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Last month, I tried an experiment ending and relisting all of the items without watchers in my store. You can read about the results in this thread. If you are interested in doing the same: my results were that you will see a bump in sales the first few days after an end and relist (with a good number of those sales being from the end and relist batch), and a bump in watchers over the next few weeks as buyers find your “new” listings. At least that’s what happened for me last month.
This thread will be a nice follow-up. What happens when you try the end and relist again a month later? I was planning on waiting another month or two to try it again, but @Timo posted that they received an eBay bucks promo which ends tomorrow. So I figured it would be worth trying the end and relist again. My theory is that I won’t see the same sales boost as last month. I would guess that the end and relist is most effective at increasing sales if it’s done once or twice a quarter. But this will give us some data to either back that up or disprove it.
Here is my end and relist process:
I currently have 3444 listings in my store and 2004 listings with watchers. I sorted my active listings by watchers in reverse order and ended all of the listings without watchers (1400 in total). All that involved is clicking one check box to select 200 listings and end them, then moving on to the next 200 until I reach the listings with watchers, at which point I stop. Then I go into unsold items and relist those listings 200 at a time until they’re all back in the store. The whole process took me less than a half-hour, and that included typing this post.
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brief update before I go to sleep:
It only took 20 minutes to receive my first offer from this batch of newly relisted items. $45 on an item listed for $50 which of course I accepted. Even if that’s the only sale I make from this end and relist batch (and it won’t be), it was worth the 30 minutes.
I set my auto decline prices high (anywhere from 75% to 90% of BIN price) and I bet I would see even more offers if I lower that threshold. Might be something to try next month.
Also, about a dozen of my newly relisted items have watchers when they had none prior to the relist. Whether that means those items will sell faster (or at all), who knows, but at least I know there are eyes on the listings now.
It’s kind of amazing how quickly all this happened. It’s been less than an hour since the end and relist! Just another reminder how many buyers are on eBay all over the world every minute of every day…
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Well, someone was here in ’23 🙂 I agree with everything you have written Craig and I think it still applies today. A small time investment for some positive account activity and movement and hopefully a temporary sales/viewers/watchers bump. I think a quarterly (or maybe monthly, as long as it doesn’t cut into your listing time?) delist/relist is the right move for a bulk edit. I still like to sit down and look at my “listings ending today” and anything with zero or only 1 view I will end and then try to look over and then sell similar and relist after fixing whatever I can. It is nice to see something that has had zero views for months start to get views! Often there is a small mistake in the listing or a category or keyword change that needed adjustment and that makes all the difference. Even when no changes are made, though, you can tell when something that was a complete dud gets some traction – it’s not mere chance, it’s because of the sell similar and “touching” the listing. This helps to improve your listing quality over time. One thing you mentioned was setting the high auto-decline. Are you still doing this? I generally never use auto-decline because I am prone to running steep sales once in a while and the auto-decline might be set higher than the sale price, so no offers are even able to go through! I also have tried to bulk edit/add “auto-decline” with an automatic % off feature (like 80% of full price) from nothing existing prior, and the bulk editor doesn’t work like that (nothing gets populated) so I just keep giving up on that…. is there an easier way you know of if you don’t initially fill in a value? No way I’m going to sit down and hand type out 80% of all my listings for auto-decline, so I’ve really never tried it. (Other than sorting by ranges ie: $20-$25 and then bulk editing an auto-decline price of $5 off… that _does_ work… but wish eBay could just calculate and plug in a percentage off.) For now I just turned if off, but I do need to deal with a lot of 50% off offers, which sometimes gets old. Have a good day! 🙂
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@Ebaymom I too wish there was a way to bulk auto decline. I have mine set pretty high because lowball offers annoy me and I find they usually don’t buy it if they start that low. I usually price at the highest 2 year Terapeak sold and then do a 15-25% auto decline, and largely set auto accept there also. It also keeps people from doubling up if I am running a 10-20% off sale. I would like to reset this lower since I feel like sales are a bit disappointing this Fall and sometimes I get the used items now at very low cost. If Ebay takes into account the sell through rate in Cassini then mine is probably not helping me out, especially as my store grows larger. About one-third of my items sold by best offer so far this year.
On my traffic page, I’m getting 20% of my page views from outside Ebay. So I can’t end and relist any more often than annually I think, though I could start thinking about doing it for items with zero views. I have linked my Pinterest account and Ebay has the new social Beta, but so far I can’t pin multiple items to a board so that does me no good at all until they fix that. I have made the suggestion on the new social page. If that were to happen then I could rework my Pinterest boards without having to delete sold items and stop pinning each item after listing. Plus, I would be able to redo after a bulk sell similar.
