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I’ve been listing some stuff on a particular Facebook Group….just a few things, last week I got one sale out of I think 6 or 8 things I put there. But the only fee is the PayPal transaction fee, so no ebay fees. And, over time, I’m hoping to be viewed as a regular in the group, which helps with sales. Also, on this last sale (first time I tried this) I added an ebay discount coupon to the package….will do that with all the Facebook sales from now on. Might help, might not, but can’t hurt to try.
I’m hoping to do more with my FB business page (I post, but it doesn’t really get views….) and IG and You Tube. Also, I want to update my existing Pinterest account. A friend, with no real social media experience, but real artistic talent, got 15,000 followers on Tik Tok in two weeks by posting videos of her making her paper mache jack o lanterns. So I just joined Tik Tok and will see what I can figure out there.
I’m also considering the new ebay Ambassador program. I would use that to promote some of my stuff, but also other seller’s stuff….
So, a lot of things I hope to try, but we’re already in Q4 and I need to focus most of my energy on getting new listings up….trying to figure out how to add a lot of listings AND gain more visibility with social media etc.
@Zach I sell vintage, used and other long tail stuff and I think there are a lot of things going on in the market right ow that are making it very challenging. I am ebay only, except for a small presence on FB. Do you use social media to drive traffic at all?
I tried using private offers in the past with very limited success. I’m trying a variation soon. I sell on a Facebook Group and don’t mention my ebay stuff there. However, I just got permission to add an ebay coupon with my packing slips when I send packages to my FB Group buyers. Will this do any good? I don’t know. But I figure it can’t hurt LOL
I might print out the default coupon ebay provides , but I would much prefer a coupon design that makes the coupon stand out a bit more, so I will probably end up fooling around with Canva or one of those programs. Or maybe ChatGPT.
When I was first trying coupons, I basically begged ebay to give us some coupon customization ability, and I got the usual response ” Great idea! We’ll take that back to the team” LOL
@ChristineR If you chose Private AND you then chose a specific buyer group (or groups) ebay will only show those people your coupon.
However, what ebay never seems to mention is that IF one of those people—just as an example—posts your coupon info to , say, his Facebook page, anyone seeing it can use it to buy from you. Which is fine by me, but not all sellers are aware of this. I usually put limits on the total that can be redeemed, the duration , etc.
@Sharyn I agree it’s longer than necessary…ChatGPT made suggestions and I went along with them. I could have stopped sooner but decided to let it play out. In my prompt I think I asked it be sound “professional” or something like that , which may have helped to keep out some of the “must have” language….
I definitely think it’s worth playing around with. And it surpasses ebay’s description AI in part because it allows prompts, whereas ebay just draws from Item Specifics and stuff and has one “voice” it seems to use.
Anyone using AI for listing/descriptions?
I have not been impressed with ebay’s description AI, and I have just started playing around with ChatGPT. I’m a slow typist, so when I can copy and paste, I’m usually happy. Here’s a listing description I created using ChatGPT…basically, I gave ChatGPT the gallery photo and asked for a description….ChatGPT made further suggestions and I went from there.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/389048183572
I’m still not sure how much I will use this, but especially for something like this….where I have three different items in a lot….it seems like it is a time saver. Of course, you need to check for accuracy, and I did edit out some of the chatter between ChatGPT and myself. But overall, I’m pleased.
Anyone else using it?
@the_seam_store The shoe story is great! We never know the impact we might be having on others in this world. That guy thought he bought some shoes….little did he know at the time that he was also launching someone else’s career.
And another lesson I take from that story: You bought the shoes on almost a whim…and it paid off in a big way. Sometimes, it can really pay to just go ahead and do something we haven’t done before, just to see where it might lead.
Thanks for the post!
Hmmm….even if you don’t use social media, an influencer can see something they like on ebay, talk it up and all of a sudden, there’s a huge bump. But I agree, that seems unlikely given your stuff. And since it seems to be across all your items.
The only other thing I can suggest is ebay has been known to provide erroneous data to us, and it could simply be a reporting error on ebay’s end.
But I’ll certainly be waiting to hear what you discover….
@Timo Wow–that is a HUGE spike! What type of stuff do you sell? And is it possible one (or more) of your items went viral on social media?
I agree: 90 days is too short for long tail stuff. But it’s good to know that they are using the 90 days time frame, because it probably helps explain why some good stuff sits and sits….because it is getting very little visibility. As to price: A lot of long tail stuff doesn’t sell quickly because it IS long tail…by definition, that means there is little demand and it won’t sell till the right person sees it. It isn’t necessarily price that is preventing the sale, it is more likely that the few people who are interested haven’t seen it.
