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I have been on Scavenger Life forum for almost 6 months, and love the forum, podcasts, and all the good tips and info.
I love the J&R ‘list it and forget it’ philosphy but just cannot totally embrace it for my business model even with GTC being ‘mandatory’.
For the last 2 weeks or so, I have been cancelling quite a few items just before they automatically renew with GTC. Then I relist them as new listings. This has been generating sales. Yes my sample size is small but there is Absolutely no doubt about it. For example, one item had been listed for 57 days. Then relist with No changes and it sells in a few minutes yesterday.
The search bump eBay gives to fresh listings must be really significant. eBay finally put that item in front of the right buyer, but not until it was a ‘new listing’.
SixBit manages my auctions. This makes it somewhat more simple to cancel & relist. But I still don’t like to burn any extra time. It does make more sense to be just listing new items.
Seems that eBay’s propaganda about GTC being better for sellers is a fabrication. It is mostly just better for eBay. Think about it. Perhaps it is a better fit for their Promoted Listings profits. And of course items are renewed without any time gaps so listing revenues are generated or free listings consumed.
More eBay changes that contribute to their bottom line, but not directly to the marketplace or sellers.
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Craigslist Hunter – arguably one of the most successful eBay sellers that still falls under the “scavenger” umbrella – said that the move to GTC killed his sales. His strategy beforehand was to start at the minimum BIN time (7 days?) and then work his way up until finally hitting GTC. He said most items sold before hitting GTC.
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoUwEd0FiJY
His solution – as you discovered – was to manually end listings and relist them. Problem solved.
However, other sellers have taken the same route of massively canceling and relisting items only to see a very minuscule bump in sales. When I did so it had almost zero effect and I haven’t entertained the idea since.
Obviously it’s about what you’re selling and how you’re going about it. I’m still a firm believer in best price + best shipping always winning out, but if you’re selling in cluttered categories with a lot of closely-priced competition, then something as simple as having a “fresh” listing can be huge.
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I’m reluctant to share my opinion (after being scolded with “NO NO NO” after the last time) but I think you might have a valid point. I used to have only 30 day listings and then I just relisted (with no changes) every 30 days. With that method I had very close to the same sales volume and sales $ amounts as I have currently – but I now have more than twice as many listings. The type of items I’m selling hasn’t changed. I think the relisting process every 30 days was giving me a boost in search. Just my opinion though, not trying to offend or upset anyone who disagrees.
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Uh. Im always confused when people think they cant sell in different ways. We just do “list and forget” because it works for our lifestyle. We dont like the hassle of “riding” our inventory.
We came up with “list and forget” back in 2008 when many eBay sellers we saw were getting rid of items that didnt sell within a month. They either were afraid to hold into inventory or just assumed an item was worthless after a short period of time.
We’ve learned that everything sells eventually. If ending and relisting items works for you and somehow tricks the eBay algorithm, then that’s cool!
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I’ve been noticing an ever growing number of “your item hasn’t sold in 16 months” on my listings, so I tried one night a few nights ago to end and relist a few hundred items. Out of every hundred items ended, 85 would relist with no problems and 15 would have 1 problem or another that needed to be fixed. I gave up after 200 items.
I wish that I could end/relist for the 16 month pop-up, but it’s not worth it if I have to spend 10-20 minutes working on 15 listings for each 100. I could spend the time working on any other number of projects for my business.
End/relist is great for small inventories, but burdensome for large ones, especially with errors.
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Yeah, I think if you have a store of under 1000 items, it’s pretty easy to ride the inventory. Always checking, tweaking, relisting. Can’t hurt. Just takes time.
The bigger issue is the root of this conversation:
–“Why arent my itms selling faster!!!!”
–“Is eBay hiding my items from buyers????”
–“Does nobody want my stuff :0”You can react to these feelings in different ways:
–Spend time monitoring and tweaking your items to try to sell items faster.
–List and forget. Spend time working on other projects or listing new inventory.
–Be much more particular about what you scavenge and only list items that are high demand.The last choice is the most important for people who get nervous about their slow selling inventory. Instead of thinking that eBay is hurting you, maybe you’re listing long tail inventory that a very limited number of people want. If you want a fast churn and burn store, the you need to only list items that many people want everyday.
What is impossible IMHO is to scavenge longtail items (because they’re plentiful and cheap to buy) and think you can sell all them very quickly. This way lies madness.