I only have a handful of repeat buyers. I have heard coupons don’t work well so haven’t tried them. It’s a little tempting to try them since you get another change to for your buyer to get a message in their phone about you.
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Here is where I sit on this process a couple years later. It’s something I still do every few months in one way or another. I’ve gotten into using auctions lately, so most of my end and sell similar is returning unsold auctions to my store as fixed price with best offer. Then like “magic” a few things sell.
1. I miss eBay bucks and wish that eBay would bring them back. 🙁 I used to load up on all my regular ebay buys (shipping and packaging supplies mostly) on eBay bucks promos, and from the selling end they would lead to a little boost in sales on items with watchers. Maybe someday we will see them again, but until then I’m still in mourning.
2. You will want to choose between end and relist or end and sell similar. Sell similar gives you a brand new item number. Relist does not, but your listing keeps its watchers. Personally I believe that the algorithm likes new listings, so I do end and sell similar 100% of the time.
3. I think you’re absolutely on the right track doing something with listings with zero views or watchers. End and sell similar, cut the price, change the title, change the category or some combination. eBay search is different now than it was a few years ago, particularly with casual users who are more likely to use Best March to sort their search. Adding photos to stale listings is another option — remember we get 24 photos now!
4. I use templates to make new listings and set my auto decline for something like 60% of my buy it now price. For example, with a $20 listing I set my auto decline for $12. For a $50 listing I set it at $35. If I went a little lower, I’m sure things would sell a little faster.
Here is the fastest way I can think to bulk-edit offer settings:
In the second row of drop-down menus in active listings, click item title (next to contains) and select current price. When you do this, the contains drop down menu will switch to is equal to. Type in a price (for example, 19.99) and then select all and bulk edit all your $19.99 inventory to your new auto-decline price of $12 (or whatever you choose). Do the same until you’ve edited everything in your store to the right settings.
In general, pricing is such an inexact science that I think considering lower offers is usually worth it. When I send offers to watchers, I do 20% or 25% more than half of the time. It’s just so much easier for people to ignore notifications and spend their money in random places than it was a few years ago. So if a buyer is remotely interested in my item, I want to give them a reason to buy it before they find somewhere else to spend their money.
Here’s one example: I just got a $20 offer on a $29.99 listing. What would you do in that scenario?
Most of the time I would accept that offer. This time, for whatever reason, I countered $25 — and the buyer immediately declined. Whoops!
I think the listing will sell for $25 eventually, but I felt regret almost immediately. Makes sense. Always more to buy. Always more to sell. Next time I’ll accept the $20 offer.
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Day 1 update: I sold 6 items today from last night’s end and relist batch, in addition to the 1 item detailed in my previous post which sold last night. 5 out of the 6 items from the end and relist batch sold for between $10 and $30, and all 7 sales were under $50.
A nice sales boost for very little time investment. For comparison’s sake, I sold 7 other items today which previously had watchers and were not part of the end and relist batch.
Another point worth mentioning: 90 items from the end and relist batch already gained watchers. So in the first 24 hours after this round of end and relist, almost 100 items (out of 1400 total ended and relisted) either sold or were added to someone’s watch list.
Regardless of how many more sell over the weekend, I’m going to give this a try again next month. The early results are even more encouraging than I might have expected.
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@Craig-rex – Thanks for posting your success. I have a lot of listings that are over 2 years old that I’ve been ending and selling similar in batches of 20 for the last week. I have a completely different type of inventory and haven’t had near your success but have had a few sales this week of stagnant inventory. I’m going to keep going as it has been helpful to re-evaluate my listings, updating titles and adjusting prices. Many of these items go back to when I first started eBay in 2016. An eye opening reminder of how my processes have changed in that time (with much credit given to Jay and Ryanne and the contributors to this board).
I was surprised you set your auto-declines so high. Is that because you were getting a high volume of low ball offers and taking up too much of your time?
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I’m glad these posts have been useful for you. I’ve been somewhat surprised at how successful the end and relists have been, but encouraged enough that I will keep trying them once a month for the foreseeable future and posting my results. I’m curious if the process will continue to lead to the same bump in sales and watchers month after month.
