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Total Items in Store: 1278
Items Sold: 22
Gross Sales: $832 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $531 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $130
Highest Price Sold: $101 (4 new Williams Sonoma bowls, $10 at the end of my neighbor’s yard sale)
Average Price Sold: $38
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $100ish at the flea market (2 mornings)
Number of items listed this week: 7Two big things happened this week.
On Sunday I started my free trial on Nifty (formerly autoposher) cross posting software. I really like it but did have some item specifics (like measurements and condition) not transfer over. I will need to be careful with my older listings with defects. It also did not categorize some of my home goods properly. I cross posted about 85 listings to Poshmark in a few minutes, but have not sold any yet. It doesn’t allow me to crosspost any more until my first monthly payment.
I also had my Ebay store consult, 45 minutes. The guy to helped me was at Ebay open but was far, far better than the person I was assigned to there. I recommend that everyone sign up for this service. The big takeaways were (1) 90 days is the sweet spot for selling an item. Pretty much if your item does not sell in 90 days you should be tweaking or refreshing it with sell similar. He wants me to do 10-20 a day over time. (2) he sent me a listing quality report – some people can still see this within Ebay but I cannot. I still need to look at it but he said it will give me homework to do. (3) he showed me a page called buyer groups and suggested I send them coupons, newsletters, etc.
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The 90 day thing— I can understand that being applied to new, multi quantity listings. But it seems very arbitrary for single quantity, long tail items. By definition, long tail items can take a long time to sell. Here’s what I’m trying at this point. I have a lot of items that are more than 90 days old (some are MUCH more). And no doubt I could improve the listings (I confess, some could definitely do with a price reduction I’m sure). So, last night, I somewhat arbitrarily took all my listings that are over about 180 days old and changed them from a lower General Ad rate to 9%—-which I consider high, but I need to make space here and get some of this stuff gone. It didn’t take long to do. I think a lot of those listings are not “bad” listings, they just have had very little visibility for a long time, because ebay has been downgrading them because of their age. So, rather than change a ton of listings that might actually be OK, I’m giving ebay more money to increase the visibility and we’ll see what happens.
And this week, I’ll be gradually ending and revising/relisting (sell similar) those between 90 and 180 days, while keeping them at a lower rate (but still a little high for me—-5%).
One I’ve finished that, I will probably start doing the same with the older listings, and when relisting, I’ll set them at 5% rather than 9%.
Is this a good idea? I don’t really know, But I’m going to play with it, because I’m willing to sacrifice some margin for (hopefully) some sales velocity.
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@mycottage definitely let me know what happens. I am speculating that Ebay treats 90 day + listings as “once a dog, always a dog” unless you revise at least the title and maybe photos. I have tried clearance pricing before on long tail low dollar and it has not worked for me. OTOH I have sold old listings after ending and selling similar more often.
Some podcasters have reported that if you later scale back on your promotion rate, Ebay tanks your sales. So I’ve never gone over 3% except for clothes 9%.
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Yeah, there’s just so much conflicting info out there, even from ebay itself. I remember a few years ago an ebay presenter—I think she was involved with the search team, maybe ran it—said that ebay now has the ability to recognize old listings even if you relist/sell similar (they no longer need to rely on the item number). She strongly suggested that revising listings was more helpful than ending and relisting (especially without revision). The implication was you might get a slight bump in newly listed, but it wouldn’t last long, because an unrevised listing would quickly be viewed as the same old same old. And she very pointedly suggested that minor tweaks would not cut it when it comes to revision.
So, I’ll keep you guys posted on how this works for me. But whether it seems to work for me or not, keep in mind your results might vary LOL We all sell different stuff, and it is often very hard to know for sure whether this or that change was actually responsible for an increase or decline in sales.
Good point about dropping the rate too fast. I’ll need to consider that.
