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Hope true for you trash elves as well. This week I heard some folklore that you should price your items other than .00, .99 .98 .97 .96 or .95. Supposedly if you change it to some odd number you get a boost. Also Chat GPT suggested raising prices on stale items a little bit to see if you can move it. Interesting…
Also in the ebay messages they are offering a one on one session with Ebay about your account. https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Now-Available-Grow-your-Business-with-Free-One-on-One-eBay/ba-p/35249244 My Ebay open gal was really sweet but not too helpful, so I signed up to do one.
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I know summer is usually slow, but this is the slowest my store has been ever. I’m talking going days without one sale, then I’ll get one sale… sigh, cry
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@Ryanne, I really suspect that Ebay turned up the freshness factor in the algorithm in the past couple of years since the podcast ended. I made a post here after Ebay open showing that Ebay tracks your store’s percent 30 (“stagnant”) and 90 (“stale”) day listings. I’m probably going to cave and get Nifty software that will automatically end and sell similar. I will likely set it to 60 days for now. I definitely do feel though that people are cutting back on wants in favor of needs except the very wealthy. I had to do a lot of sales and extra % offers deeper and still didn’t have a very good summer on Ebay.
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@Ryanne ps. At eBay open i got to ask the Cassini guy a question and asked him about dialing up freshness and old items dragging down your whole store. He couldn’t answer directly I guess but anecdotally told me he had two stores, one with something over a year old that wasn’t getting sales / performing as well. So basically don’t have anything over 1 year old. Then eBay is tracking 30 vs 90 days and a supervisor from the review team in the ladies room said “you don’t want any of that”. Message received. I’m also taking offers on fresh items more readily. Will refresh every 30 or 60 days. Because of Pinterest I might use 60 days.
Yesterday posh just lowered their rate on packages up to 5 pounds six dollars and something. I’m definitely going to cross post!
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It’s been more than slow for me, but I haven’t been listing. I figured that was the issue, but maybe that is only one part of it.
On the other hand, I did sell a print on Etsy this past week for $1750. It’s a commission for my parents, but it’s still good!
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This year has been my worst ever. Basically, my resell business has been in decline the last few years. My profits declined about 60% from 2022 to 2023, stayed about the same in 2024, and then have dropped another 30% from that 2024 level for this year. I’ve had several months this year where I’ve lost money with my business. Luckily, I have a part time job that pays the bills.
I don’t really think I’m doing anything different than I had been before. I guess people just don’t want as much niche vintage stuff as they used to.
Etsy is down. Ebay is down. Facebook Marketplace is something I’ve started using more recently and it has added some sales, thankfully. But of course the cost of rent/living has gone up substantially the last 3 years.
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this has also been my lowest year on record. there have been weeks where i sold barely $300, when the normal is minimum $1000. when it started to get slow, i turned off promoted completely. i was using the adjustable rate. i thought, why give ebay more money when i’m not making any money. well then my store basically went dark, a couple sales here and there. so i turned promoted back on. i also had some active policy violations for items they took down. so i ended those listings, because they weren’t ended like the old days, just sitting in my store but no one could see them. that helped for a bit too. but all in all the sales are slowest i’ve ever seen.
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I guess at least I’m not alone. Yeah, eBay definitely punishes you for turning off promoted listings. I just set the rate at the lowest possible (I think it’s 2% now) and only promote items that are more common and have more competitors. Of course, given my lack of success lately, maybe I’m doing it all wrong.
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@Zach I sell vintage, used and other long tail stuff and I think there are a lot of things going on in the market right ow that are making it very challenging. I am ebay only, except for a small presence on FB. Do you use social media to drive traffic at all?
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Yeah, I agree. People are tightening their belts, plus we have large swaths of the government getting furloughed or fired. I think people are scared economically right now.
I have a lot of stuff listed on FB (and a bunch of supposed-followers of my FB store), but beyond that I don’t really use social media to market my items. Occasionally I’ll post something to enthusiast groups on FB (like posting an old camera to a camera collector group), but it rarely results in sales. I’m just not that into social media in general. @MyCottage, how are you using social media to drive sales?