An increase in watchers (along with the sales bump) has been the biggest takeaway from this month’s batch — last week, before the end and relist, I had 2004 items with watchers. Tonight, as I’m typing this, I have 2,104 items with watchers — even though I didn’t list much last week! That’s a very encouraging development, particularly considering how quick the end and relist process is.
As far as the auto declines go: I’m honestly not sure that my method is the best way! But it is something I have developed over time, and my thought process today is something like this:
My lowest priced items are around $20. I used to have an auto decline on those items of $10, but over the last year I raised it to $15. The same general rule for items that are more expensive — for example, my auto decline on a $100 item is $90 when it used to be $75 or $80. I’m sure I’ve received offers that I would have accepted if only I had seen them, but there are always ways of interacting with an interested buyer, like sending offers to watchers or running a markdown sale. I have found that most offers I receive are ones that I accept, no negotiations necessary, and I prefer that to waking up to 10 or more offers at 50% of my buy it now price.
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I have SixBit and it allows you to auto end and relist each item. I have it set for 30 days. I’ve been using this feature for all of 2021, but did not have SixBit in prior years and thus rarely used end and relist (maybe once a year on some items).
I was checking my numbers year to date to see if it made a difference. I compared my year to date eBay numbers from 2018 and 2019 to this year (2020 was an anomaly for sales so I’m not using it for comparisons).
My eBay sales are down 18% from 2019 and down about 5% from 2018. My store is as big or bigger than it was in those years. Obviously, many factors could be at play here, but at minimum I would say that “end and relist” did not magically double my sales numbers. Those expecting a panacea should temper their expectations.
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I hope no one reading this is considering end and relist as a panacea, or even a temporary substitute for regularly listing new items that buyers want. Like markdown manager, offers to watchers, and coupons, it’s merely another tool in an eBay seller’s belt.
I would be curious if you can include more details about how SixBit uses end and relist. Is it a relist (same item number) or sell similar (new item number)? I have used both in the past, so I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the two, but who knows.
Are you ending all of your items every 30 days, or only select items such as those without watchers or those in specific categories? So far, I have only used end and relist on items without watchers, so a few sales makes the process worth the (minimal) time investment.
Do you see a boost in sales on the first day after end and relist? Compare it to 7 days prior, or your average day, or whatever benchmark you like. How about the first few days after you end and relist, or the following weekend? Hopefully SixBit tracks this data for you. I don’t use SixBit so I manually keep track of all numbers detailed in these posts.
For now, I primarily sell in the same few collectibles categories, so I have a limited view into how this strategy might increase sales of vintage toasters or phone chargers. But I’ve found the Scavenger Life principles have helped improve my sales in different niches, and I suspect end and relist is the same, even if it may prove to be most effective for most sellers if it’s used once or twice a quarter.
I have also been utilizing the end and relist exclusively during eBay bucks promos. That is likely another factor in the temporary sales increase I have seen, maybe the biggest reason why. I’m not sure end and relist would be quite as effective on a random day, particularly since eBay sales are unpredictable by their nature. Almost any day of the week is randomly slow for a million different reasons. Compared to a few years ago, it’s nice that eBay gives us all these different tools which might provide a little sales increase here and there. There are other tools (most notably promoted listings) which I never use, maybe to my own detriment. But selling on eBay is all about finding and refining the processes that work best for you.
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Well, I thought I had replied here, but looks like it disappeared, so I will briefly recap.
SixBit uses the relist option that keeps the same item. Each item is on its own separate 30 day relist timer.
I downloaded data into Excel and analyzed every sale since I started doing the 30 day relist thing (almost 600 sales).
38% of items sold in the first 30 days of listing (so they were never relisted). These sales took on average 3 days with a median if 0 days.
I looked at the other 62% of sales and found that it took on average (and median) 14 days to sell from the last day they were ended and relisted. Basically, items were selling equally at all times in that 30 day cycle.
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Your post makes me slightly more confident that relisting a large number of items at the same time is what’s behind the small sales boost that some of us are seeing in the few days after an end and relist.
I’m not sure how easy it is to customize within SixBit, but I’d be curious to see what would happen if you set the relist timer to the same date for 500 or 1000 items.
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I am a much smaller seller than most here, but I do list regularly so I think I have some data to contribute.
