HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

I am selling top quality brands of stationery on ebay, and have listed about $350K at retail. Even with my items on SALE at 33% off (that means my listings are priced about 33% below say Officeworks) I am only selling $50 to $100 per day. I should be selling at least $1,000 per day given my prices and range.

Am I doing something wrong here?

Message 1 of 35
Latest reply
34 REPLIES 34

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

Thank you so much for the time you took to provide such a helpful response.

Message 21 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

Thank you so much ... i am now getting it!

Message 23 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

🙂 once you get your store looking right, you should sell HEAPS!!
Message 24 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

Thank you all so much .. I am taking it all on board.

I had a retail store and with this level of stock I was selling $1,500 per day, but rent was killing me.

However, at only $50 to $100 sales per day in ebay, perhaps I should have kept the shop. At least I was earning $8 per hour then, compared with about 10c an hour on ebay.

Generally, in the stationery business, if you have $350K in stock you have a mid size business.

The number of questions and offers I was getting from ebayers was missleading me into thinking ebayers were finding my listing but just not buying.

I will definately go through my listings and deal with the category issues etc that are sugessted in the posts above.

 

Message 25 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

....And when you find the answers, please come back & share YOUR knowledge.....every day is a learning curve, and what works NOW, may not in the future. Nothing stays the same 🙂
Message 26 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

THANK YOU TO ALL ... I WILL BE BACK TOMORROW

 

Message 27 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

The categories that are used on ebay are used for search engine optimization (SEO). The naming of pictures may help as well, along with adding information to the listing, as I understand it having unique information is better.

 

 

Message 28 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

Hi  I think maybe office works don't charge postage /delivery that may have a bearing ? also agree with too many "others" cheers

Message 29 of 35
Latest reply

Re: HELP ... HELP ... HELP ... WHY ARE MY SALES ON EBAY ALMOST ZERO

All of this is meant to be constructive, so I hope you find something useful here, and obviously you'll need to pick and choose what you think will best suit you...

 

Description... 

 

I advise formatting these for a more professional presentation (I don't mean anything super fancy, just a bit of general clean up will do) - you're selling stationery...some of your customers will be students, parents of students, etc, many others will be business owners like yourself. Just a personal opinion, but I would:

 

  • remove all instances of emoticons
  • keep the item description the primary focus (larger font - remember some people will be using phones to view and buy, so I switch to 18 rather than the default 10 or 12 for description text, otherwise most of the content seems fine, comprehensive but succinct, but right now eBay third party advertising and cross promotions mean other seller's ads are taking up more real estate on the listings that your own description)
  • put any terms of sale after the the item description 
  • remove the blue type asking customers to contact you about discounts (primary reason, though I understand exactly why you have it there, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, eBay often views such invitations as trying to deal off-eBay - I had "custom orders welcome" in my listings, got pinged with a policy violation, and there was absolutely no reasoning with eBay, better to just say something like "happy to combine postage and save you money wherever possible" or some such similar phrase that clearly indicates it's for purchases made on eBay).

 

 

Honestly....I'd also consider changing the store name. The only time people can really pay cash is when they pick up (and most people would expect to save on postage in that instance), but the vast majority will pay you via PayPal, and may view the offering of a discount for cash from a newer seller as a bit off-putting (i.e. less trustworthy, basically because it's a common tactic of scammers, to get people to pay by other methods like bank deposit). 

 

As everyone else has mentioned, store categories are the best tool you get to cross-promote your own items and make it easy for people to browse a specific section. As a buyer, I use them all the time and have often turned away from a store that has everything in "other", sometimes even when their categories are too broad (eg in a music shop "female vocalists"..... that's not really a thing people look for as an option to refine searches, so if every release they've got is in a category like that, I'm not wading through it... )

 

Another reason eBay's (not store) categories can be important, I recently received a discount voucher from eBay, but it was only valid for specific categories. There was some stuff I wanted, but heaps of sellers didn't have them listed in the category I needed them to be (I was looking for business supplies, which is one of the cat's that the discount was valid for). 

 

Consider playing around with some different promotions. I definitely feel cdifferent promos will work better for different items. For example, in my categories, buyers often purchase multiple, different items at once, so I have the most success with the "Buy X amount and get Y% off" discount. 

 

Also consider offering express in addition to standard postage, just because I know from experience, stationery is on of those things a lot of people don't look to buy until they already need it (myself included Smiley LOL ). 

 

Message 30 of 35
Latest reply