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I think it’s easy for people to think themselves out of what should be a fun business for most (especially if you’re just p/t) into making it yet another boring work-like task with the associated problems that go along with it. Plus, a LOT of bad overthinking. A lot of the “theories” I read when it comes to selling on Ebay just don’t make any sense. Why would Ebay purposefully block your listings? Or slow them down? Or cause harm in any number of ways? Why always negative? I guess it’s a negative thought rut – once something has been “proven” to be the “fault” of something beyond your control, you can’t change it because Ebay has all the power or something. Uh, no. It’s your business. Not Ebay’s. You can do whatever you want. Keep it fun. Keep it positive.
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This all day long. I should paste this to the front of the forum.
I think its great that people want to tweak their listing. If that works into their system of selling, very cool.
But often this way of thinking comes from a place of negativity. Why arent my items selling. eBay must be harming my store. I must outsmart eBay. Im falling into a hole. This is what it sounds like to me.
Like I said, if you cant handle selling long tail items, then focus on only finding and selling high demand items. Unfortunately this brings its own challenges because you’ll be spending more time and money seeking them out.
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This is on point. Negative though ruts are pervasive on most other reselling forums – just read the comments on your average reselling YT video and you’ll be convinced that eBay is actively trying to force every seller off the platform for some asinine, undocumented reason. Thankfully when the same kind of topics are discussed here, there’s some reasoning behind it or an attempt to prove it via some method. I appreciate that.
As others have said, trying to beat the system is not worth the effort. Sales come and go. I had a $1k weeks followed by a $300 week, but my confidence in the platform remained the same throughout. I trust the process.
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I agree that end & relist is burdensome, even for my smaller inventory with some Sixbit software assistance.
List it and forget is the ideal technique but requires the right type of inventory (Ryanne’s).
If you see messages that items have not sold for 16 months, and/or if your items cannot relist due to problems, it is also a safe bet that eBay is not showing those items much, if at all.
Almasty: you are correct. It is a matter of business priorities and your opportunity costs.
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Actually, when you send offers to buyers it tells you if an item has been listed for 16 months or longer. They ARE searchable by buyers. I send several offers a day that have been listed for 16 months or longer. I however don’t know if items that have trouble relisting are impacted in this way. Since I sell primarily extreme long-tail, including items I haven’t seen in YEARS, I can’t tell what has potential errors and what doesn’t unless I end/relist. I don’t even know if having errors even impacts sales with an inventory like mine, since similar items to the ones with “errors” (listed at the same time and same kind of items, so probably realistically have “errors”) have sold recently.
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Every month we will update the items eBay says are 16 months old. Its easy enough because its never more than 100 items or so.
But our way of selling just doesn’t allow the time to spend each day checking and tweaking listings. For others, they wouldnt do it any other way. eBay has room for all of us.
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I have in the past ended and relisted old items, but I have so many listings (~3000) and usually have a bunch of new stuff waiting to list, that I rarely have time I want to spend on relisting. As a rough guess, about half of my listings have the over 16-month flag. The oldest listings also don’t have the same simple appearance I’m using now and which I would like to update and a few other current tweaks.
I’ve been thinking about hiring somebody on a short term basis just to end and relist, but they need to be smart enough to figure out most of the new item specifics base on the old listing without constantly asking. I wouldn’t want them trying to update the description, photos, etc., I think that would be too much to expect.
I’m something of a procrastinator on things that don’t absolutely have to be done right now, pretty much a life long bad habit that isn’t likely to change much at my age, lol.
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Do the old listings that say “over 16 months old” still sell? There’s a myth that once eBay flags it as that old, they hide those listings from buyers.
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Just sold an item that I listed 4 years ago and forgot about and never edited.
I also just went through and ended then relisted 91 items that had the 16 month old tag and were about to automatically relist.
Slow sales will make you try things. -
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The old listings will sell occasionally. I have seen a little action when I relist old items, but nothing huge. I definitely get more sales-boost spending my time listing new products.
My old listings don’t look as good as my newer ones, I’m sure the new simplified look I’m using sells better. Then there is the situation with newer item specifics. I find that some old listings have dropped basic item specifics such as brand somewhere along the way. I’m selling on eBay Motors, so changes that happen on the eBay main site aren’t always carried over and Vice Versa.