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I’ve been listing some stuff on a particular Facebook Group….just a few things, last week I got one sale out of I think 6 or 8 things I put there. But the only fee is the PayPal transaction fee, so no ebay fees. And, over time, I’m hoping to be viewed as a regular in the group, which helps with sales. Also, on this last sale (first time I tried this) I added an ebay discount coupon to the package….will do that with all the Facebook sales from now on. Might help, might not, but can’t hurt to try.
I’m hoping to do more with my FB business page (I post, but it doesn’t really get views….) and IG and You Tube. Also, I want to update my existing Pinterest account. A friend, with no real social media experience, but real artistic talent, got 15,000 followers on Tik Tok in two weeks by posting videos of her making her paper mache jack o lanterns. So I just joined Tik Tok and will see what I can figure out there.
I’m also considering the new ebay Ambassador program. I would use that to promote some of my stuff, but also other seller’s stuff….
So, a lot of things I hope to try, but we’re already in Q4 and I need to focus most of my energy on getting new listings up….trying to figure out how to add a lot of listings AND gain more visibility with social media etc.
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@mycottage please let us know how it goes. I agree that new listings should be the focus. I’ve only got one market at the end of November and will focus on Ebay. I have been able to up the number of days per week I do at least 3 listings but I still am not consistent.
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I can’t get a sense of how things are going because I have not been listing anything for several months. I stopped doing any promotions, and all I do is send out offers. I’m selling about 1-4 things a week. I’m glad to know that it isn’t just my inattention to eBay.
My career job is getting more time consuming. With vacations and family stuff, I just don’t have any time. Now we are getting a significant portion of our downstairs tiled, and we have to move furniture and whatnot back and forth as they make progress.
I guess it is a good thing that I’m able to work and make money that way while eBay is on the outs.
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I just finished a pop up vintage market and sold about half of what I did in the Spring even though the event was very well attended. A ton of smalls, which thank goodness I brought. No large art work sold, and I had some great pieces.
Ebay normally is very good for me this time of year but it is quite slow despite my weekend permasales and offers. There is evidence my favorite RA retailers are not doing well enough with their Halloween lines. I watch a few news segments on Youtube and it is showing up there. People are looking for discounts. Still looking for special vintage maybe but at a low price point. My suspicion is people are definitely getting tight with their money. The cost of living here is out of hand, especially rents since Covid, so the pop up markets are definitely slower I think due to this.
After my Ebay online review session – highly recommended – I ran a coupon to my last 90 days of buyers. I accidentally made it public and I did think the coupon helped my sales. Hard to know which it pushed over the edge but you get a nice big banner. I will continue to run regular sales and coupons and offers this holiday season. I’m offering prices below market comps and discounts bigger than the ones I did last year. I also will move more items over to my flat rate shipping business policies to show up on Google Shopping.
I have promoted at 3%, with 9% on my few clothing items. I don’t intend to raise it and my advisor did not recommend it, though it did show up on my suggestion report for some categories, giving the average % as 6-7% for the category. I think that is maybe people like me, and other people at trending (of those promoting).
After Ebay Open, the videos coming out of that, and my store review, I’ve discovered (1) the flat rate shipping advantage for Google, (2) that I need 7 pictures per listing (arbitrary but Cassini likes it), and (3) sell similar every 90 days. I’m due now to sell similar. They don’t distinguish long tail unique vintage items so have to play the game and relist or revise once they decide it’s a dog.
I also got frustrated with Ebay’s algorithm so I subscribed to Nifty. I started my free trial with 85 Anthropologie RA items. None have sold yet. I need to get back to Nifty and cross post more items. It’s great software but because of Ebay’s items specific format, some details don’t come over so used items will take longer to bring to Posh and I’m missing measurements. At some point I started putting condition notes in my description but my old listings don’t have that. But new eyes are looking at least at some of my items.
Conclusion: It’s getting harder to make money reselling and I have too many piles! I still love it but will need to have 1-2 yard sales, minimize or stop shopping except at the flea, go down to Los Angeles for markets, and put some larger items on Facebook Marketplace.
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