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Has anyone gotten off the wait list in March? I thought they said it would roll out March 1 for many more sellers. On mobile, it’s a separate toggle at the top. It’s a bit frustrating that they display it so prominently without allowing many to participate. Also noticed good visibility for promoted listings on mobile.
Tough to get to listing last week, but did sit down twice and got 10 itmes listed. 8 were from death piles. I did manage to stop at a couple of thrift stores during the week’s running around (which felt really nice) so I will continue to list those items first and then get back to the piles. Have a great week challenge friends.
As a part-timer with the foot on and off the Ebay gas, I’m probably in the minority strongly suspecting that EBay’s algorithm rewards activity. I suggest you go ahead and try trickling out your listings for a couple of months and see if you notice a change. I’ve always thought about trying that since I cannot list daily, but always just end up throwing everything up the day of.
Total Items in Store: 439
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $69 + $10 free shipping
Total Sales: $415
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Needlepoint kit – paid $10 estate sale https://www.ebay.com/itm/332552008375)
Average Price Sold: $47
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $28 (a couple of thrift stops)
Number of items listed this week: 10Ran a couple of auctions on things that didn’t sell for .99 cents last week. Just had one other item sell after they ended. Got another items in cart message for 5 used items, but unlike last week none of them sold this time after I reduced the price by 5%. 🙁 It felt very crikety this week so I’m glad I did my numbers – only half of the days had sales, they were grouped.
I finally finished listing the box that has been upstairs for a month. My daughter had her surgery so hopefully this week will be better for listing. Have a few new purchases to not add to the piles. Have a great week.
Has anyone shopped on mobile lately? A Youtuber mentioned a bunch of Instagram reseller chatter about changes so I looked. Guaranteed delivery is set apart right at the top of the results display as a separate toggle filter (not just nestled in the filter menu). This, of course, bums me out a bit since I’m still waitlisted. It also makes me wonder if free returns will be treated that way since it’s EBay’s new thing. I also noticed one of my promoted listings keeps popping up on the search results again and again with every scroll down. It’s got a gray tone. Interesting…
One more thought is that sellers of unique items probably are more likely to benefit from social media marketing. Ebay already makes it easy and convenient to share items but this also takes additional time. If older listings are pushed down in search, outside sharing might be somewhat necessary to attract buyers into the site and help people find your item.
I just looked at the boot camp topics. It does seem like it will be most helpful to sellers of new, common goods. I hope you report back to us later if you hear good tips for scavengers or ways we need to adapt if they openly address tweaking the algorithm.
With used, unique items a big factor is seller time investment – to source, list, research, price, sell and ship. Ebay metrics (except maybe view count) seem to to be less helpful. Sourcing guidance won’t be helpful to scavenger sellers. Sellers of used goods will need to rely on item specifics fields vs. product id # which typically cannot be found in the database.
Pricing is more of an art and sellers may need to maximze profits with slow dime selling to make up for the increased time investment. Ebay databases typically cannot offer valuable guidance for used items. Sales data going back longer than 3 months would be more helpful.
Returns may be more common with used goods due to condition issues on average and shipping may be more costly. Buyers may be less likely to expect free shipping and returns for hard to find or collectible items. Sellers of unique items may not see the same sales increase as new buyers if they offer free returns because fewer shoppers are looking for their items.
Sick all week and husband out of town. Just shipping out for me, no shopping or listing. This week should be better I expect.
Awesome. I wish my parents would have encouraged me to go to Europe when I was in college. My mother was an international TWA stewardess so I have no idea why they didn’t. I’ve never been and life (and $) really can get in the way after that. Good for you!
Lol. We definitely don’t own a horse! That and a boat are the worst investments. I’ll admit that we are decked in the local “uniform” Patagonia, all sourced at the thrift store ($20! like new jackets!) or on clearance online. I actually brag about my thrift store finds and my Ebay business. My mom friends are curious and a few of them go to rummage sales but none of them resell. We almost moved to Southern LA (Laguna Beach) before we bought our first house here. The fancy cars and spendy, competitive vibe turned us off. The town we live in is very, very highs and lows, everyone in our minority middle group is house poor. Overall, it’s uber casual and people don’t really buy into the attitude some mentioned above. Either they are too rich to care or they can’t afford to. So, it’s interesting.
I was remembering that you were passing on museums, etc. so maybe I didn’t remember that correctly. I really like to use Tripadvisor or Yelp to find inexpensive and good local food.
