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Well, it’s still kind of a matter of preference, but it seems to depend a lot on how much competition there is for that kind of item. If it’s super specific and it is always on the first page of search results because there are only ever like five of that thing listed on eBay at a given time, it might not matter so much. According to eBay’s definitions, any listing is stale after 30 days and stagnant after 90.
For me, I’m not really attached to the data on the listings re: watchers/views, so now I just cyclically refresh everything in bulk by selling similar 200 at a time.
Also, a bit of a detour, but I used to think promoting those kinds of listings wouldn’t help much because it’s always high enough up in search results by virtue of being rare… but I also learned that’s not exactly true. They told us that the organic search results placement is more about having a high-quality listing. If your listing is excellent (great photos, no spammy stuff in the title, all the relevant item specs, etc) it may yet beat out listings that are lower quality on the actual search results page. So even if you have an item that’s always showing up on the first page of search results, what promoting those rare-ish one-off listings will do is actually put them in other ad placements around eBay, like the “similar/related sponsored items” offerings on the actual listing pages of the others, etc.
Sarah Styles (from the video) is awesome, and she is going to be putting out a buuuunch of YouTube videos to discuss these things as they come up. I’m actually going to be joining her live on Fridays for a recap chat where we can discuss whatever came up in our store that week, keep picking apart all the stuff we learned while on campus at eBay, etc!
I can confirm this is what they told her–I was also present in person for that conversation! It was directing from an executive and also the team that works on that part of the back-end.
I also wondered why they don’t just make it automatic. I’m assuming it’s because they want to give people a choice about losing the history of watchers/views/sell-through on that listing, which is all tied to the item ID, which is what changes when you sell similar. I think selling similar is really unfavorable to some sellers who have multiple quantity listings that they keep forever and restock when it sells out because they want that history to be continuous. That’s what I gathered from talking with other sellers at eBay!
9/18/22 – 9/24/22
Total Active Listings: About 12,400
Total Number of Items Sold: 69
Gross Sales (including shipping): 1338.21
COGS: 150.89
Highest Price Item Sold: Handmade mint and white disco/leisure suit from the 70s ($75)
Average Price Sold: 19.39
Returns: 2
Sourcing Cost: 0 (still working through a pile from an estate clean out)
Sales have been sloooooow for me since about the beginning of August. I am really hoping and praying Q4 comes through for my store. I think not sourcing the way I used to for nearly a year now is taking a toll. I had a great run about April-July, then it sales kind of tanked. So I’m going back to the regular pattern of trying to source better stuff, no time-intensive estate clean outs, and listing consistently, listing non-consignment stuff! General sales volume has been down, but also my average sale price has gone down.
It has been an awesome couple of months, ironically, in the sense that I had the opportunity to put together a seller-led session for eBay Open and present it this year. At the end of August, I flew to San Jose to work on eBay open content for a week. It was terrifying but really, really fun, and I was SO happy to see My Cottage in my chat! My session was about inventory management, called “Bin There, Done That” (haha) and it will be on the eBay for Business YouTube channel for the rest of time, I am told, after they post it sometime next week.
I made some amazing friends at eBay, both with corporate folks and fellow sellers. We also had the chance to talk with teams from every department you can think of, and heard about some of the new stuff they’re rolling out soon (like hopefully no more unpaid items, ever, by the end of this year).
In light of that, its disheartening that my sales are so crummy at the moment, but I’m keeping the faith in conjunction with putting my nose to the grindstone! I have been listing the whole time, but not as much as I used to, not as consistently, and have been paying contractors for more front-end estate clean out work rather than directly for items processed and ready to be listed.
Any ideas about semi-liquidation would be welcome if you guys have thoughts, because I’m also gearing up to move back to my homeland of southern Illinois, probably in about 6 months or so. I want to keep the business going obviously, but if I have fewer than 10k items to move, that would be awesome. COGs are always low, so I’m not afraid to drop prices, I just don’t have a ton of confidence that a price-drop alone will generate sales more quickly.
I hope everyone’s week is more profitable than the previous! Cheers!
Hey all! January has been pretty meh until the last 4 or 5 days. I’ve done a little over 6k in gross revenue this month, as of right now. I haven’t taken the time to break down my weeks because I’ve been doing these eBay Seller conference calls with all the Up & Running folks. It’s been very interesting! As I’m sure many of us in this forum would experience, I haven’t learned boatloads of new information, but it has been very helpful and encouraging to hear from/talk with other sellers of many varieties, not to mention hearing directly from some of the eBay corporate people themselves! I think my favorite thing has definitely been the Q&A sessions, because everyone involved is pretty experienced, so the questions are good! By the way, I am allowed to share links to these calls (they are like zoom presentations and Q&As) with anyone who wants to view them after the fact, so if anybody is interested, let me know the best way to get them to you. It’s been funny and enlightening to hear everyone’s questions during the Q&A sessions — many of the same ones we wonder about around here, to be sure! Here are some of my personal favorite takeaways so far:
1. There are lots of myths and mystery about the algorithm, but the only thing the eBay corporate facilitators would definitively say about helping the algorithm work in your favor is to list at least a little every day–specifically, don’t go more than 3 days without listing. I usually binge-list for a couple of days a couple times a month due to the nature of my workflow with my helpers, so I’m doing an experiment and adhering to this advice for the rest of Q1 to see if it seems to make a difference.
