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Okay folks! I think I have it figured out. Just navigate to the list of campaign to have running, and click on one of them towards the right. And you get an option to download a report for that particular campaign. If it’s a campaign that had a sale in it and the information about that sale will appear in the Excel file that you download. And that’s how you determine what item actually sold. I have everything out of campaign, mostly by category. I’ve sold 4 items for a total of $50 hours, with an ad cost of about $9.75. And that’s in line with the 20% spend rate that I selected for advertisement cost.
Cottage, when I grabbed one of your promoted item’s titles (the Xmas blow mold one) and searched for that item from the eBay search, not from within your store, I saw the reduced sale price of $71.XX without a slash through the amount. However, once I clicked on the listing to select it from other listings, and was within the listing itself, I saw the original price with the line through, demonstrating there was a price reduction (i.e. sale).
To me, this just means that if you are trying to appeal to buyers strictly on pricing alone, the MM is an excellent to to quickly achieve a price reduction and have a measure of control over the duration, etc.
Trying to get to page 1 of the search results, because there is a large number of similar items is another matter. To me, that’s where promoted listing comes into play. Cost aside, if I want to appear on page one of search results, and who doesn’t, then I am hoping promoted listing helps me achieve that goal.
I’m not listing daily, so I get no favoritism from Casini for that activity, I’m not shipping daily (I’m at 3 days handling time), I’m not a Top Rated seller, I’m not the cheapest, etc. So, I’m looking for purchased SEO. Let’s see how the promoted listings works to that end, I guess.
HI cottage, so when I looked at your store, the only way to tell there is a sale price is once you’re in your store. I think that is what the young man on 10k on the bay was alluding to. By the way, woo hoo, you have a nice one (Vintage Arctic Cat Panther Snowmobile Smiley Boy Ceramic 1970s Atlantic Mold) 10 watchers! Another note, your heading on your store has 2 commas in a row. Just a little friendly FYI. my feeling on the promoted is, it’s probably best on crowded categories. If you’re trying to stand out in clothing, for example, the first page is critical. If you’re trying to get movement on long tail items, perhaps not such a great idea. Cheers
I think the gist of it is, that at some point in the transaction, perhaps once you select the listing from the search results, the original pricing appears and the buyer selects the item and puts it their cart based on that original price, and it isn’t until after they have agreed to that price, by virtue of selection, that by they see the discount. I believe his point is that someone was probably willing to pay the original price anyway, and that by using markdown manager at all, you’re throwing money away. But no matter, if the markdown manager is going away as of 10/3/17 then it’s moot. That was my take
I sold 3 items so far by using this feature and have only put about 1/4 of my store on. I’m going to do the rest now that I see there is some value. I did some YouTube sleuthing on the subject and there is an interesting video from 10K on the Bay. He said markdown manager is going away. Also, he showed how, at least in some cases, the mark down didn’t show thru to the buyer until after they selected the item and it went in their cart! It was an interesting video from that regard. https://youtu.be/sz-7VJrxOxY
I started to use promoted listings. I started with items that I happen to have multiples of. Unfortunately, a lot of other people have multiples of the same thing and the market is saturated with these items (a deadstock Kohl’s stuffed animal & an under-the-counter water filtration system). It didn’t really do a darn thing there because folks are not looking for these items. So, I tried it on my one-of-a-kind inventory. I started with the category of women’s shoes. I plan on ceasing buying women’s shoes anyway, so it seemed like a good idea. First, I increased the price of all my women’s shoes by 25%. Then I put the entire category on promoted listings with an advertisement rate of 20%. So, that works out to be almost the same amount of cost as the amount I increased the price by. It’s a wash to me. I didn’t have my shoes priced terribly high anyway since I view them as a commodity item. I sold the first pair under the ad price within a couple of days. So, I threw up a few more categories. Let’s see how it goes. It won’t cost me anything since I already jacked the prices to offset the ad costs.
I’ll toss in the only thing I ever really look for in men’s shirts….Pendleton
I am back in here again, because I never really took the Etsy thing very far. I guess I talked a bug game then went back to what I know. It came up yesterday when I was waiting in line at a bag sale and the woman in line in front of me only sells on Etsy. She really made a good case for it. And vintage now counts if the item is pretty 1998. So, it’s tempting to get my act together and do it. I looked up a few items and see that the same thing I have on eBay is twice the price on Etsy…..
