rank in category.
This year, I am trying a new category (since October). It’s going great, but I am low man on the rank pole. Lots of sellers with successful sales in the category will sell / be shown to buyers before my item. I am making progress, but it’s taking time. I DO lower prices/ run sales to get conversion and show ebay gods that I am successful in the category.One of my tricks to help conversion, is to get little cheapies to sell within the category/brand where I make lower profit, but helps rank me as a successful seller selling XYZ.
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–So the more you sell in a category, the higher your items are? If you’re willing to sell lower than everyone else, it’d make sense you’d sell more.
–Is this category a collectible/vintage item? Or is it a new commodity item? There will be a difference since the commodity item will be of the same new quality as all the others.Just curious where you’re getting the info from.
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Let’s take remote controls since you just listed a bunch of them. If there are 100 of your same remote controls of same condition, model, etc showing up John’s Electronics (made up store name) are going to show up as a preferred before yours for best match and possibly even more than that if you believe ebay hides listings to make it an even playing field where both You and John can win.
This is b/c John’s Electronics sell electronics day in and day out and are higher ranked than you in the category.
For vintage items, I think it also there but different a bit. So, a buyer is looking up military patches let’s say. Sellers with military patch and adjacent sales history will appear first to buyer and they get preferential rank for best match (best match to this particular buyer, not to ebay as a whole).This is why big sellers talk about going niche all the time – b/c the see the faster sales as they snowball sales by listing same / similar category items.
No, I can’t point to anything in the ebay handbook that says this is true, but this is what I think happens.
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I see trends in my store all the time that support bcfol440’s theory… For instance I have a handful of belts listed for years – never sold… One day I will accept a low ball offer on a belt to move it. Then I will check my “watchers” soon after and there will be not just one or two but three or four other belts that have been sitting for years all of a sudden with watchers and views… It’s like the belt sale upped my ranking in this category and now for a while it will have some popularity in search and then slowly go back down again. This also happens with certain toys, and jewelry and many other things. My gut feel (no proof other than anecdotal) is that sales in a particular category give you a temporary boost in rank in that particular category…
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Cool. I wonder what kind of volume you’d need to sell quickly to get noticed by eBay. I assume we’re talking about those sellers that sell 500 items a week in a specific category.
For sellers like us who sell, <50 items a week across all categories combined, I bet the volume isn't there. It's just easier for us to list what we find.
Let us know how you're experiment goes. I'd be interested in the tracking of your rank in a category + what it took to get there.
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One other thought… so there is an argument for having a “niche” market … but also another argument for having a huge volume “general store” like Jay & Ryan’s with 8000+ items… you are going to have a lot of good opportunities to gain good category rankings in a lot of different categories… helping your overall store in search rankings.
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Taking offers increases your rank b/c it shows you as a successful seller. So, yes, accepting offers does just more than get you cash in hand it shows you as a ebay seller willing to do business and make sales within the category.
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bcfo: I can also add anecdotal evidence to this as well. When one dress shirt sells, many start to sell. Same with suits, shoes, etc.
There is some brand specificity in clothing on this as well. I notice that brands will tend to group together as well. So not just a shirt, but a Brooks Brothers shirt will sell, then other Brooks Shirts sell too.
It makes sense, that if you had a successful sale, eBay promotes your items over items that don’t have sales (within the search parameters of the buyers obviously), but that is why sales history is so important, both on your account as well as on a listing.
If buyers are buying a type of listing, eBay wants to show similar listings to other buyers. Velocity is what they want.
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This is where Im confused:
–If I sell the X Product, it makes sense that eBay would promote my listing if its a new and I’m selling multiples. This is like the Amazon “buy box”.
–But if you have 100 totally different Brook Brothers shirts, why would eBay promote your listings since they are different from each other?
–Why would eBay promote your item instead of just promote the next item with the best price/match, regardless of seller?
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@Jay: “100 Totally Different Brooks Brothers shirts” — That is the relative issue.
When most people search, they would type “Brooks Brothers Dress Shirt” then maybe the size or color. When I look right now under “Brooks Brothers Dress Shirt 16”, I get 5,840 active listings right now.
So with that volume, how does eBay rank order the results for Best Match? Prior sales history is something that they look at. Stores with sales of similar items that have had recent sales will move higher in search. It doesn’t mean you move to the top, just higher. As eBay says, lots of factors go into where you rank in search, but prior sales history is one of them.
I completely agree that how the person enters search terms, uses the item specific filters at the left, whether they sort by price or best match, etc. all go into this as well. They will never divulge the true Cassini algorithm. So this isn’t a “magic bullet” or anything that can truly be measured.
But I can tell you that, as someone who sells a lot of similar items, these things go in waves for a day or so. When we had some makeup sales in the past where we had multiples of the same or similar item, when one would sell, then it was a snowball for a day or so.