2. There is no foreseeable hope for combined shipping through global shipping program. Sorry, we have to live with it. It was only slightly crushing to hear this right from the horse’s mouth, haha!
3. Especially for items like mine (super misc), as has been discussed many times around here, heavily discounting things on mega-sale will likely not result in a whole lot of sales volume; they instead recommend (of course, haha) putting the profit you are willing to give up into promoted listings adspend because then at least you are getting something in exchange for the sacrifice of your profit! More eyeballs on your listings! I have always struggled to balance how much of a sale I want to have so people feel like they are getting a deal (and they are!), and how much to promote listings without feeling like I’m throwing away money. I never thought of doing promoted listings basically INSTEAD of a sale, and how that might actually result in more sales volume, so I am doing a little experimentation with that this quarter also. I still haven’t figured out entirely how to spend the grant money, but I have spent a little bit of it on storage infrastructure, some extra labor as I clean out this current estate I’m working on, and also tried out eBay for Charity for the first time. That was exciting, and I am happy to say we were able to make a $500 donation to the Midwest Innocence Project for the first time ever. I want to commit to it again in the future, but for now I turned it back off so I can get my revenue cranking. I really want to hit 100k in sales this year, and now that I know by experience how eBay for charity works, I will be a lot more comfortable pulling the trigger for more than just a trial-run in the future.
Let me know your most burning questions if you have any, and I will try to ask them in the next Q&A! We’ve got a couple more weeks worth of those on Fridays.
I also am thinking seriously about cross-posting some of my best vintage clothes onto Etsy, so any tips/advice/cross posting recs would be very much appreciated! Cheers everybody!
@millionairedojo A solid week indeed! I am seriously considering cross posting some of my best vintage clothes to Etsy… do you have any must-know advice for that? I’m sorry if you have mentioned this before and I just missed it or don’t recall, but do you use a software to cross post? Just curious about your experience with this aspect as I think about diversifying a bit! Thanks!
Yeehaw! Love those high dollar sales (over $100!). Also I need to seriously consider getting a hot tub… that would make slogging through uploading photos into drafts so much better! You have the right idea!
Happy New Year!
I’m mid-shipping craze following an extended handling time for holiday travels, so I haven’t pulled my numbers together yet, but December was my best sales month to date, even with extended handling time, so I am thrilled about that! For the first time, we did over 10k in gross sales in a month. January 2021 was previously my biggest month to date, so I am very curious to see how this January goes! I’ve made a few notable changes for the new year, starting on tax prep next (so jealous of @retro-treasures-wv for having all your tax bookkeeping done already! Agh!!) I ended my promoted listings campaign to see how the store does without any promoted listings. I am just not convinced it helps enough to justify the cost, because it’s taking the fee if someone buys your item within 30 days of clicking an add… I guess we’ll see! Honestly if I have a really low week of sales, I may turn it back on at an even lower percentage or something. But I’d rather not have to do it at all since I’m not selling iPhone cases 😉 Another reason is that I have officially updated the vast majority of my listings to give a percentage of sales to the Midwest Innocence Project…so I’d rather spend a slice on that than promoted listings. It’s all an experiment, so we shall see if that swap serves my store well or not.
Also, the Up & Running online training webinar stuff starts next week–excited to see what I learn and what the community is like! I’ll report back about it as much as I can. Another change I’m making this year is trying to hold myself accountable to a maximum number of work hours every week regarding the store. There will certainly flexibility and exceptions on occasion, but as the rule, I’m trying to work more on a basis of abundance and rest than I did last year. When things were slow, it felt good to work overtime, but that wasn’t the healthiest as the year wore on. I’ll report back about that too, lol. I like to work, and it’s the default for me. However, I have other projects and things I’ve somewhat neglected while being preoccupied with my store and often working more out of stress than anything else in 2021.
I hope everyone is off to a good start this year! I have some catching up to do to finish shipping (35 more things to ship today, shipped 65 yesterday) from the break, and I also need to create all my new 2022 spreadsheet pages, total things up, finalize all my 2021 records in my own numbers once I’ve completed shipping for all the items that sold at the end of 2021. It will feel great to have that stuff set up ASAP! Then it’s on to processing through a huge estate full of stuff in ATL, as well as a bunch of farm estate auction stuff I brought back with me from my hometown in IL. Lots of work to be done–you can see why I have to limit my hours haha! I will say though, I am excited and healthfully motivated to jump in. Wishing that for each one of us!