I have been doing the end/relist (not sell similar) for a few weeks since I read about it here. I do 4-5 items a day when I am not actively listing under the theory eBay will think I am active daily. I pick items that have been listed the longest (1-2 years in my case). I don’t have a large enough data set to see if it really helps me sell more in total, but I can say for sure it gets those old items sold! Looking at my spreadsheet for the last month I sold 36 items, 11 of them had been relisted recently, the rest were new-ish listings. I do try to change the listings up a bit when I relist, reorder the photos, change the title or price a bit, but nothing substantial.
I hadn’t thought about being more targeted (ending items with no watchers or doing it during eBay bucks promos), but I do it regularly now. The only downside for me is the change in listing date now makes it harder for me to track my inventory (I used to sort by date listed to find the old stuff to pull and put in yard sale or the antique booth), but since stuff is selling hopefully that wont be as much of an issue!
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I’m so glad this has been useful for you, especially with a smaller store as every sale brings so much more potential since it’s not only cash in your pocket but also the chance to invest in new, quality inventory.
Modifying the listings in a small way is particularly smart considering you have smaller relist batches. “Touching” the listings was something that @popeyespostcards recommended in his thread about experiments to improve sales, which was what inspired me to start these threads.
I sort of like that eBay gives the listing a new date when you end and relist (or end and sell similar) since that’s made it so much easier to see that this is working well! I suppose I could have found the data if I used SixBit, WonderLister, or exported to Excel, but I have always been a little bit of a creature of habit in how I use eBay, and I like doing everything directly in seller hub.
Also, a heads up: I received another eBay bucks promo on my buying ID last night which ends 10/27. I am leery of doing another end and relist batch since I just did it two weeks ago, but I will probably talk myself into it by the end of the night. It’s such a quick and easy process that even a few extra sales make it worthwhile.
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Wanted to bump this thread to the top with a rare 8% eBay bucks promo circulating for the next few days. Give the end and relist a try if you haven’t already!
Here is how I do my end and relists:
1. Sort all of my active listings from least watchers to most. I like to only relist items without any watchers, but in theory you can sort however you want.
2. End all of the items without watchers 200 at a time. In my 3000+ item store, this is about half of them.
3. Go to unsold listings and sort by price low to high. I like to sort before relisting them just to keep me a little more organized. Relist (or sell similar) 200 at a time. I’ve done both relist and sell similar in this manner, and I’m not sure that it matters which one you do.
Just for reference: I followed this process last night, and start to finish the whole thing took me less than 30 minutes. 5 of the relisted items have already sold in the first 24 hours, and 97 of them have watchers. I’m going to send a batch of 15% or 20% offers tomorrow to encourage some more sales.
I’m sure many of these items listings would eventually sell anyway, but my theory is that a subset of eBay users browse occasionally (every few days or less) and many of them sort by new or only look at new items in their saved searches. While the end and relist method is no substitute for listing new, good quality items, I believe this is one method of helping you reach those buyers, especially if you accept offers and are flexible on price. I would guess that the eBay algorithm is also happiest when sellers are active and regularly listing.
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I was skeptical, but the cancel-and-relist method just snagged me a $55.00 offer on a wack-a-doo item I have had in my store since Nov 2018.
Of course, one data point is not empirical evidence, but it’s been months since I have seen any activity on this item.
I countered with $75.00. I love this train wreck of an art sculpture. If it were anything from 2018, I would have accepted immediately. But part of me doesn’t want to part with this guy.
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I am glad to see more reports that this has led to sales and offers for many of you. This gives me more confidence that this is a useful tool and not just something that works in my niche or with my store.
I was also skeptical the first few times I tried this, which is why I thought it would be useful to document the experiment in the forums. The outcomes have never been exactly the same — sometimes I get a large (>50% above a “normal” day) sales boost on the same day I do the end and relist, other times the boost comes a day or two later, and other times it’s a consistent small increase for a week or two.
What I enjoy most about the end and relist process is seeing sales on items which have had no offers for months or years. Once you get the hang of the process, it is very fast (even with 1000+ items) so it doesn’t get in the way of more important tasks like creating new listings or shipping.
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@craig rex. Sadly the buyer accepted by offer of $75.00 and then immediate canceled.
So he is back up for sale again.
As I said before , yesterday I had end and reposted 200 listings. Yesterday I got an offer on creep bird guy – he was part of the cancel reissue.
But I also had sale from an item thats been the store since 12/1/19 (did not cancel and reissue). This serves a good reminder that old listings do sell.
Someone smarter than me needs to do an aggregate study to is this is just statistical noise.
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@debitendcreits That reminds me- I’ve got eight jars of unpitted green olives in the larder.
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