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I love to get into the weeds of analyzing Ebay, but a video I watched recently made me think again about the scavenger equation. What if when you boil it down, it’s really just about sourcing great items and offering them at good prices. I tend to price on the high end, higher than solds and then run a sale. But, I don’t have any shortage of inventory and a mild climate. So, I’m thinking it would make more sense to price lower vs solds. I have some stale inventory and I’m over my store subscription.
Where do you price vs. solds as a general rule and do you run a sale or not? Question is for things that do have at least a few solds within 90 days. I’ll just assume if you do free shipping, you mark that up. Thanks trash elves.
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Christine.. You hit our process right on the nose. we do the same. we research solds on several sources and put the highest prices we find in our Notes section in WL. Then when time comes for me to price, I use the higest price sold, making sure it is close to an apples to apples comparison, such as box, no box, cert. of authen. or not, original decals, etc., etc. Then we mark that up 40%. That leaves enough room for us to run a sale 5 days a week at either 15% or 20% Off and take offers. On offers buyers seem to not even see the original price just the Sale price and usually offer 15% to 25% less than the 15% off price. so that usually ends up us taking about 5% to 10% less than the highest price we had researched.
The sale is the “perception of Value” Jay has called it and others call it the Perma-sale Scenario.
So susan and I have been talking this same subject due to the slow Sales in june – july. We decided not to go adjusting all of our listings downwards, but if we want lower prices, even lower than the high we priced at, we will just run a higher percentage off sale. We have done 20%, 25% and even 305 Off One time. That will accomplish the same thing and having not gone and made a “permanent change”, when things pick back up we can either go back to offering less off, or not take offers as low.
It is really easy to do this because we use wonderLister and we just highlight all, click bulk edit and run a percent discount at whatever we want and then pick an end date for that sale to end. just the same as in Ebay only we can do all of our listings 1.002 at this moment all at one time. If we had 5,000, we can do all at once. ebay makes you break it up into smaller batches.
we too are 2 listings over our 1,000 limit and have inventory we bought 3 and 4 years ago, so time for a good, deep discount Sale on those to clear out and maybe get things rolling again.
I just started a 15% Off Sale today and it ends sunday night at mid-night. We also added make offers on all of our inventory on any item of $10 or more. Up until this morning we didn’t take offers of much under $39.99. Like J and R used to say. but I see others and also J and R now taking offers on low cost items agagin so thought we would too. This along with the discount and we will see what happens over the next week or so.
Maybe you could give this method a try also and see what happens and we can compare notes to see if we moved some inventory out.
Mike at MDC Galleries in atlanta
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Mike,
“It is really easy to do this because we use wonderLister and we just highlight all, click bulk edit and run a percent discount at whatever we want and then pick an end date for that sale to end.”
I don’t see this in Wonderlister. I can highlight and click bulk ed, but I don’t see any where that I can “run a percent discount”. Could it be that you have the silver version that has “Sales Promotion” that I don’t have with the Bronze?
Mark
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For me, 75% of sold comps for BIN price with best offer turned on for everything. I go a step further of setting an auto-sell best offer price of what would be the lowest I’d be willing to accept, I do so to automate the process to the best of my ability. As far as sales go, I run 10% off $24.99 and under and 15% off $25+ sale all the time. I run the sale for 2 days, and restart it every morning after it ends at midnight pacific time. I just like the rundown timer that gives people a sense of urgency to buy to get that certain price.
Where as I can understand the point of pricing low to increase sales, I’d rather maximize the monetary reward while still keeping a pretty high sell through rate. But I still believe that sourcing quality is the main factor in doing so.
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I price below solds with the goal of moving all items priced $50+ in a month. I want to be the lowest price available when someone is scrolling through search. With what we know now about listings getting stale, it’s even more important to get items gone and out the door in the first 30 days.
“Fast nickel” approach is the best IMO. Even if I had unlimited storage space I’d still go for it because I’ve found it allows me to jump into investments easier knowing they won’t sit around. E.g., if I’ve got a $50 item that sells for $250, I’m probably going to sit it at $200 and get it off the shelf within the week. Priced at $250 with 10+ other listings means I’ll be waiting a while for another $50, which isn’t a whole lot when the $150 sale from under-pricing can quickly be invested to purchase other items that beat out that extra $50.
I do run sales, but usually only 10% or 20% if I’m feeling generous. The 14 day rule that excludes items from sales is handy because I’ll sometimes feel like I’ve under-priced an item correctly only for it to sell the very first day it’s eligible for the markdown. That tells me I’ve not been right on my pricing, or someone came in and cut just under me. If items still aren’t selling even with the sale, then I get to start figuring out whether it needs to be blown out, or just left alone for the right buyer. This is problematic as my buying habits have changed from all-around seller to bringing in larger lots of specific items; if I’ve got 20 units of something that were supposed to sell at $65 but are still there at day 30, alarms start going off. After that the chances of selling an item seem to go down dramatically. If there were sales within that time, then it’s worth waiting them out – maybe they’re just slow sellers.
I take offers on most things that aren’t quantity listings. In my experience, offers work best for vintage items where the price is questionable or just a rough approximation based on the most similar sold listing.
I haven’t had a major summer slump yet, but I think my shift in inventory will likely mean slower sales in the winter months.
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Do you think lowering prices will mean anything will sell? Not sure what kind of inventory you have, but I find that many weird, unique items are not price sensitive.
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Thanks everyone for your thoughts. I’d love to hear from more sellers too.
Jay I had a hybrid new RA and vintage but I’m moving away from RA. Usually there are at least a couple of recent Ebay solds for most of the items I’m pricing. So far I’ve been slow dime, but there is just so much to source (and I have my piles to list first) and only so much time to list so probably not a store upgrade for now. I’d like to get my sell through rate up, and I can handle more packing in the mornings. So, I’m wondering if I’d do better with that if I start pricing under solds in the first place.
