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I’ve been thinking about spinning off about half my store into another one. The reason is that I have almost no repeat customers or multiple item sales to customers, and I think part of the reason is because of weak branding and somewhat unrelated items. I sell mostly clothing, but like specific niches of clothing. Someone looking for a kid’s Halloween costume may not be also looking to pick up a military jacket for instance.
However, I’m wondering if this is really just more work for not a lot of pay off.
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This has been discussed now and again over the years here in depth but it is a topic probably due for a resurrection, since it seems to be a different eBay, post pandemic. I added a second store several years ago to sell postcards and other small ephemera in part to have a branding focus for that market. I used Easy Auctions Tracker to keep track of the bookkeeping for both stores pretty easily but it turned out to be not worth the trouble so I’ve wound it down. I think it’s pretty hard to build repeat customers and multiple item sales unless you have a large store in a hot niche for collectors’ items. I’m thinking sports cards, for example, but I know nothing about clothes. In your case I think you’d have to ask yourself whether an individual person would buy a lot of the specific clothing niche you’re thinking of spinning off to get those repeat buyers and multiple sales. Are there many people out there building a closet full of X who’ll buy more X from you? There are several strong niche store sellers here that’ll hopefully chime in.
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This is always a great topic for discussion. I used to do this back in the day — media items on one ID, trading cards and sports memorabilia on another. I think it was when I was at that place where I had enough listings for a basic store but not nearly enough to justify the cost of the next level up.
Since the new ebay algorithm weighs new listings so heavily, I think that right now having one store for everything is almost always the right decision, if only because you will get more buyers by having more listings.
I think it’s pretty hard to build repeat customers and multiple item sales unless you have a large store in a hot niche for collectors’ items. I’m thinking sports cards, for example…
I get repeat customers and multiple item sales every so often in the sports cards niche, but both are rare even though I have almost 10,000 feedback and 0 negatives or neutrals and I go the extra mile to provide the best customer service. I imagine they are almost non-existent for smaller stores or sellers who have a lackadaisical attitude about customer service. Most collectors chase after very specific wants for their collection, and flippers look for the good deals to flip. These impulses, more than anything else, is what drives them send that offer or click the buy it now. I send out coded coupons to buyer groups every so often and get a few extra sales that way and a few times a week I’ll get a repeat buyer or multi item sale. So the tools we have been given from eBay help somewhat, and they are all worth trying.
But mostly eBay is still the unglamorous work: list a pile of items, wait a few days for one to sell, a few weeks for another sale, and a few months or years for another.
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Interesting, thanks for the insight! I see what you both are saying about it likely not making sense unless you are some collector-type shop. I sell a lot of one-offs, many of them vintage, or few of them on eBay. I wonder then why eBay seems to be pushing somewhat this metric of repeat customers if many stores are like mine?
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I have three stores, one was clothes and hats only, but I’m transitioning it to very small items that I can take along on road trips to ship from the road (so I can leave one store turned on). The other two should really be combined. In hindsight, I wish I had stuck with one store:) I rarely get a repeat customer in any of the three. And signing in and out of each store when listing/selling and checking offers is a pain and a time waster. I sell one of a kind items, mostly vintage. Hope this helps.
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Cheryl, if you are doing this from a computer rather than a phone, you can log in to each store with a different browser and then you don’t have to keep logging in and out.
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I have one store and I do get some repeat customers. I believe this is because despite previously listing almost anything, I am now heavily into the craft/sewing niche. I’m guessing my repeat customers are followers of my store who buy again when they get an email from eBay showcasing my new listings.
That being said, having other weird items that are not in my niche (I still have a lot of those types of items listed) never seems to stop niche buyers from shopping my store. I agree with Craig Rex that “mostly eBay is still the unglamorous work: list a pile of items, wait a few days for one to sell, a few weeks for another sale, and a few months or years for another.” It seems to be more about waiting for the right buyer for each listing rather than exactly what your store contains as a whole.