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Yes, my helper did confirm they can see exactly when you originally listed the item. He did not say you get any kind of penalty for that though. They both said revising after 90 days. I often don’t have a second photo I want to move to the primary photo and I like how I do my titles (which conformed to what he suggested – brand, item, type; say what it is in 54 characters). So I don’t really like to mess with that either on my old listings. So if they were overpriced as I suspect and I am offering a lower price, then Ebay should set the formula to take that into account I would think but I’m not sure they do.
I have now looked at my top 10 categories and besides suggesting upping promotions to 6-7 (the average percent for those promoting) in some categories, what they wanted was a bunch more photos. They want 6-8 photos per listing. I have a lot of listings in these categories with new items and I have like 3-4 stock photos only. I’m not going to go back and take more pictures. IMHO my prices are probably why they haven’t sold.
In my top 10 categories, Ebay is giving me a rank “Your rank by sales (GMV) value: 534 out of 135,732 sellers in this category and condition” that is excellent in all categories. I’m not sure what that means.
Today I did try to send a coupon of an extra 5% plus I have my store on sale until Sunday. We’ll see. I set the coupon to go out to buyers from the last 3 months I think.
In the Selling on Ebay podcast this week, they argued that the item and price the buyer is looking for should rank so much heavier than how long it has been on the site or the seller’s activity level, etc. I agree with this. It seems like Ebay assumes it’s a dog and 90 days is definitely not a lot of time in vintage flatware – just as one example – for the buyer to come along.
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Interesting this is in the breakdown for the listing performance:
Daily impressions per listing
Click-through rate
Sales conversion rate
Recommended item specifics filled
Recommended item specifics to add
Brand
MPN
UPC
Number of photos
Number of keywords in title
Free shipping
Estimated handling time
14 Days Returns
30 Days Returns
60 Days Returns
Accepts returns
Seller paid returns
Promoted listings
Promoted listings ad rate
Order discount Multi-buy
Sale event + markdown
Best Offer
ISBN
Item Id
Price
Significantly not as described (90 Days)
Item not received (90 Days)
Negative feedback (90 Days)
Quantity available
Shipping fee
Item age in days (this is since last refresh)
Sales count in last 31 days
Custom label
Number of watchers
Google Shopping rejections
Actual handling time
Actual shipping time
Item condition
eBay trending price
Hm…is this the priority weight of Cassini? Unfortunately the trending price is blank. It looks like Google has not rejected my listings, though I don’t think they are showing them due to calculated shipping. If this was in order of importance, that is a bummer since I don’t want to add photos. Some items don’t need 8 photos.
Also interesting that I have a lot of this:
Click through: Your listings’ quality meets the top benchmark;
Sales Conversion: Your listings’ quality meets the top benchmarkso the additional pictures recommended are to get me more impressions. I was surprised he was happy with my conversion rate, it’s only 1.3% overall last 30 days.
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I agree: 90 days is too short for long tail stuff. But it’s good to know that they are using the 90 days time frame, because it probably helps explain why some good stuff sits and sits….because it is getting very little visibility. As to price: A lot of long tail stuff doesn’t sell quickly because it IS long tail…by definition, that means there is little demand and it won’t sell till the right person sees it. It isn’t necessarily price that is preventing the sale, it is more likely that the few people who are interested haven’t seen it.
Back when everyone had the Listing Quality Report, I tried asking ebay repeatedly about stuff like photo numbers. My question was basically: I have 3 photos, perfectly adequate for this item. But you recommend 7. So, does the number of photos actually matter to the algo? Do I get less exposure with 3, and bumping up to 7 will get me more exposure because I now have the magical number ebay recommends? Basically, when I could get an answer it was : 7 is a recommendation based on our data. You can go along with or not.
Which, of course, didn’t really answer the question.
I seem to remember that one YT guru, TechNSports, treated the LQR as gold: If ebay recommended 6 photos instead of 5, he would take a 6th photo. He claimed following ebay’s suggestions boosted his sales.
I don’t know. I’m just not willing to dig out old inventory to take more photos just because ebay says 7 is better than 6.
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This discussion reminded me of the old Listing Quality Report that eBay used to offer. It no longer appears to be available to me.