That’s so cool! I track that info too, but haven’t done an analysis of it since I pulled a bunch of data together for my book in 2020. This makes me want to check in and see how that shook out for 2021! I find myself moving more and more toward estate sales/auctions as well, though I can’t resist popping in to Goodwill every now and then. Thanks for sharing this!
So cool! Good for you, and good for your county for prioritizing that. Sixbit admittedly sounds intimidating to me; I have mixed feelings about cross posting, but I do use ink frog to back up my listings at least! I’ll be curious to know if you go with Sixbit or not!
I’m glad to hear that… sometimes I feel bad for posting so inconsistently on here. I really appreciate the consistency everyone else seems to have haha! My monkey brain can only really be consistent with a handful of things in life, but I will hopefully become more consistent over time. I actually think some of my lack consistency is what helps me not burn out. One of my graduate school professors told us all that it’s okay to drop the ball, just don’t drop the same ball twice. Running an eBay store does take a lot of time, energy, focus, and wrangling of details, so sometimes I just have to take a break from building and do the bare minimum for maintenance (shipping and some admin, mainly!). Even oscillating somewhat, staying in the game this long (4.5 years since I started my store) is extremely rewarding and surreal.
Speaking of storage, I am pretty dang organized with my inventory now in three climate controlled storage units. I overhauled my inventory system over the spring and summer in order to maximize the units I have and not need a fourth. Also, I want to be able to teach someone else to pull and ship items if it becomes necessary later due to just volume of sales or other life circumstances. At this point, even with my husband helping me on a crazy shipping day, having a cleaner system is SO beneficial. That being said, I would love to have some kind of appreciating asset instead of storage units as soon as possible, but I’m not sure we’ll be living in this area long term, so I’m hesitant to try and build something or even buy something. We’ve lived in GA for ten years, are considering having kids in the next few, and my entire family lives in the midwest. I have a sneaking suspicion we may be relocating somewhere along the line, but who knows! I’ve always wanted to start a midwestern branch of the store due to having amazing access to cool vintage stuff in farm auctions near my hometown, so maybe that will come into play!
Sanity is a high priority in my world, haha! I definitely think some small chunk will go to maximizing my storage situation even more (additional shelving, bins, etc). I haven’t delved into cross-posting too much, though I’ve always had an interest in listing some of my higher end vintage clothing on Etsy and going full-stop Etsy with it… photoshoot with models, pretty packaging, etc. I’ve just never had the resources or mental bandwidth to do that without feeling like my focus was spread too thin. But maybe some additional resources changes that! I like the idea of diversifying in that way, but also wonder if it would be acceptable to use money from an eBay-related grant to expand onto a different platform. In any case, I think I will eventually do that with the cream of the crop vintage clothes.
Congrats on winning a local small business grant! That’s awesome! How did you find out about that program? I wonder how many local grants like that are available, right under our noses! Any amount is so vindicating when you work hard on your business, and I can certainly appreciate the desire to spend the money effectively and wisely. I will certainly keep everyone posted on what ends up happening in my decision making.
Applying wasn’t too bad–just answering some essay-style questions about me, my business, how this kind of money would help it grow etc, and of course I had to provide some basic business info, enough for them to deem that I meet the criteria and am in fact a real business haha! I didn’t have to submit a plan of any kind, and as far as I know, there are no strings in terms of how you spend the money as long as it’s in reasonably in the realm of growing your business. I’ve been thinking generally along the lines of inventory, infrastructure, and more help! I did have to submit a headshot after I accepted the grant, and I agreed that they could follow up with me about my business and how I used the grant, but I think that was optional.
I didn’t have to submit any kind of video, but they might want one from me eventually! I’m up for it I think, but again, I don’t think that was a condition for accepting the grant!I’m not sure what the selection process was like, but I believe they awarded 20 of these grants in 2020 and this year they awarded 50 from over 10,000 applications. eBay officially posted a press release about it on December 7th if you want to know even more about it. Seems like they were very successful with their 20 people last year, so I’m glad to see them expanding the program accordingly!
Thanks for your thorough response on what you’d do with the money! I love your math–I find myself mocking up similar scenarios regularly. $85,000 of inventory available to buyers would certainly be a smart move. Hiring more help is on my radar for sure, and while I don’t have a death pile per se, I do have a whole estate clean out that just began a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure the quicker we can get all of that listed, the better!
1400 is AMAZING! I think crossing 1000 items is an incredible feat; it feels like you did something impossible! It still feels that way with other milestones after, but I guess you’re a little less surprised that you actually did it, because you know you’ve done it before. I didn’t really intend to go much beyond 10k, but when things got slow after abut April this year, it felt better to just keep aggressively listing when the numbers were lower than expected. I probably for real won’t let it get much bigger volume wise, and instead focus on replenishing the value of items rather than the number of items. It’s a shift in thinking for me, and I might even change my mind on that later. When sales are good, let that motivate you. When sales are slow, let that motivate you. Like a scavenger, use it all!
