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what are y’all using to crosspost to Poshmark etc? Nifty? are are there other tools you recommend. thanks!!
i think we’re comparing apples to oranges. my perspective started in 2008 and is well documented in this podcast, our saying was always “list it and forget it”. we sell niche, weird, longtail items. 10,000 of them in my store at the moment. the amount of “gardening” we have to do by relisting our store every 30 days and paying the maximum fee amounts to ebay to get anything to sell is not like it used to be. they are clearly pushing organic search down in favor of promoted and “fresh” listings. so you must be ever vigilant in rotating your store rather than selling the weird old item and listing the new constantly. the longtail, list it and forget model is not what ebay wants, though it’s what ebay was founded on, so not sure competing w Amazon is a great long term strategy for them. guess only time will tell.
after much experimentation, I have also reached the same conclusion: ebay sales are only happening when you turn on dynamic promoted listings. i turned them off, sales die. i turn them to the lowest percentage, 2%, sales still dead. i turn on dyanmic with a 15% cap, sales start again. it’s a new ebay world, you just have to pay way more in fees to get sales.
i do the minimum promotion too. the variable was insane, like 15% on some categories, like ebay, i’m not paying you enough in fees, you have to take an additional 15% and 9% on shipping??? wtf
this has also been my lowest year on record. there have been weeks where i sold barely $300, when the normal is minimum $1000. when it started to get slow, i turned off promoted completely. i was using the adjustable rate. i thought, why give ebay more money when i’m not making any money. well then my store basically went dark, a couple sales here and there. so i turned promoted back on. i also had some active policy violations for items they took down. so i ended those listings, because they weren’t ended like the old days, just sitting in my store but no one could see them. that helped for a bit too. but all in all the sales are slowest i’ve ever seen.
I know summer is usually slow, but this is the slowest my store has been ever. I’m talking going days without one sale, then I’ll get one sale… sigh, cry
yes our staff was extremely excited, love the clip they posted!
@christiner, will you relink to that video? that link is broken
What others have said: Pirate Ship. It’s free to use and has better rates than eBay. I have rarely gotten a price adjustment, but when I have, I have disputed it and 100% of the time has closed in my favor. I am also comparing prices with Shippo for anything above 15 oz, as they tend to be cheaper, though you only get 30 free labels a month until you have to pay to upgrade. I’ve never received a price adjustment using Shippo and we’ve use them for Broad Porch since 2020.
example of a shipping label i just bought: 10×10 polymailer, 2lbs, going from VA to MO. Pirate Ship price was $7.36, Shippo was $6.82, both for USPS Ground Adavantage. *shrug*
yes i started using Pirate Ship a while back because i could link my business credit card to it and get 6x points for buying shipping (Hilton Honors Business AMEX) which was at the suggestion of @retro-treasures-wv, which it won’t do if you just buy shipping directly from ebay. and recently, because i’m a super nerd, i am also logged into Shippo and comparing prices for every shipment and for some reason there are shipments that can be up to several dollars cheaper on Shippo for the same size package on Pirate Ship, they are mostly larger boxes going further, but I’m happy to save a few bucks when I can. I have the free Shippo account that allows 30 free labels a month and I use only the labels that are cheaper, everything else goes through Pirate Ship.