Back when everyone had the Listing Quality Report, I tried asking ebay repeatedly about stuff like photo numbers. My question was basically: I have 3 photos, perfectly adequate for this item. But you recommend 7. So, does the number of photos actually matter to the algo? Do I get less exposure with 3, and bumping up to 7 will get me more exposure because I now have the magical number ebay recommends? Basically, when I could get an answer it was : 7 is a recommendation based on our data. You can go along with or not.
Which, of course, didn’t really answer the question.
I seem to remember that one YT guru, TechNSports, treated the LQR as gold: If ebay recommended 6 photos instead of 5, he would take a 6th photo. He claimed following ebay’s suggestions boosted his sales.
I don’t know. I’m just not willing to dig out old inventory to take more photos just because ebay says 7 is better than 6.
Yeah, there’s just so much conflicting info out there, even from ebay itself. I remember a few years ago an ebay presenter—I think she was involved with the search team, maybe ran it—said that ebay now has the ability to recognize old listings even if you relist/sell similar (they no longer need to rely on the item number). She strongly suggested that revising listings was more helpful than ending and relisting (especially without revision). The implication was you might get a slight bump in newly listed, but it wouldn’t last long, because an unrevised listing would quickly be viewed as the same old same old. And she very pointedly suggested that minor tweaks would not cut it when it comes to revision.
So, I’ll keep you guys posted on how this works for me. But whether it seems to work for me or not, keep in mind your results might vary LOL We all sell different stuff, and it is often very hard to know for sure whether this or that change was actually responsible for an increase or decline in sales.
Good point about dropping the rate too fast. I’ll need to consider that.
The 90 day thing— I can understand that being applied to new, multi quantity listings. But it seems very arbitrary for single quantity, long tail items. By definition, long tail items can take a long time to sell. Here’s what I’m trying at this point. I have a lot of items that are more than 90 days old (some are MUCH more). And no doubt I could improve the listings (I confess, some could definitely do with a price reduction I’m sure). So, last night, I somewhat arbitrarily took all my listings that are over about 180 days old and changed them from a lower General Ad rate to 9%—-which I consider high, but I need to make space here and get some of this stuff gone. It didn’t take long to do. I think a lot of those listings are not “bad” listings, they just have had very little visibility for a long time, because ebay has been downgrading them because of their age. So, rather than change a ton of listings that might actually be OK, I’m giving ebay more money to increase the visibility and we’ll see what happens.
And this week, I’ll be gradually ending and revising/relisting (sell similar) those between 90 and 180 days, while keeping them at a lower rate (but still a little high for me—-5%).
One I’ve finished that, I will probably start doing the same with the older listings, and when relisting, I’ll set them at 5% rather than 9%.
Is this a good idea? I don’t really know, But I’m going to play with it, because I’m willing to sacrifice some margin for (hopefully) some sales velocity.
I hadn’t seen that on YT—do you remember which YTer it was?
But I’ve been saying that ebay is well aware that agentic AI poses both an opportunity and a real challenge….because more and more people will be using Agentic AI to find stuff to buy….rather than going to sites like ebay or Amazon or Google Shopping.
Elsewhere, I’ve mentioned that I think Agentic AI is the main reason ebay recently introduced automatic positive feedback for sellers….feedback is probably a “trust indicator” for Agentic AI tools, and so ebay wants its sellers to have a higher number. It is also one of the reasons ebay is finally revving up (however slowly) its Livestreaming Sales….the hope is they can pull in people who want some activity. Buy It Nows can be found by Agentic AI, but I think it would be harder for AI to scrape Livestreams. So, yes, I definitely think —and have said elsewhere—that when ebay makes changes these days, we should always evaluate them through the prism of Agentic AI. Some may have nothing to do with it, but others might be tied to it pretty closely (even though ebay won’t necessarily say that).
I’ve been haphazard about using Pinterest. I probably should use it more. I wish ebay would tell us where external traffic comes from , because I’m sure they have that info, but they clearly don’t want to share it with us. (Unless we use their social media tool, and I’m not sure how much use that really is)
I had been using the Newsletter for a while, but saw little impact. I think it would be more useful if I had a more focused inventory….more of a niche. But I’m going to give it another look. I have IG and FB account, but spend most of my time doing the Friends of the Library FB account instead of my own LOL
I will be interested to hear what the Zoom interview tells you.
