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Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but …the Good Life? Yep. We just spent two days at a town wide yard sale we go to every year, loaded the car, and spent the next morning shopping some nearby flea markets, small ones, real old fashioned flea markets with a minimum of new stuff and lots of old stuff. Car was already so full, we had to pass up some stuff, but managed to pick up some neat smalls and paper stuff. Met up with an old flea market friend, and chatted with lots of friendly flea marketers. The sellers skewed older (just like us LOL), and I suspect many have been at this for years. It made me ask, not for the first time, why no one has ever set a TV comedy show in the Flea Market world…so many colorful characters!
We stay at the same hotel every year, a rambling old place on the Main Street of the town…its not fancy, but the staff is friendly and we’ve come to look forward to it. One couple we talked to has been coming there for 15 years for the Town Wide Yard Sale. It’s a good size, not so huge as to be overwhelming, but big enough to make it worth the trip.
Of course, we’re home now and I’ve got to empty the car and start photographing…no rest for the weary, but we enjoy this, and that’s the key!
As Sharyn said: no embedded videos, but links with thumbnail are OK. I’ve got one at the moment:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163257873259
Once you have your video uploaded to YouTube, it’s easy to add the video link to your listing with the tool from Flipper Tools:
https://www.flippertools.com/ebayYoutube/embed-youtube-videos-in-ebay-listings.htm
don’t know if this helps or just further muddies the waters:
https://www.remodelista.com/posts/object-lessons-heller-dinnerware/
Thanks Tony.
Looking at the three variables:
1. Listing quantity. “List more” increases this number (obviously) but as Tony notes, we are subject to some practical limits here: we can work to increase the efficiency of our listing process, but even so, most of us can only list so much. (Listing more multi quantity listings can help here as well, but, as scavengers, most of us don’t source that type of stuff very often.)
2. Sell through: I think of this as sales velocity. Again, there are things we can do: run discount sales, use social media, as well as list more non-long tail items in the mix. How much time and effort to invest in these efforts versus simply listing more is always an open question.
3. Net profit. Of course, I agree with Jay here, increasing the ASP of items reduces the need to increase listings, and this is largely a function of sourcing.
As a scavenger seller, I tend to think of my formula for success in the simplest terms possible. Two things: Learn and List. Learn all you can about what to source and where to source and how to list efficiently, etc, and list, list, list.
ChristineR,
I agree with the need to attract new buyers (and from what I can tell, eBay IS using Social Media pretty extensively). But I also agree that too much emphasis on new puts ebay at risk of losing sellers of the old (and their buyers) to other sites, some established (such as etsy) and some newer ones (such as Poshmark).
I especially think Christmas is a good time of year to remind buyers that ebay has tons of stuff that will bring to mind Christmases past….it is the one time of year when even non-collectors tend to be feeling more nostalgic, and might go looking for that toy they never got when they were a kid, or the decorations their mom always put up for the Holidays, or…whatever.
silverFoxFinds
Oh, I agree…the target audience skews younger, as they already have a lot of us oldesters…and it skews new because, as they’ve said repeatedly, an amazing number of people STILL think ebay is all old stuff (and mostly auctions). So, they need to change that perception. I think they are right about that.
I’m just not sure, even if I were younger, I would find the commercial memorable. I don’t think the commercial would bother me, there’s nothing really wrong with it, but it just doesn’t seem like it would stand out.
But I’m not an ad company exec. Maybe this is exactly what ebay needs. As long as it gets the youngsters to look at the ebay site….and maybe it will do that really well.
Latest ebay commercial:
Anyone else find this to be less than memorable? Or maybe I’m just too many generations removed from being the target audience?
Yep, I’ve used my library a number of times.
Jay says: “If someone could tell me an item that would sell all the time, was easy to source, and could guarantee me a $5 profit on each sale….I’d be there in a heartbeat.”
This is another difference between scavenger sellers and commodity sellers: I don’t mind sharing BOGOs with other scavengers in part because sellers here are scattered across the country and not buying in my backyard, and in part because many of the items I’ll probably not run into again.
But the commodity seller who finds a product like Jay described knows that pointing it out to others is an invitation to greatly increase his competition and maybe ruin his profit center. So, not likely to share it.
The one thing I think that will sell pretty constantly at a good profit? ebooks and courses on selling online LOL
I read the long tail book when it first came out, and no question, many people started selling on ebay in part because of the book’s influence—after all, pretty much anyone can find long tail stuff to sell.
What people missed was that many of his examples were digital: Selling music downloads is a matter of selling 1s and 0s, no physical product involved. He devoted a few pages to ebay, about how great long tail stuff was for ebay, but sellers missed an essential point: long tail is great for ebay because ebay doesn’t own any products(just like selling music downloads): no storage issues, no handling, no shipping…but ebay SELLERS do have all those issues.
Long tail is good for us because of the vast reach of the internet, which exponentially increases the number of potential buyers compared to say, a space in an antique mall. But we still have to deal with storage, shipping etc. WHich is why it’s important to ensure sufficient sales to provide both steady cash flow and a profit center. And I think there are two main ways to do that: either list a large enough volume of stuff to ensure steady cash flow even with long tail items, or list a mix of non long tail and long tail as I described above. So, where I might need 5000 long tail one off listings to make “x”, a mixed inventory seller might need only 500 to make “x.”.
almasty, I suspect this author is thinking of long tail in terms of products, not (as we do) individual items If we’re talking about a seller having hundreds or thousands of each item she sells, then yes, I think there can be a level of predictability. If one SKU is selling 100/month and one is selling 3/month, it’s not too hard to draw some reasonable conclusions. But our stuff? As you say, for most of us, ALL our stuff is long tail, and since we usually have only one of each item, it can sometimes be pretty hard to predict which one will sell first, because as Jay often notes, it will sell when the right buyer comes along, and that’s about it.
Jay, I’m right there with you. This guy had been in business for years, he had the contacts and a good sense of what buyers were looking for at any given moment in his categories…but he still had to move quickly because stuff went in and out of fashion. Like you say, it’s just another type of challenge, and one I’ve been reluctant to embrace, even though I understand the logic of what he was saying.
I might have mentioned this before, but years ago there was an ebay seller—smart guy—who operated a B&M gift/antique shop in a tourist town. Most of his income came from the B&M, but he did pretty well on eBay too. What he always preached was : He sells new “gift shop” type merchandise on ebay, margins aren’t that high, but he knows the market, and his stuff sells at a good pace. That gave him his cash flow. He also sold antiques and other long tail stuff, again, he knew the market and had been selling for years, so he bought at good prices and sold with great margins. That was really his profit center. He always felt ebay sellers should sell a similar mix to ensure cash flow and profit.
I always figured he was right, but I’ve never really taken the time to work on the new merchandise end of it. So I’m still basically a J&R seller: List, list and list some more. His point was he didn’t need to have as many listings, and could still generate a good steady income.
Just a heads up for those who attended eBay Open this year: We now have access to ebay Concierge customer service. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, I have nothing I need to ask them right now, but still, happy to see we finally got it.
08/25/2018 at 9:19 pm in reply to: New login page for Ebay – Sign in with your username OR Facebook #47962Sonia, I think small, casual sellers have My eBay instead of Seller Hub, just as they have the simple listing form instead of the advanced listing form.
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