One metric I always found interesting in that report was GMV — Gross Merchandise Value across one’s listings. I always thought that positive changes in GMV might have a positive influence eBay’s search algorithm.
While digging through my eBay dashboard in search of the report, I noticed a surprising 600% spike in impressions for the last several days. Sales are not much affected.
Maybe I’ll figure out how to post a screenshot to share what I’m seeing.
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@Timo Wow–that is a HUGE spike! What type of stuff do you sell? And is it possible one (or more) of your items went viral on social media?
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@mycottage: My eBay store focuses on used computer parts, with most items just a few years old and about 10% or so considered vintage—over 20 years old. There are nearly 900 active listings. The large majority of my listings are fixed price without best offer, etc., and no auctions. I end and relist approximately 90% of the inventory every 30 days – typically with no changes made. SixBit software helps me with this.
I promote very few listings: only 8 listings, that are Good-til-Canceled and are my loss-leaders and/or feedback builders.
There is not really any chance of an item having gone viral. I don’t use any social media. The eBay report shows increased impressions across most of my items. Further examination is underway to see what triggered this.
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Hmmm….even if you don’t use social media, an influencer can see something they like on ebay, talk it up and all of a sudden, there’s a huge bump. But I agree, that seems unlikely given your stuff. And since it seems to be across all your items.
The only other thing I can suggest is ebay has been known to provide erroneous data to us, and it could simply be a reporting error on ebay’s end.
But I’ll certainly be waiting to hear what you discover….
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Sept 22-28, 2025
Total items in store: roughly 4500 listings
Items sold: 73
Gross Sales: $5575.86
Net sales: $3978.81
Cost of items sold $935 ($415 mine / $520 consignment)
Highest Sold Item: $300 – Polo Tweed Sportcoat
Average Price Sold $76.38
Money Spent on new inventory: $262
Number of items listed this week. 107 -
@mycottage I have messaged my reviewer with the question about photos. It occurred to me that you could just put in your logo or something multiple times to fill in the missing photos. Seems kind of cheesy, but if it gets you more impressions, that would be cool.
I also asked him if I could get the listing report for my vintage listings, which are not my highest selling categories. You get three of these reviews and they have an agenda for each, but you have to wait a couple months to schedule the next one.
After my live pop up on the 11th, I’m going to work on ending and sell similar. I guess I will start with their photo recommendations. Regarding the % promotion, they just give the average and want you to match that. But I am wondering if some people are not promoting and other people are promoting at trending, that would make the average probably in between at the rate they’re asking me for. So I’m not sure I’m going to get results from giving eBay a higher percentage (6-7%) and then I worry about taking that percentage down having heard anecdotal reports of eBay stifling sales afterwards.
Thanks for getting into the weeds with me everyone. It would be nice to get some of these existing items moving. I’m definitely considering a shift to flat rate shipping in the future on most items. I think I have a pretty good handle on what things cost to ship most of my items fit within a cubic foot. I told the guy I go to Google shopping. I never start on eBay.
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Had an interesting one yesterday.
I sold a pair of shoes early in the AM. Buyer offered $115 on $119……of course I accepted.
When I shipped the package I thought the name looked really familiar. I searched my inbox, but had no other sales to the buyer (not since 2014 when I last cleaned out my email). But that name….so familiar, I even had a pretty good idea who it was. I logged into quickbooks and checked to see just how far back my records still go after the huge clusterfrick of a transfer from godaddy to QB a few years ago.
And there it was. 2011. After 6 years selling collectibles and cameras, these were my first 3 shoe sales on eBay. I still remember finding them. Two pairs of Florsheim V Cleats and a pair of Hanovers. I decided to get them because they looked nice and I was pretty sure I had heard of Florsheim before. I still remember listing them on a Saturday morning, and leaving for our family cabin for an August afternoon at the lake. Before we got to the next town, all 3 pairs had sold. All to one international buyer, for $100+ each.
I was instantly supercharged.
I began learning everything I could about dress shoes.