Do you think there is a possible downside of losing watchers when ending and listing new?
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This post was not meant to be negative, but rather to report how end and relist was helping my sales right now. Yes, I admit my statement regarding GTC and eBay propaganda is negative. I changed my avatar so as to not look so grumpy.
I think ‘list it and forget it’ is great, but not all my inventory seems to fit that model. Even some items that I thought fit the model were ended and relisted late this month and then promptly sold. Go figure.
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Almasty what were the most common errors when relisting old items?
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HTML/active content errors from the policy change YEARS ago. I worked for weeks and even hired a helper to remove the code off the basic listing page & in the HTML section of the description fields. It repopulated in many listings, so when I choose to end/relist, I am getting those old error codes popping up. Since I’m still selling listings that unfortunately have active content still in the code, I am choosing to ignore those sort of listings and not end/relist them anymore.
No, I never sought out to insert java/links/etc,. in any of my listings ever. This originally happened in the first place because a paid listing software tool I used included links in the listings, which wasn’t a big deal at the time because it wasn’t against Ebay’s policy. Hah.
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Sorry if I missed your answer before. Can you confirm that these old listings still sell even after 16 months? While its nice to always be “fresh, I just want to have evidence that eBay doesnt hide these listings in search as some sellers are thinking.
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I completely changed the way I photograph items for my store 8 months ago. Doing a quick scroll through my listings, I can tell what is older or newer than 8 months. Out of the 50 items that have sold in my store since October 24th, 20 are older than 8 months.
Now I am going through the listings to see “start times.” Since I last ended/relisted items last summer, I can’t tell the exact listing date of these items. I know many have been listed for at least 2 or 3 years. Here’s what Ebay says for them:
Start time: Jun 17, 2018 04:20:48 PDT
Start time: Jun 24, 2018 09:48:13 PDT
Start time: Jul 05, 2018 04:38:58 PDT
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:19:12 PDT
Start time: Jun 18, 2018 04:55:30 PDT
Start time: Feb 09, 2019 13:07:40 PST
Start time: Jul 03, 2018 03:34:30 PDT
Start time: Jun 30, 2018 03:21:40 PDT
Start time: Nov 01, 2018 09:25:19 PDT
Start time: Oct 28, 2019 16:25:07 PDT (an end/relist one from the other night!)
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:22:22 PDT
Start time: Oct 28, 2019 16:29:02 PDT (another end/relist one from the other night!)
Start time: Oct 11, 2018 09:50:49 PDT
Start time: Jul 09, 2018 03:36:44 PDT
Start time: Aug 24, 2018 11:48:11 PDT
Start time: Oct 17, 2018 12:34:13 PDT
Start time: Jul 09, 2018 03:36:44 PDT
Start time: Jun 30, 2018 03:21:40 PDT
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:22:22 PDT
Start time: Jun 13, 2018 04:42:40 PDTI’ll continue to not end/relist and see how sales go. 20 out of 50 sales is a strong showing for the hold and wait ethos. I at this point have too much new stock to deal with to care about ending/relisting and babysitting the older stock as it is, so it can continue to sell when it does and I will continue not caring.
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I know for sure the old listings still sell, but I don’t see any way to verify or quantify that.
Since I always include those over 16 items in send offer, I suppose that could account for some increase now that we can do that, but the old ones were selling before we could do that. Same for Promoted Listings, while that may have changed the frequency of old items selling, we have always sold a few.
We have many items that are unique enough that there may not be many valid search results.
Not to mention that some sales may come directly from a Google or other search engine and aren’t affected by eBay manipulation of search results.
So, yes, old (over 16) items sell but there is no way for me to know where they were showing in search results for the buyer at time of sale.
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We have many items that are unique enough that there may not be many valid search results.
Good point. For those of us selling long tail items, we have less competition from other sellers. Maybe if we sold popular items with high competition, being “fresh” might matter more.
We sell old items (over 16 months) each and every day.
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https://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&item=221561896463&rt=nc&_trksid=p2471758.m4903
I sold one of these in the past week. There have been 8 sales since the item was listed on Sep 28, 2014, but those are old enough not to show up on the page sold history. Ii looked back at my sales records and the last previous sale was Feb 22, 2019.
So, this is just 1 old item sold, I don’t want to take a lot of time searching for more examples but they do occur.
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