I’ve found that listing every day is the trick to better sales, along with the obvious: good photos, good feedback, good customer service, good prices. I believe having just one store is favorable to the algorithm: listing more in one store each day rather than listing less per store in multiple stores is the optimal way to insure the eBay algorithm is in your favor.
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I have had one account for 17 years. For the first 5 years I sold everything but clothing. The past 12 I have sold primarily mens clothing. In both setups, there were repeat buyers.
My current store has around 3800 listings. I run everything BIN/OBO. I like to constantly encourage multiple item purchases. To do so, I have a promotion set up storewide “Buy 2 get 1 free + free shipping” pretty much year round. The promo only works when the buyer uses “add to cart”, and automatically blocks purchases made with best offer. I notify the potential buyers of the B2G1 promo though the offers to watchers, as an alternative “haggle free” buying option. The buyer goes away feeling like they got a great deal, and I sell 3 items without having to respond to any offers, for around the same combined price I would have tried to haggle for separately.
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Some good insights here. My random old stuff is taking much longer to sell now. My monthly sell through rate has been about 3% since early in the year, which is lower than it has ever been since I started on eBay. If I stay at 3% but grow my store, then I make more money. But I’ll also get on board with eBay’s new game. VintageTreasures is on to something. I do have items in a couple collectibles categories that I know have some of those coveted enthusiast buyers out there. Those have really slowed down for me too, but there is a lot of competition. I plan on trying to focus my sourcing on those categories and use eBay features such as coupons to get some of those enthusiast buyers to come back to my store. And try and list a little every day.
“I wonder then why eBay seems to be pushing somewhat this metric of repeat customers if many stores are like mine?”
That’s a good question. It doesn’t seem to make much sense for traditional eBay scavenger sellers who list whatever they find across many categories. I believe it stems from the current eBay focus on certain categories that attract obsessive collectors and expensive items. An eBay announcement in May said that “sustained investment in focus categories continues to pay off, as we double down on trust and authenticity, innovation, and engaging enthusiast communities.” If you look at the recent marketing efforts and new site features, they are all aimed at getting deep-pocket collectors to buy more – and to buy more expensive items – in those categories. Which seems to be working for eBay, in that their “enthusiast buyers” buy “71% of all goods sold on eBay – spending an average of $3,000 each year and shopping 30 times a year.” I think it’s really interesting and although it doesn’t seem to be helping my sales at all, it’s actually a lot better than when eBay was trying to compete with Amazon several years back.
One problem is the narrow category focus seems to be leading to progressive declines in the raw numbers of buyers on the site on a daily basis. EBay brushes off those losses as being “low-value” buyers. Unfortunately, those are our buyers of long tail used items that aren’t in hot categories.
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“71% of all goods sold on eBay – spending an average of $3,000 each year and shopping 30 times a year.”
I see from eBay’s “Investor Day” handout that they conflate “High Value Buyers” with “Enthusiast Buyers”, and yet according to their own figures these Enthusiast Buyers are spending an average of 100 dollars on each shop. Out of 147 million buyers 28 million are these Enthusiast Buyers, which is 19%, meaning that the other 81% are real cheapskates.
We’re High Value Scavengers; we list 85.03612% on average of all the interesting long-tail items on eBay. Are they grateful? Nah…
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Interesting; so does this mean that eBay is trying to focus on becoming a high values collectible site and the rest of us scavengers may be left in the dust since future policies will be aimed at focusing on enhancing the HVC categories?
I don’t think there is any evidence eBay is focusing on high values collectibles at the exclusion of other types of sellers. I’m sure Authenticity Guarantee took some resources to set up, but that program will only weed out dishonest and/or scammer sellers which is good for everyone who uses eBay.
If anything, I think changes like the new listing flow make it easier for casual sellers to sell a few items, which in turn makes it easier to convert those users into casual (or frequent) buyers as well. I also think that a lot of subtle improvements, for example to shipping flow, have shown that eBay wants casual users to be comfortable selling on the site. You don’t even need a printer to ship a package anymore!
There have been more than a few times in the last five years where it seemed like eBay was trying to compete with Amazon or wasn’t sure what the best plan was for them. But since the start of the pandemic, and I think a change in leadership within the country, their public announcements seem to recognize that they see the importance in smaller sellers.