Is this something I think that you can use to your advantage? Probably not. I think in may areas, the market is too big. Now if you are a market influencer in the niche, yeah you might be able to use it a bit. But I don’t think that it moves quite that much, at least not enough to change my behavior.
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This just sounds more like noticing coincidences, rather than the sale of 1 item directly leads to selling additional like items.
If you have a large number of the same type of item in your store, you will be more likely to sell a greater number of that item compared to items you have a lesser number of. I don’t believe selling 1 specific item on EBay will necessarily lead to additional sales of that same type of item, unless you have a repeat customer specifically coming back to buy a similar item to what they originally purchased.
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@ Almasty: I would agree that just one sale may not create a tide, but it can start one. Again, I have just seen too many times that I can get one sale on a type of item, then a second, then 4, and then lots more over a short period of time (1-2 days). Then it dies back down. And they are always similar items and usually similar brands of that item.
No rhyme or reason to it that I can figure except that while people were searching, we were moving up in the category for a while, then it died back down.
It is easier to understand that Cassini is the cause then a nationwide spike in the desire for Brooks Brothers Dress Shirts… 🙂
Dunno… Understanding Cassini is as hard to figure as understanding buyer behavior…
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Certainly coincidences can be true. I guess I have enough “coincidences” to notice a trend over time. So, I’m going with it and leveraging my buying to move inventory when I need to.
Jay – ebay likes a happy buyer. So they present the option to the buyer that makes them most happy. Whether it’s a seller who leads the category in product and customer feedback, zip code, etc. It’s not the only thing, but it certainly is one of the things.
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Just throwing in out of left field here – I’ve noticed that when I LIST in a category, I start to pick up sales in that category. So listing activity as well as sales activity helps to bump up ranking, perhaps?
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@Amatino: Yep, I’m betting listing in a category helps the algorithm as well.
But at the end of the day, none of us know, and none of us can prove any of it.
I do know that, at least for us:
1) The more I list, the more I sell
2) The more I sell, the more I sellSo, list and sell.
Deep advice, right? 🙂
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All this talk about trying to understand Cassini reminds me of the movie “The Maze Runner”. They are not told how the maze works of what secrets it has. They just have to do trial and error to figure out how to get out of the maze. The creators will not tell them anything, they have to figure it out on their own.
So it is with Cassini. We are not told how it works and its secrets, we just have to do trial and error to figure it out. Of course, the creators will not tell us much of anything.
Are we in an ebay Maze of some sort?
Mark
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My experience has been the same as ebaymom’s. I agree with “My gut feel (no proof other than anecdotal) is that sales in a particular category give you a temporary boost in rank in that particular category…”
I’ve noticed that when I take an offer or sell a BIN sewing pattern I suddenly get a few sales on the same day in that catagory. I have sewing patterns listed all the time so I would expect them to just average out to a certain # of sales per month. But it seems I either sell none at all or 3 in a day.
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Well I’m listing AND accepting offers, yet I’m only getting 1 sale a day in completely unrelated categories one to the next.
Explain that one!-
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Retro, seriously, I enjoy tracking your numbers because you have the same size store as me. Consistently and predictably and for probably most of 2018 you would sell TWICE as much as me dollar wise almost every week on the bread and butter type sales. I noticed your very uncharacteristic drop in sales these past several weeks – it really doesn’t make sense why that would happen out of the blue – especially if you have done nothing different than what you normally do – continue to list, sell, and promote the same as before…
The only times I have noticed weird random drops in sales have coincided with times I have had return issues with buyers and have started reporting them and adding them to my blocked bidder list. I would have never mentioned this on the board before because frankly it sounds too “Conspiracy Theory” to me – but – just wondering – have you happened to have any weird returns, buyer issues, etc. lately??
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No not really. I’ve never noticed any change in my store in relation to returns.
March is just a bad month for me. I’ve also become very unbalanced in what items I have listed. I am pretty much only listing clothes and shoes. I used to list a bunch of odds n ends across a bunch of categories and would sell most of it. I have a few totes of these items I’ve been eyeing in my death pile and I think I need to list them soon.
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This. Unless you sell the exact same item all year long, it’s very difficult to be sure of any pattern.
But if you sell a jumble of random, unique listings, there’s a hundred different reasons why sales go up and down. Maybe I have fewer shoes in my store. Maybe no one wants to buy my men’s shorts. Maybe people want xmas items and I don’t have them stocked.
Our inventories are always changing. People’s wants are always changing. Other sellers’ inventories are always changing. Too many variables.
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I have brewing up s new theory that goes like this:
People buy something if they want it and you have it at a price they find to be reasonable.
I know!!! Crazy!
13 sales in the past week (have scaled back) – 7 of those had been up for at least a year, 6 were listed this week.
Every item from a different category. 4 sold in a cluster tonight. 1 was s repeat customer!But one the one thing they all had in common! Somebody wanted them!
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