Sad, sad - drop in sales?

[bbqhqnet]

Hi again all

Is anyone else battling an unusual sales slow-down? It's almost November - and we should be firin' on all cylinders, instead I personally am at a near 20% DROP in sales? 💀

[davewil1964]

5% unemployed is considered full employment. And has been for at least the last 30 years.

So, yes, we do.

[chameleon54]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

Sales have returned to normal, following the account glitch problems which saw our sales almost stop completely for around a six weeks. This month is on track to be 15% higher than long term average with plenty of questions, offers etc 

If a seller who was making regular sales, finds things stop all of a sudden, it would be worth contacting ebay CS and keep pestering them until the problem is resolved. There are selling account glitches around at the moment and ebay can help if they are aware there is an issue.

I,m almost getting enthusiastic about ebay again and planning a full day on ebay today, packing sold items and doing an auction blitz, listing a bunch of rare collectibles I picked up from a transport museum that was down sizing part of their collection last weekend. They are raising money for a special project and had an unannounced  two hour garage sale, advertised on facebook the moment it started. The missus was on the face book community notice board when the announcement came up and clocked it straight away.

I jumped in the car and raced straight there ( 5 minutes from home ) and snaffled some great items. It wasn't quite my field, so I did some advanced searches of sold items on ebay when I got home and realised it was pretty good stuff, so returned again and purchased some more. The plan is to list them for a 3 day auction with all items finishing Sunday evening, two minutes apart. It will be a bit of fun ( like the old days ) and hopefully I will make a reasonable return on my investment. 

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Three hours since listings went live. Seventeen auction listings, currently 87 views and nine watchers. There must still be some-one looking at ebay.

[brerrabbit585]

I hope everything goes well for you and that there are no glitches before they end!

[chameleon54]

Thanks Brerrabbit. I havnt done an auction binge for over twelve months so it will be interesting to see if it still works. There is a lot of negativity around regards ebay auctions with many declaring them dead, but I used to find they worked quite well. If you had a lot of similar collectable items listed that appealed to the same buyers, you could still generate a bit of interest and get a few bidding duels going, often achieving very strong results.

If I get time I might report back, once the auctions finish, as it is proving to be an interesting experiment. Currently of the 17 listings, five have a starting bid and 21 watchers in total.

[chameleon54]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

Thanks Brerrabbit. I havnt done an auction binge for over twelve months so it will be interesting to see if it still works. There is a lot of negativity around regards ebay auctions with many declaring them dead, but I used to find they worked quite well. If you had a lot of similar collectable items listed that appealed to the same buyers, you could still generate a bit of interest and get a few bidding duels going, often achieving very strong results.

If I get time I might report back, once the auctions finish, as it is proving to be an interesting experiment. Currently of the 17 listings, five have a starting bid and 21 watchers in total.

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Auction Report - I had 17 listings of rare transport collectables, all to suit one field of collectors. Timed to finish Sunday evening and spaced two minutes apart, using ebays scheduled listing feature.

Of 17 auctions ten sold. Seven of these where only one bid, at the starting price which was set at a level that would give between 100% & 500% profit. Two items had two bids, one item recieved ten bids. Two items sold to different international clients, interestingly, both from Japan. All up around 30 watchers by the time the auctions closed.

Purchase price for the seventeen items was $165,, purchased Saturday last week.Total sale price $351. If we subtract $35 for ebay fees, the nett profit is $151. Total time spent from purchase, listing and packing around 4.5 hours, giving a wage of $33.55 per hour. There are still seven listings currently unsold and a couple of these are the best, most expensive items, valued at around $100 each. Future sales from the lot should easily bring in another $300

I must admit, when it looked like the auctions would work, I doubled down and purchased a lot more stock from the same seller. ( a local transport museum ) I have just listed another 25 items this evening for auction and so far the signs are positive. Quite a few watchers and three items have starting bids. I have another 30 lots to list later in the week and will relist unsold lots to coincide with close of new listings.

All up a pretty reasonable result which shows there are still buyers out there for interesting items and auctions still have a role to play on ebay. It also shows that you can still make a half reasonable wage per hour, trading on ebay.

[chameleon54]

Another interesting thought. The auctions returned a profit which gave an hourly wage of $33.55, which coincidently is a snap for the hourly wage I make normally from my ebay stores over the long term. ( it used to be higher when ebay was flourishing ). The auction sample must have been big enough to average out perfectly to my normal ebay trading.

The only difference is the residual profit, still tied up in the seven listings of unsold stock, which will eventually give a very strong hourly wage result for the auctions, once the other listings sell. ie. The stock has been purchased & researched, listings done, all that is left is to pack them once sold.

[ozstockman]

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@clarry100 wrote:

We are at an all time low, but we don't really care as we are closing down our ebay stores at the end of this tax year.

By this time of year we really should be selling Xmas stock, but so far nothing.

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I have just done it and I am happy to leave this place as a seller. I'd rather pay for online advertising all these ebay fees that alone  should bring me at least 30-40 of what I could get from eBay in the last two years, And nobody can tell me now to accept returns for at least 30 days or threatens me to do free postage or 1 day processing time in order to be shown at the top of their search results.

It was a good place just 2-3 years ago but then all sales dropped 60% and eBay started to roll out new features that made for us hard to operate here.

Good luck to everybody.

[clubesquire]

Another on of perhaps hundreds, thousands even, that we don’t know about. But, newbies coming in all the time with $$$ signs in their eyes.

Good on you Oz. I wish you well 🙂

Melina.

[chameleon54]

I said I wasnt going to, but I just cant help myself. I have purchased a couple of bulk lots of high quality stock recently and gone on large full day listing binges. It wasnt my fault, the stuff was just sitting there right in front of my nose and ...........well you know,............... I couldnt help myself.

 I havnt spent full days listing for a very long time, but used to do it regularly when we sold on ebay full time. Result, sales have gone boonta. I have just reached a monthly total I never expected to see again and the suitcase on wheels has been dusted off to cart parcels to the Post Office. ( I nearly threw it out its been so long since I have used it .... )

 I dont know if its ebays way of making up for the lost sales when my account was down with technical problems, but my suspician is it is just buyers looking for the high quality, rare stuff.

[collect247]

That's what I have been saying all along it's what you sell and not any issues with anyone's accounts or lights off.

If you have what peolpe want then you're set.

Well done