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Struggling to get into listing. Had a great opportunity Friday to list for a while uninterrupted and I just didn’t feel like it. I did some organizing of inventory and pruning of unperforming listings. Will try to get my mojo back. The piles await!
Happy belated birthday to you both. Here’s to another year of you doing what you love to do. Should be an exciting one coming with the roll out of your new rental. Thank you for sharing and creating somewhere to share with other people who get it.
You’re right, that is better information. Ugh, have some listings with zero click through rate that I have not ended. Wasted space and I’m nearing my subscription limit. It’s interesting to see what’s trolling at the bottom. Some are maybe price related, many are out of season, but there are some similar items from the same brand or category. Like vintage wrapping paper is not doing well, Pimpernel drink coasters. I would love to check vs. solds on Etsy.
Mp I think they just updated it very recently. I don’t see that slider tab for recommendations. Here’s a visual of myself beating myself up: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/343399540327167003/
This part is a bit more helpful, depending maybe on how big the category is: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4a/6f/36/4a6f360a24cd2e6d429a98abd4bb375d.png I’ve already lowered the price on this item a couple of times.
I suspect that these listings identified as underperforming are getting beat up a bit in search, but it would be nice to know if tinkering was worth it for sure. I don’t have time to sell similar every 30 days, even with a small store. On the other hand, this particular item is getting good impressions and similar page views vs. the category.This is still in the beta stage. I sell new and used items and both types get flagged as underperforming. I find this functionality unhelpful so far. Ebay just uses it to encourage me to add free shipping on my items even if they are priced lower than the comparison sales they are showing. Often, they send me comparisons of all of my own sales of a similar item, and then say I have a 100% less chance than myself of selling that item in an identical listing (even if the remaining item is priced lower). However, if they have an item randomly flagged with recommendations, I always tweak the item slightly – change lead photo, up the price, title words, etc. – just in case it matters to them. I use the filter button for items with recommendations only. Recently they added the traffic stats for the entire category vs your item. I might consider reviewing that data and doing some tweaking since they have labeled it underperforming. It would be more useful if they offered a list of items missing specifics – like after they add additional ones and you have old listings with blanks.
Total items in store: 325
Items sold: 6
Cost of items sold: $18 used + $175 RA
Total sales: $416
Highest price sold: $240 (New bedding bought in spring for $140)
Average price sold: $59
Money spent on new inventory this week: $0This week again not Ebay friendly with graduation, kids getting out of school early, company, and very busy contract work as we prepare for summer vacations and people being out of the office. Nothing listed and mostly small, non-vintage sales, so it’s nice when I sell a bedding set to boost a week like this.
It’s time to do a little reorganizing as I get more seasonal about my approach with things. My goal is to get a bunch of Christmas stuff up by Fall this year. My contract work is fine and fruitful, but I long for a couple of just uninterrupted listing days. It really goes against my grain to list a few items here and there, plus and there are always chores or something else to do with a short window of time. The plague of the part-time mom seller.
A teeny rant here. I’ve mentioned before I get annoyed with Ebay picking randomly on a few of my new item listings in the growth tab. They show my all of my own sales next to the item as comparison and the remaining item is actually priced less, and then say it has a 100% chance of not selling. What? I’d blow it off except I don’t want to draw attention as a stale item seller and get things removed, so I tinker with it. Anything with a ribbon or suggestion, I go in and tinker with or remove. I’m also putting “does not apply” in the upc on new items, because I don’t want Ebay to make it easier for buyers to comparison shop or click away, and I want Ebay to stop sending me listing recommendations to ship everything for free. I don’t see much upside to putting it in since I’m often not the lowest price and I draw in shoppers from Pinterest.
Total Items in Store: 328
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $24 thrifted + $87 new RA
Total Sales: $295
Highest Price Sold: $56 (Catherineholm pan – paid $15 last month)
Average Price Sold: $33
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $30 (Three vintage LLB plaid wool bedspreads)
Number of items listed this week: 4I’m surprised at the numbers because it felt even slower. Very busy at my other job and with end of the school year stuff. Enjoyed the podcast, as always. I hope to continue with Ebay into retirement or earlier parent care phase when I can give it more time. I’m planning to do a bit more gardening in my listings and list things seasonally. I pulled all of the Easter stuff that didn’t sell. I’m also thinking the cons outweigh the pros for putting in the upc, so I’m going to pick does not apply and put the number in the item description in case they start enforcing that.