Total Items in Store: 423
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $104 + $31 free shipping (including one $12 whammy)
Total Sales: $375
Highest Price Sold: $48 New plate https://www.ebay.com/itm/232386798097
Average Price Sold: $21
Returns: 1 for $85 ouch (Buyer misread listing and mistakenly thought getting quantity)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0Interesting topic. As far as relatives go, it’s good of you to try to help them learn to be more frugal. It’s best and most effective though to offer help when they are ready to hear it. As for us, I would say that we are not quite your version of frugal. We don’t drive new cars or eat out a lot. We are very heavy on retirement savings. But, we do spend a lot of money on the kids’ lessons and activities. As the kids grow during teen years they get more an more expensive. We also pay a sh*tton of taxes and housing related expenses. I’ve suspended buying inventory and all of my Ebay money will go to the quarterlies coming up, as we’ll lose $15k in SALT itemized deductions under the new tax law. We also typically splurge once a year on a vacation somewhere really nice. If we spend $ it’s on the kids enrichment or on experiences. Sometimes when you talk about traveling, I secretly wish you’d spend a little to see or do things while you were there. Memories are priceless.
Interesting week on Ebay. I’ve been sick all week, so just shipped and didn’t list. Watched more TV and movies than I have in a year – recommend 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, MO. I had very good results with the buyers with items in carts reductions. 5/7 items sold. mostly RA items. I tend to price on the high end, so I could afford to drop. I sold 9/22 of my .99 auctions. Two or three sold for .99, the rest pretty low dollar, but some over $10. Unfortunately, one managed to have free shipping. Friends, I swear to you that did check this before launching those auctions. Could have been my mistake or a sticky box. I think I did just recoop my purchase price on all items. But, it also generated activity. Over the course of the last year, I have gone away from list it and forget it and more toward anticipating holidays and keeping the store as active as possible with the time I have.
Ebay is trying to accomplish quite a bit in a short period of time, and they need to pay for it all. I find that seller profits are being chipped away little by little – the now puny shipping discount with Ebay labels, try free shipping, try free returns, reduced TRS plus fvf discount, higher fees. The onus is on us as sellers to make sure we are sourcing and listing items that still make sense having enough meat on the bone. 2X the money might no longer make sense for me unless very high dollar. $10 items probably don’t make sense. Not a great time to have a big pile backlog, but something to keep in mind going forward. I really appreciate the what solds people produce. Wish there were more good ones on Youtube. ThePaperCastle is active again, one of my favorites. Have a great week!
I got this yesterday, dropped the prices 5%, and sold 4 / 7 of the items today, 😀
I’ll let you know. They end Friday and so far I only have 4 with bids. But, I would have donated them anyway, so just trying to maybe get my $ back. Only one I bought on clearance inexpensively, the rest were thrifted at $1-3 bucks.
Total Items in Store: 428
Items Sold: 8
Cost of Items Sold: $48 + $18 free first class or PFR shipping
Total Sales: $394
Highest Price Sold: $105 Needlepoint kit to Park Avenue https://www.ebay.com/itm/232662692009
Average Price Sold: $49
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0Shout out to the forum person who started the thread about marking down prices on watched items and also to BethGreen discussing auctions boosting sales (and possibly visibility) with activity. One day in a rather neglectful Ebay week, I chose some old items to do .99 cent auctions – just stuff I’m really tired to looking at or keep cropping up in my suggested changes page over and over. I’m over my basic store limit, so ready to cull some old stuff. I also dropped some prices on a handful of other items. I immediately saw some action, receiving a bid immediately, selling an item within minutes of reducing its price, and selling another older BIN item. It just reminded me that activity is apparently rewarded. So I’m running an experiment this week by reducing the price by 10% on my 15 most heavily watched items. My auctions will be ending and I’ll have a lousy ASP next week. So far, I have not received an email from Ebay asking me to drop the price of a particular item.
This week I sold another needlepoint kit for over $100 and an antique tile for $80. It occurred to me that these are the perfect items to sell on Ebay with the increased shipping rates and fees – small, lightweight, valuable – and ones that I could easily afford to offer free returns on but very rare so it is unlikely to come back. I wish all of my items were like that! Unfortunately, I’m working through the backlog and thinking really, really I should be evaluating what is worth listing since I have such limited time. There are a number of low dollar items in the backlog as well as heavy ones. I have them sorted by type (not by value) and so far I’ve just been listing what category I’m in the mood for. Have a great week!
