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Thanks to the elves who answered my questions above. Only some of my items pop up as possible promotions and I usually pick just a hair above the trending rate, or if that fee is too high, a hair above 5% (a round # I think other sellers might be choosing). Haven’t had great results yet and I wish more items were available to promote.
Regarding the improvement requests, others may not be noticing so much if they sell mainly used items. It’s all new items in my improvements feed. I think the recent increase is due to Ebay adding new categories and now NOS vintage items are showing up – mostly craft kits for me at this point. They are flagging items with no comparisons (no UPC) so I’m not sure how they know it’s 100% less likely to sell than competitors? The entire category maybe. So I’ve decided to try a free shipping experiment for the kits they pick on. The other new items are mostly things I have sold a number of times before (hence my own listings are used as comparisons) and the recommendation has more to do with my not offering free shipping rather than the price it seems. I’m just going to tinker with the price up and down on those if I have time.
I saw in the news that 67% of Ebay transactions are free shipping already, so I’m really considering doing more of it going forward as an experiment. A lot of my items cannot go first class or in a PFR, so I’ll have to up the prices if I really want to embrace it.
Hi Cindi, can they still use the shopping cart and get guaranteed delivery with a muiti-item purchase from one store or do they need to immediate pay each item? Thanks.
Brian, what strategy do you have in choosing the % for your promoted listings? Thanks.
Total Items in Store: 336
Items Sold: 5
Cost of Items Sold: $102
Total Sales: $214
Highest Price Sold: $90 (Set of three new art plates that seemed to be blogged about or pinned somewhere, cost $48, purchased in Spring)
Average Price Sold: $43
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5Tough week for listing. We attended the out of town funeral of a good friend our own age. Hope to never do that again. Overall, it’s been quite a hectic summer with a lot of kid transport and unusual stuff going on. I can’t wait until school starts and then the back to school business subsides by second week of September or so. It makes me chuckle when you talk about your nephews being exhausting and demanding and not conducive to working. Some kids are harder than others and in different ways, plus their needs and activity levels change over time. Your sister is a good mom taking them to the country and limiting their screen time.
On the upside, I can list a lot faster now than when I started Ebay a couple of years ago. On the downside, Ebay is starting to hammer daily with their listing improvement requests on 10-15% of my actives. I don’t personally find it very helpful for a few reasons. Mainly, they show me my own items, compare with items that are not really the same, flag items that are only 50% less likely to sell than competitors, show my brand new listings, recommend free shipping on everything including lower overall cost items vs. comparison sales, etc. Wondering if anyone else is noticing this or cares?
I really didn’t want to do free shipping because I prefer the shipping to be kind of a wash, but I’m now trying it on a few underperforming first class new items where the solds were higher than my overall price with shipping. No immediate sales resulted so far. You want to think buyers will just search by the overall lowest price, but Ebay is telling us they will treat free shipping items better in search for those who don’t plus maybe people aren’t used to filtering on the phones. I suppose I should listen to this now that I’ve become familiar with estimating shipping costs. As a buyer I do love free shipping and I’m getting used to getting it from major retailers. I guess the allure is that I evaluate the price independently before seeing the related shipping, and if I then see that’s it’s free shipping I’m like “hey – that’s a nice bonus”.
I just made my second free shipping order from Amazon since canceling Prime. Three weeks and it hadn’t shipped FBA products from the warehouse. Tried to cancel, they emailed “sorry, it’s too late”, then shipped later that day. This could be a nice opportunity for Ebay coming on the with Guaranteed Shipping program for the holidays. Have a great week.
Thank you everyone for your thoughts. There is a lot that goes into pricing, but original art or rarer items can be harder to price for me as a adolescent part-time seller. This is especially true since we only have access to 3 months of sales data on Ebay. It’s tricky when you don’t have enough data available (there were a number of Worthpoint hits on Google but I don’t have a subscription.) So, that’s when the gut comes in and a though to other seller’s current prices. I’m always using my gut to make purchases but often I stop to research the solds too, so it’s a mix. The market will tell me if I’m too high and I can adjust within the year. In most common cases I’m on the high side of the solds or maybe a 50% or less above, then I do the perennial 10-20% off sales. I had a tapestry sale not long ago that was pretty rare but I matched a price on Etsy and the quick buyer essentially told me she was thrilled to find it so cheap – oops. It’s all a fun learning experience. Interestingly, someone just put up a new listing today on these for $199 so I’ll be watching that pair.
Thank you both. Mike I kind of factor in what you describe but there is way more gut involved in my process and I’m too small time to buy subscriptions. Normally I do not pay more than $15-20 for used items, but it was half price day and these really feel and look like quality and just spoke to me. Since I have limited time for Ebay sometimes I splurge a bit on items that have been priced by people who know what it is. The most fun is finding the overlooked items though. So, my COGS is overall higher than many trash elves, but I seldom lose $ and my duds I’m thinning cost only $1-3 (mostly handmade items and relatively uninspiring pottery). I’ve found these bookends priced at $295 and $395 online without best offer, but Ryanne your pricing is inspiring!