From August to November, I searched and sourced and switched nearly my entire inventory to dress shoes. A nice break from shipping fragile items. During those couple months that same buyer spent roughly $2100 on shoes, and became my top buyer to date (2011). I remember finally sending him a message, but never got a response and he never purchased anything from me again…..until yesterday.
Ebay’s old bookkeeping platform, Outright, would let you sort by things like top country, top state, and ever top buyer. This buyer stayed at the top of the list for 3 or 4 years, so it’s no wonder I remembered his name.
…..Back to Yesterday
So, I decided to send him second message….14 years later.
“Welcome back! I will never forget the name of the person who bought the first pairs of shoes I ever sold on ebay, and then several more (you were my highest spending buyer back in 2011) Hope you are well. Thanks for your business.”
To my surprise, he responded just a few moments later.
“So nice you remember me 🙏😍! I am fine, looking for new shoes again – it’s a passion… will take a closer look at your offerings. Stay tuned ;-)”
……and then he spent the afternoon buying 8 more pairs, turning a $115 sale into $750.
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@seamstore that’s an awesome story. It’s funny how Ebay can seem so random and huge but we’re all just people on here.
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@the_seam_store The shoe story is great! We never know the impact we might be having on others in this world. That guy thought he bought some shoes….little did he know at the time that he was also launching someone else’s career.
And another lesson I take from that story: You bought the shoes on almost a whim…and it paid off in a big way. Sometimes, it can really pay to just go ahead and do something we haven’t done before, just to see where it might lead.
Thanks for the post!
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Anyone using AI for listing/descriptions?
I have not been impressed with ebay’s description AI, and I have just started playing around with ChatGPT. I’m a slow typist, so when I can copy and paste, I’m usually happy. Here’s a listing description I created using ChatGPT…basically, I gave ChatGPT the gallery photo and asked for a description….ChatGPT made further suggestions and I went from there.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/389048183572
I’m still not sure how much I will use this, but especially for something like this….where I have three different items in a lot….it seems like it is a time saver. Of course, you need to check for accuracy, and I did edit out some of the chatter between ChatGPT and myself. But overall, I’m pleased.
Anyone else using it?
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I have used ChatGPT for descriptions. I first give it a prompt & ask it not to be salesy and provide a fact based description, or something in that vein. Then I would give it the description. I haven’t used photos for it to gleam information.
I like your description, but maybe a bit long. I am impressed that it didn’t add in “this item is a must …” or “it is essential for anyone interested in …”. When that happens, I have to be specific about not using that language.
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@Sharyn I agree it’s longer than necessary…ChatGPT made suggestions and I went along with them. I could have stopped sooner but decided to let it play out. In my prompt I think I asked it be sound “professional” or something like that , which may have helped to keep out some of the “must have” language….
I definitely think it’s worth playing around with. And it surpasses ebay’s description AI in part because it allows prompts, whereas ebay just draws from Item Specifics and stuff and has one “voice” it seems to use.
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For Sept 22-28 …. 5 items sold including a big one thanks to my wife. I did a lot of listing (a lot for me) that week. Trying to stay consistent although have work travel going on. Finally cracked 600 listings!
Total listings: 601
New listings this week: 22
Items sold: 5
Gross sales: $1212.43
Cost of items: $213.00
Ebay fees: $202.23
Gross Profit: $797.20
Average sales price: $242.49My big item for this week was a pair of Bill Huebbe fox wall sconces. My wife and I went to an estate sale and saw them, she looked them up and they seemed to be a great find at $250 for the pair but we were already spending a few hundred so I wanted to pass. the next day everything was going to 50% off and we decided to go back. We were 3rd in line when they opened (among about 25 people) and I got them. Ironically the lady behind me was planning to grab them as well! So paid $125 and sold for $875.00!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/197718714278also sold a Louis Vuitton bag that my wife found at an estate sale. the chose an Authentication service offered by Ebay. She paid for it and we shipped it direct to them. Now we all wait to hear if it’s real or not! Bought the bag for $80 and sold for $275.00. hoping it goes through.
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