Best offer I use for higher price items – over $30 – or if there are not many comps, with auto decline at about 50%. I found it really distracting to get offers on my phone at work before I set limits. Sometimes people send me offers anyway and I realize I only paid under $5, and want the sale. It’s emotionally harder for me to set the auto accept, but that would be wiser.
I also find that if it’s something I’m not really into personally, then I tend to be willing to price lower – like the coffee mugs from my death piles. I just want them gone. I did sell quite a few of those I recently listed.
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Unique and solid value items, price on the higher side of solds. It may make it longer tail, but the rare items that have real value, get what you can and take offers (with an auto decline level to avoid wasting time).
On more commodity items, pricing usually 90% of top of solds with a floor of the grouping that I find. I ususally find in items that have a lot of comparable solds, there is a price support at a certain level. That is where the floor is (on auto decline). I like the more commodity items to move, but not below price support (don’t give it away) with the chance for upside.
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This. This. This.
It’s tiring to hear people say that all you have to do is lower the price to sell things quickly. This is only true for high demand items.
If we’re honest, most of us do not sell high demand items. They are low demand items which is why we can find this stuff for so cheap out in the world.
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I agree Jay. That is why we bifurcate our pricing. If it is rare, has value, unique…price higher!
If it is a commodity, price to move but within the market. For example, I may see that a certain brand of shirt goes for top line of $30 (a few of 300 sold), then there is a large grouping of them that move at $22 (price support). I will price at say $29 with an auto decline at $20-$22.
I get the most I can while still having flexibility to move down on an offer.
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I have retail marketing background, so i decided to finally put it to work this month for eBay. I used to “set and forget” it. At season’s end I would run a 20% off sale seasonal clothing I wanted gone.
My new strategy is start researching the comps and not blindly lower or keeping same prices. To be honest, I haven’t researched some of these items since I LISTED them. That is not good business for me (or any business really). There have been identical items that have came and went in the time mine has sat unsold aka stale. 🙂 Ack.
It’s a slow process but so far I’ve made some sales. I am only doing this on items I am “unsure” on or are old. Some I still believe are the right fair price. Some are not in-demand anymore, or now there are 20 listed, or sometimes I am the ONLY one listed now so maybe I raise the price!
Process:
Pick an older item at least 6 months (I am starting with items $50+).
Check it on Worthpoint, Etsy, eBay, Poshmark if relevant, Amazon, and google shopping.
Check solds on ebay and sell through rates. Check similar items if rare/ weird.
Adjust if needed! -
I price items lower than solds or active listings. I figure that just because someone paid a higher price once doesn’t necessarily mean that someone else will pay a price that high again. If it’s really expensive, I’ll price lower and add a best offer, unless I know I can genuinely get that price.
Another pricing strategy is to discard items below my pricing guidelines for what I want to get for an item. I used to price higher to make up for it, but I’d rather just get it out of my house and fill the space it would’ve taken up with better stock.
I sold a book yesterday for $40 that I listed 10 years ago on Ebay and forgot I had in stock. I even forgot where the storage location for the item was. That’s another strategy. Trusting in old pricing decisions and letting items sit for as long as they need to in order to sell.
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Awesome question! The psychology of buying and selling is one of my favorite topics to study.
I strongly believe in pricing high relative to the comps I can find for my items. I’m generally selling collectibles and items that are “wants” and not “needs”.
Therefore, my customers are largely looking for something that makes them feel good in some way as opposed to filling a base level need, where lowest price becomes a motivation (think groceries, house, vehicle).
The price a seller places on an item is the first indication given to the buyer on the quality, and in my opinion, desirability of the item.
There is a large body of psychological research pointing to the validity of pricing high to motivate buyers to purchase, and I have found for my items this holds true.
I have no intention of putting the type of items I currently sell on sale as this can lead the buyer to believe there is some reason it is no longer “worth” the initial asking price. Which is akin to saying that the seller does not value what they are selling in some way. Again, this is for the type of items I sell, which does not include clothing or commodities.
I do have Best Offer on many of my items, and I do this due to pricing well above comps, which allows a savvy buyer to still purchase my items. The lowest price I accept on a best offer is still above comps and I do not accept anything below the best offer price I have pre-determined for the item.
Like J&R, I sell predominately low demand, unique items and possibly would price differently if I sold commodities with high competition.
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This. Selling collectibles or “wants, not needs” means people are almost wanting to pay more for an item. They dont trust a collectible if its priced too low.
Its easy to do an experiment and slap a 50% sale on an inventory full of collectibles. Trust me. Stuff wont fly off the shelves. These items are not price sensitive.
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I agree about cool vintage stuff not being price sensitive. A high price often adds to it’s desirability.
I’ve never put anything ‘on sale’ on Ebay or Etsy. I’ve occasionally reduced prices, but I wouldn’t want to advertise that in the listing. On sale suggests that you overpriced it or you’re desperate to sell it.
When pricing I look on both Ebay (currently listed and solds) and Etsy. I usually price high. I want to be really pleased when my stuff sells, not to be left wondering if I could have sold it for more!
When I look back at stuff I sold 2 or 3 years ago, I’m now surprised at the low prices. I used to think about what items were worth and a fair mark-up or margin on the price I paid.
Now I try to make an imaginative leap into the mind of the buyer. They have money. Lots of it. And they want cool vintage stuff. Lots of it. They want to look at beautiful photographs and have an enjoyable (hassle free) online shopping experience. They don’t care what the seller paid for the item or where they got it from. They are not scavengers. Definitely not.
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