I’m on the cusp of buying one myself. Which LED lit box do you have and would you recommend it? Thanks
If I were to guess how to use this in the kitchen, I’d guess as a yogurt strainer for thickening yogurt.
second week of posting my numbers…woo hoo (that’s the big accomplishment) week 5/28/17 to 6/3/17
items in store apx 650
items sold 16 (hey, that’s a 2.46% STR, more than I imagined)
total sales (this includes shipping costs) $392.96
net sales (net COGS & shipping & returns) $268.59
return 1 – deck of vintage cards for 11.91 + 2.77 shipping
average gross sale $24.56
average net sale $16.79
highest sale – vintage Maid of Honor turquois mid-century electric ice cream maker $65.09the return was from some yahoo said I didn’t include all 52 cards, never mind that the photo shows I have all of them. I have an auto return set up for anything less than $20 cuz I don’t do well with actually dealing with these guys and get myself in trouble. better to just give them the money and ignore the situation entirely.
the highest sale item was a pick for 31 cents from the goodwill bins.
Extrapolated out (for S&Gs) if I had 4000 items in my store, and all things held true from this week, then that would be a net sales week of $1645.42. Boy that puts it in perspective. Its a lot of hard manual work for that number (this is assuming I were doing this full time).
Happy Hunting!
Hi, I haven’t replied for some time, but I see you edited your post 2 weeks ago, so I assume you’re still looking for an answer. I do not think you need to use html to upload the photo, but you do need a URL address. I know that the department that supports this process at eBay is very adept at addressing concerns, as they are a technical customer support group. So, you should rely on them as your first resource. They are very knowledgeable.
The entire process was really slick for me, except when it came to the picture URL piece. That’s what dragged it down for me. I have a question for you: where are you hosting your images? Ideally, there would be a URL that one could simply change out the endings on, say with a concatenate function in Excel.
I’d love to here how it’s going for you.
I felt the need to delve into a point brought up in the podcast referred to as tending the garden. Jay, I think you eschewed it as not a preferred method for you and Rhyanne. However, I took a crack at it because I’m slowly going through my inventory to catalog the storage location of each item. I found that there were significant numbers I thought were listed that were no longer posted. I am likely to blame for this, mishandling reposted listing before I started using the list it and forget it methodology. But it did call attention to the fact that if you don’t check on something, at least annually, then you can’t be entirely assured everything is up to snuff. I also think there is a middle ground for reworking inventory. Maybe just changing shipping options or altering the price. After all the market price may have shifted since the item was originally posted and now an increase is warranted. Remember your initial position on gallery photos? This concept of tending the garden may well be tantamount to that.
Well, I’m taking the plunge…I’m going to report my numbers, such as they are! First, a few questions if you please:
1. when reporting gross sales, are you including the shipping amount? Or, are you just including the amount of the price of the goods? I ask because, although I price shipping separately, I typically plan on making a certain amount from the shipping costs.
2. what time period are you using as the week? Monday morning to Sunday night? Sunday through Saturday, or….?
3. do you feel I’m missing anything from this formula: (sales price + shipping) – (shipping cost + COGS + eBay/paypal fees @12%) = net
4. for average sales price, do you go with or w/o shipping in that value?Here are my numbers for the week of 5/21 – 5/27
ebay: $263.42
net: $98.32 (after shipping, COGs & ebay/paypal fees @ 12%)
number of items sold: 7
average sales price (including shipping): $37.63
average sales price (w/o shipping): 20.19
highest selling item: 49.99 (not counting shipping) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-Blu-Ray-DVD-player-Model-BD-P1400-USED-WORKING-w-remote-control-/201770714225?rd=1The highest selling item is my own personal DVD player which I no longer used.
At the time of these numbers we had about 620 items in the store; a mix of some vintage, some clothing, some household items…nothing extraordinary. My eBay partner, Lynn, and I put in about 1.5 hours to 3 hours a week together working on listings. I probably put in 2 – 8 extra hours a week additionally, but we don’t work every week. Recently, we probably took about 5 weeks off from eBay, and now here comes summer! So, I’m actually pretty okay with netting $98. The only thing is, putting pen to paper (so to speak) and really looking a these numbers makes me a little less happy about them. My father, a realtor, always used to say, “production cures all woes”. Guess it’s time to make more cha-chings!