Make no mistake, I buy from mega sellers in the trading cards niche all the time, and I know they play by very different rules as far as fees, policies, etc. But most of eBay’s changes in the last two years have made selling on the platform better or easier for me, and some innovations (for example, sending offers to watchers) have been huge improvements. It’s not a perfect platform but it’s amazing how different ebay is now compared to 10 years ago, and still a successful company with a pretty unique niche and much bigger footprint than competitors like Mercari, Poshmark, Etsy, Craigslist, FB Marketplace.
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Bringing in the high value collectibles to eBay is MEGA important and brilliant for all of us. Like it or not, eBay has the (incorrect and out dated) reputation for being a scammy place selling face shaped potatoes.
bringing in these high value markets brings trust to the marketplace overall. eBay becomes THE place for high value items. eBay also becomes a trusted market for All transactions.
amazon is in decline and frankly, sucks with poor shipping habits and fake products.
I’m so glad eBay abandoned the “be like amazon” plan.
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In the eBay UK antique Chinese vase selection, 23 thousand listings, of which 872 don’t come from a seller based in China. The 22 thousand “Old blue glazed porcelain ancient China Qing Dynasty Handmade vases” that do come from China are brand-new, or at least no-one’s offering a relic certificate to go with the 2,600-dollar “Antique Porcelain Qing dynasty yongzheng mark famille rose deer Pine Vase”. This seems to have the effect that other sellers get good prices at auction for their items (big glass vase ) presumably because it’s easy to filter by location.
There doesn’t seem to be any intention on eBay’s part to restrict this new China trade, according to some bloke on YouTube.
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I actually just started a 2nd store but maybe for a little different reason. My wife and son want to go on a cruise and I told them if we could flip stuff on ebay to pay for it then sure! Since my main store is now focused on model trains I figured it made more sense to open a separate store for this little side, side hustle.
To make it a bit of a learning experiment I decided to put some constraints on the store. We are limiting the storage space to a single plastic bin. Everything listed in the store must fit into this one bin. Once the bin is full, older stuff needs to get donated and unlisted. This will hopefully force us to discover small, fast selling items to list. We also are not allowed to spend any of our own money. We each “donated” old personal items that we wanted to get rid of and all future inventory will be purchased using the profits from the sale of these items. I’m also limiting the amount of time spent on the store to 5-6 hours a week, mostly on nights and weekends. I scheduled the first batch of items to go up this week, one a day, we will see if we get the necessary $2,000-$3,000 we need for the cruise by fall of 2023.
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I like the idea! How old is your son (will this be like a teaching experiment for him)?
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My son is 6, I do intend to use it as a way to teach him the value of things and how to make money but he is still young enough that it can be a challenge. I took him to a train show a few weeks ago and he decided to announce to the dealer of the table that we wanted to buy his stuff to sell on ebay, lol!
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@craig-rex That is true they have made it easier for the casual seller to list. I suppose that is encouraging. I agree that the lost direction trying to compete with Amazon was a losing situation and focusing on “collectables” sounds like a solid middle direction with raking in more money while maintaining an authentic connection to the secondhand essence of eBay.
I suppose my fear is just in the way I look at my own business; when I tally up percentages of categories that are at the bottom of the high performing list, I make a mental note to invest less inventory in those categories. If eBay feels that small time quirky/vintage/one-off sellers are not bringing in as much money as the HVC, wouldn’t they be likely to take a similar approach?
@retro-treasures-wv Hey I like that eBay has a reputation for selling face-shaped potatoes! lmao! I think it brings a kind of “Wild West”/treasure hunting attitude that’s fun! We’ll see if the focus on authenticity and high value can extend to all categories in the future. I know when I run across high value clothing items I send them straight to TRR. eBay simply doesn’t attract enough high-value clothing buyers to make it worthwhile, and if you do manage a sale there’s higher risk of getting accused of selling a fake (interestingly TechNSports says he does the same for the same reasons).
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