Ebay sent an offer to upgrade my store to premium, but I’m going to go for a balanced approach of list it and leave it vs. keeping it fresh. I’m not ready to upgrade the store just yet for $30 more a month, and hope they come up with a level soon between 250 and 1000. Have a great week.
Love that they are spotlighting the shopping cart feature! All the time people buy multiple items separately even though it says in my very brief description to get combined shipping with the shopping cart.
I made a book order from Amazon after cancelling prime in January. The shipping was unbelievably slow and I didn’t look at the estimate since it wasn’t a third party seller. Maybe if that is common, it has something to do with the upcoming shipping policy changes at Ebay.
I think Ebay and Etsy both have good opportunities right now. It will be interesting to see what happens as Walmart continues to ramp up. I’m a big Target fan, so I’m rooting for them. Fun to watch it all unfold.
I know! $83.64 shipping. Funny, I had this item priced higher and then thought to myself, “it’s just a tablecloth!” Maybe could have gotten more for it? Pricing is such a challenge sometimes.
I had my first known prop sale for a movie set in the 1960s called “Summertime” being filmed in NYC. Paid $4 at indy thrift. My daughter is a performer type, so she had to touch the item “someone famous” would touch. Fun. http://www.ebay.com/itm/332176984258
Sold this awesome mid-century kitchenware. Paid up a bit at $15 and the black handles were whitened from the dishwasher. I used fine steel wool and olive oil to refresh. http://www.ebay.com/itm/232311694107
Out of my comfort zone but thought I would try. Sold very quickly! Paid $2 at the weird storage clean out thrift store. Have another with LA Guns and some 80s metal decals to list. Maybe I’ll go back for more and try to cut a deal. http://www.ebay.com/itm/332234870686
Good point Mike. I hardly ever have anything long like that, so I just use 12-14″ as my wake up call to start paying attention to the issue.
Total Items in Store: 380
Items Sold: 6
Cost of Items Sold: $152 new + 12 used
Total Sales: $354
Highest Price Sold: $240 (Bedding I purchased online last month for about $140)
Average Price Sold: $59
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 13Thankfully one good sale to save the week and it was a Facebook Pinterest party item sold the same day, so that’s awesome. I’m trying out a few promoted listings and had one sale in a couple of weeks. I’m going slightly over the 5% mark for most items. I pulled an action I was running for a sealed Lego set starting at .99 since there were practically no views after 6 days (seems odd). Very busy with family life and the latter part of week was definitely not Ebay friendly. No shopping this week, so back on the wagon.
For the caller in Santa Barbara, I recommend also trying the Facebook Group Santa Barbara Home Décor Swap. It’s smaller and still a bit more upscale than the other local swap sites, but things do get buried fairly quickly.
Re the removed listings issue, just reporting that an unlucky few reported sell similar items were also pulled, even some that had been tweaked a bit. Those seemed unhappy with paying a bunch of listing fees but were glad they hadn’t lost all of the text and photos.
Have a great week.
I too was intimidated by shipping at first but you will get the hang of it. I looked on YouTube at Danna Crawford’s old shipping show videos. You kind of see someone doing the process comfortably, and see how big a box something ends up going on one it is bubbled and packed well and what type of shipping method was used and why. I also began by listing similarly sized, weighted smaller items to get the hang of it for a bit. One of my early mistakes was not using the usps flat rate bubble mailer and flat rate medium box enough. Good luck. Come back and visit this page after you ship a few items. There is good advice here. If something needs a box that is over 12″ inches on one side, watch out for the dim weight warning up above and maybe seriously test pack it. Dim weight dings can add $35-40 and either keep your item from selling or burn you if your listing package demensions were understated.
Wow. Thanks for posting. I just saw a video on YouTube indicating that the number of listings in certain categories (i.e. clothing) has really taken off in the past year, without a corresponding growth in sales. I also have always wondered if they have the server capacity to show all of the listings at once? I know, I know – it’s conspiracy territory.
I just checked my facebook groups and there are others reporting this. Interestingly, the categories seem to be collectable, used items, so people are speculating that it is part of EBay’s strategy to keep moving toward more new goods. Categories mentioned there were stamps, postcards, vintage jewelry, dolls and housewares.