Thanks Mike! I’ll probably go higher with best offer but this is good to know for sure.
Wanted to comment re the Ikea RA conversation. Plastic bags are banned here so I bought all of my great reusable Ikea bags on Ebay. If I lived near an Ikea, I would totally source certain items there (probably lightweight textiles and kids’ items), though I would never list something I didn’t own and you are not supposed to use stock photos.
It’s fun to buy one of a kind vintage items and the return is amazing. But it’s also fun to speculate with RA and get great design and quality at a low price, then hold and flip for 2-10x the money and there is way less holding time if you are doing it right. Retailers are stuck having to produce and liquidate all of their duds and meh items. As resellers, we can go in and cherry pick their most special and undervalued items. If I think I can get more for something on Ebay than they have it priced at the retailer or predict they will sell out of it, I’ll even pay full price and sometimes it sells while it still available in the store and/or on the retailer site. I’ve been called out in messages for this once or twice, but I don’t see anything unethical about it. Some folks are too far away from the retailer or have never heard of it before, plus I ship globally with GSP and reach other audiences with Pinterest or Google. Anyway, it’s a whole other fun game about scavenging that I love.
Yeah. I use Google Shopping sometimes myself but I think you are right that not much traffic to my listings can be originating there (wish we could see details in traffic!). My pinned items and photos often show up on images very high and most people would be using Google organic search. Ebay adopting a clean background also goes against their new colorful marketing theme, so I hope this is one thing they won’t want to emulate about other sites going forward.
Total Items in Store: 364
Items Sold: 2
Cost of Items Sold: $18
Total Sales: $55 Ebay + 1 Facebook Sale: $30
Highest Price Sold: $35 New large measuring cup
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 32A dreadful week despite listing, which is very unusual for me. The second sale came after I revised the prices in the listing improvement section on that item. Ebay came up with way more listings for me to improve than ever before, about 15% of my inventory. Fortunately they also added a place for you to just tweak the price without opening and revising the listing. I tweaked almost all of them a little bit, upward in some cases. Hope for a better week this coming week and I’m focused on building up inventory. Can’t wait until school starts again and there is less running around.
Thank you to those who provided the Ebay Open updates and links. I’ve turned on 60 day returns and turned off the restocking fee that I wasn’t using anyway except to make people pause if they are likely to return. As soon as I can get on the Guaranteed Shipping program I will go for it since I’m always taking the kids here or there and work is right next to Fed Ex. I have had some missing PO scans but not enough to keep me from trying the program. I’m starting to add an overnight option to all of my listings as the final shipping method choice and have run a few new item promotions. Finally, I’m doing a bit of pruning to some old items or creating new listings. Despite the backlog, I find it very hard to give up on dud items I picked. Not sure why – it’s totally irrational.
I’m a bit bummed about the white background requirement for Google Shopping as I really enjoy designing my listings and using color and sometimes patterned paper or wood backgrounds. Hopefully Ebay will not adopt a requirement. Hope everyone’s week on Ebay was better than mine. 🙂
Doubly – I really enjoy your what solds and admire your ability to find interesting items with surprising value. Best of luck to you while you get back on your feet.
Total Items in Store: 350
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $12 used + $39 new RA
Total Sales: $234
Highest Price Sold: $103 antique cast iron Indian chief bookends
Average Price Sold: $33
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0Better than I thought once I added it up, so glad I kept the store open during vacation. We were gone and then had family in town so zero work on Ebay except to ship these items out. I had 5 days handling time (because of the limited options) on but immediately sold a couple of things when we left and then it presented as overdue, so hopefully I’ll still make my % for TRS.
I’m looking forward to seeing the photos of your new rental. You’re doing my favorite part – decorating with cool, quality budget finds and I enjoyed looking at the Farmhouse photos.
I’m taking a more seasonal approach these days to Ebay and I really want to get items listed for the Fall. I’m also giving a lot of thought to my pricing. I find that I tend to price high, but then when offers come in for used items, I tend to take it because I paid so little. On my Easter stuff, I priced it more to move, thinking I did not want to store it for a year with all of this backlog. I’m in a fantastic place to source and there is always plenty more stuff around the corner. Since I have so much stuff already and I’m running to the post office to drop an item or two everyday, it totally makes more sense to price lower if something is not that special and is not RA with a higher COGS.
R & J Mad Maine has some old videos about sourcing in Norway. I love her personality and have found some pewter and glass here, though glass identification can be a challenge. Have a great week!
Buyer just admitted to being out of town. Funny she first described it as “post office issues”.
My favorite recent sale. Paid $3 apiece at indy thrift where the older ladies like fussy stuff. They have raised their prices since I found the place unfortunately but still an amazing place. http://www.ebay.com/itm/232286931796
These handmade items take a looong time to sell but I feel compelled to rescue them. Paid $3 at the same indy thrift. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331886005086
Struggling to sell vintage wrapping paper, but did manage to sell this one. Paid .99 at a thrift store. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331889763494
