Light Dawns in Dark Places.

[pacotrading]

Like i said Light Dawns in Dark Places, had a small relavasion, well at least for me, we had a listing with color variations, all the same price, no takers, but there was one item we needed to move on so reduced the price on that one, well the next day sold it, and later that day sold one of the higher priced variations, now relised when searching the listings due to one variation being at a lower price, actually placed the listing higher in a general search function.

Hmm, thinks OK if one created a out off stock variation with a lower price, this would place the listing further up the ladder, sort of a legal search manipulation, i am sure that is what a lot of Chinese sellers do.

[go-tazz]

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@pacotrading wrote:

Like i said Light Dawns in Dark Places, had a small relavasion, well at least for me, we had a listing with color variations, all the same price, no takers, but there was one item we needed to move on so reduced the price on that one, well the next day sold it, and later that day sold one of the higher priced variations, now relised when searching the listings due to one variation being at a lower price, actually placed the listing higher in a general search function.

Hmm, thinks OK if one created a out off stock variation with a lower price, this would place the listing further up the ladder, sort of a legal search manipulation, i am sure that is what a lot of Chinese sellers do.

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That's what most Chinese sellers now seem to do and it's completely destroyed the search parameters on a

lot of items,(and put every other seller down the bottom of the list)

They now need a filter that excludes multiple variation listings so that you can exclude all the low cost items

that you have no interest in,(eg: the title states a high priced item at a low cost but when you go into the

listing that item isn't at that low cost and instead the low cost item is a piece of carp that's not mentioned in

the listing title).

Currently I scroll past all multiple variation listings for that reason but now when you search via a standard

search you come across a set priced item but when you go into the listing it's a multiple variation listing.

I give up searching for items due to this underhanded tactic that these sellers use and it means that I

don't buy on that day,(others may do the say and IMHO this may be one reason for slow sales for some).

[pacotrading]

Hmm yes i get what you are saying in our case we actually had one varation at lower price, but it was not bogus, but yes i rember reading something about this on this forum, but it did not click (must be getting slow in my youth LOL) till did one ourselves, well sometimes maybe if you can not beat it, join it, ie fight fire with fire. 

[digital*ghost]

Out of stock variations (and their respective prices), don't show in search results (or, at least, they are not supposed to, so usually if the lowest price item is not available for purchase, the next lowest price is displayed). 

With variation listings, the Chinese sellers generally get away with the tactic by having one completely different item in the listing at a much lower price than the item that's being advertised (a classic example is an evening dress for $100+, but one variation is for a pair of stockings at $1 free-post so that the dress will intiially appear as though it can be bought for $1). This is actually a policy breach, but reporting it is like water off a duck's back for the Chinese sellers, Aussie sellers aren't so....blessed. 

[chameleon54]

There may be other factors affecting your listing placement. When you revise a listing it seems to get a a boost in visibility for awhile. As you mention, when you reduce the price of the item, it seems to get a boost in visibility, but ebay also place a % price reduction note on the listing and push it in featured items of people who have it in their watch list or who have clicked on the item to view it. So it gains increased visibility in several ways.

Probably the biggest factor is that when you sell an item in a multiple listing it gets a signifigant boost in visibility for awhile. This can result in several sales in a short period of time.

 Another interseting thing I have noticed is that if you have other similar, but unconnected listings, they also seem to get a boost in visibility. This results in multiple sales of similar but not identical items for a short period. 

[pacotrading]

Ahh yes makes sense, have noticed this as well, have read somewhere even increasing prices can boost listing visilbilty as well, guess any revision of any nature does that.