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Lousy so far, but I hope to make it back to listing by weekend.
Jay agreed. I know I’ve been dancing along the lines today with free thinking. I had actually good sales last week for me. I’m not really a consipracy theory person just more of a need to know kind of person. Do I trust Ebay to tell me what I need to know to get the best results for my time investment? Enh, not sure. Part of the attraction to Ebay is the game aspect of it. I like to have access here to bigger seller’s observations and experiment results to spot patterns.
I think we are on the same page that sellers of more common items will be affected more by the changes at Ebay. Also on the same page that moving in fresh listings never hurts your chances of selling items.
Last year when I was less consistent about listing, every time I listed a few of my older items would sell within 24 hours, sometimes in the same category. Lately, I’m not seeing that happen. This spring, listing would result in no older listings selling. Recently, it’s my newest listings I’m noticing are moving right after a session (in better numbers than they used to).
I like the forums for sharing observations and evidence since Ebay is not always transparent. It’s up to the reader to make their own assumptions or conclusions and maybe experiment with potential improvements.
Let me preface this comment by saying that I am not a tech person. Generally, Ebay would not want to hide listings from buyers. But, what if Ebay does not have sufficient server capacity to show all shoppers all of the possible listings? One theory is that they have been doing rolling blackouts to avoid server overload. Then they tweak the algorithm this year to heavily favor the freshest stuff. Sellers in more competitive categories would notice a difference. Sellers of unique items not so much. If this theory were true, Ebay should be showing accurate impression and view data to show good faith. They might get more specific about how much best practices help your listing, like maybe emphasizing a bit more that months old listings should be revisited and price trumps best practices in best match (if true).
Also with the move to product pages, they decided that modern shoppers are getting to many hits to sort through and might avoid or stray from the cluttered platform style. My understanding is that only some items with a product page adopted will show to a buyer if the product has many listings. Will this gradually alleviate the server burden? Am I missing something?
I’m just seeing more brand new listings sell off – not really at exceptional prices btw. I went back and tweaked older listings and some did sell. So, as much as I like list it an forget it due to limited time, I think it’s a good idea to go back to older listings and tweak them. There are theories about the minimum changes you need to make to refresh. I don’t want to do 30 day listings because I’m not sure I can keep up. I hope ultimately Ebay just limits the categories they apply the product pages to. It really doesn’t make sense for certain collectibles and more unique items. It makes a lot of sense for ipad cases.
Thanks Julie. I find their sales are unfortunately not as good as they used to be as of 9 months or a year ago. I used to score mornings online and locally at the extra 40% off sale sale – they rarely discount that deep now and people are totally on it online when they do. For that reason and because of all my vintage death piles I’m not buying much RA. I’m getting a bit nervous as my RA inventory is now about 30% of the peak. If you lived near an outlet though, wow. That would be great to hit up!
Someone just started a thread about that post I saw.
I listed 20 items, 17 from piles. Time to hit the afghans – ugh! thanks for the challenge. My daughter is here sick today so I might get in some listing as I’m home from work.
I did go to the college rummage sale – not much to resell – and bought some gorgeous ’60s Sascha Brastoff pottery at Goodwill. Fun! but after the afghans it’s my policy to list the new stuff, so other piles will wait.
I’m doing some finer organizing into banker’s boxes by type and I feel like it really helps you feel a bit less overwhelmed. I also have my list of seasons I want to list certain types of items in. Bite size pieces and a plan.
Total Items In Store: 441
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales: $622
Cost of Items Sold: $202 + $24 free shipping
Highest Price Sold: $255 New Duvet & Shams (paid about $130 clearance within a year)
Average Price Sold: $57
Returns: 1 partial cancellation / buyer mistake
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: About $50
Number of Items listed this week: 20After the photo fiasco, I have to confess to you all that I went over to the dark side, looking briefly at ecommercebytes and Ebay forums. I found an interesting and lengthy post from a large seller whose sales had dropped “off a cliff” since December. The gist of it was that in March, Ebay changed the mysterious algorithm to treat high sales history less favorably and effectively punish sellers or listings (not certain which he was alleging) with staleness. Discussion went on to say more than 60 days was stale and furthermore that staleness might trump best practices in best search placement. I bring this up because I noticed that my newest listings are selling, and I did some price drops and tinkering with my stale listings having watchers and sold a few of those. The remaining items have been quiet. I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed this pattern.
I also read once that Ebay has a hard time competing for tech talent in the Bay Area. It really seems like they need to work on managing change better and notifying sellers when there are important issues to show good faith. I would not want to be a rep for them at the open fielding questions! Have a great week.
In my tiny retirement account I make individual stock picks (most of our retirement is in my husband’s accounts and in funds). About the time when Jay and Ryanne soured on Amazon, I figured Amazon small sellers would turn to Ebay, and Ebay vintage sellers may turn to Etsy. I bought stock in both. Etsy said they raised fees to do marketing. I think they will be very wise to captialize and grow given Ebay’s current focus and issues. I currently love Ebay because it’s comparatively quick and dirty to list, and you can list anything. But, as I move away from RA selling to more vintage, I’m hoping Etsy will step up it’s vintage game and draw shoppers. Maybe after a few successful Christmas seasons and better advertising, shoppers will start thinking of Etsy. If Etsy items show up better in Google or Mercari than Ebay items, that’s a big factor too.
Yes, let’s do it starting Sunday morning. I would love to price to sell and clear this bulky stuff out. I could literally pick up an afghan every visit to the thrift store and I like to rescue them because of the work someone put in. But, unless they are really exceptional and I’ve cleared most of the piles, I don’t think I want to store them. I have a bunch of baby quilts too. Same rescue weak spot but I think people are less inclined to buy used baby stuff and they get a lot of new gifts.
Thank you for the very nice compliment VT. Sales are slow this week for me too.
I’ve been doing some finer organizing of my piles in new boxes and made a list of items by type with some general goals about when they are best to list over the course of the year, eg. ahead of holidays or back to school, etc. One of the bulkiest items I have are afghans and vintage bedspreads. I’d be up for a challenge of listing them. I think I have 7 or so. It’s not my worst listing / packing type, but definitely I’ve been putting it off. What I’m most dreading is super fragile 60s thin glass ceiling light shades and vintage tabletop lamps.
Great story except the kids will be grown. Cats in the Cradle Song Lyrics
RT Oh how I loathe the mysteriously checked boxes glitch! Just sold an item on auction for .99 with free shipping. Honestly can’t say this time that I remembered to look though. You’re welcome!
I’m working this afternoon on a whole box of cartoon character coffee mugs from my earliest days on Ebay when I was scared to ship much else. Talk about eating your vegetables! I feel pretty determined to list myself out of this hole I made if it’s $10 or more. The next time I list I will switch it up to something I like better. I did list some patriotic stuff today, including some fabric.
Thanks Amatino. I don’t use business policies because I didn’t want to spend the time consolidating the multiples ones I inadvertently generated. Ebay is always off on the combined shipping but it often works out pretty ok or they punt and ask me to send an invoice. This time with the PRFE it was a $7 loss so it caught my attention. Made me wonder if something had changed recently? It sounds like you don’t think so. They told me to send an invoice for the extra shipping or cancel, neither sounded good since it was an old listing.
