topic Re: So quiet!! in Selling

So quiet!!

melinachristina — Sat, 04 May 2019 01:43:58 GMT

We’ve been through quiet periods before, but this has to be the worst I think, not that I’m complaining really. I’ve been awfully sick. God I’ve been sick. Retirement is great, but getting old isn’t.

Were lucky to have a few lookers (emphasis on few), let alone some tangible watchers. Same for us on other sites too. The only items selling at the moment are the cheapie cheapies.

Weve also listed items of historical value and superb provenance that ordinarily create great interest and always a sale, always - barely a looker even!

I Just find it interesting how steady consistent sales can more or less stop overnight, and not just here. On our other sites we sell mainly to the US. It’s not so bad but sales have still halved.

Just interesting. I hope everyone else is doing okay, especially those who rely on this sort of income to put bread on the table.

Melina.

Re: So quiet!!

kopenhagen5 — Sat, 04 May 2019 02:32:12 GMT

Re: So quiet!!

padraicpaul91 — Sat, 04 May 2019 02:39:28 GMT

Without getting into the 'what ebay is doing wrong' debate, I will point out that this time of year has always been my worst. I'm about 25% down on yearly average but this is expected.

However, my turnover is much higher than for the same period last year, which was worse than what you are experiencing just now.

I have adopted a few strategies that seem to be putting me ahead of my direct competitors in sales.

What I find difficult to understand is the changing patterns of when customers do buy. Once, Sunday (worldwide = 40 hours) accounted for 40% of my sales. Now that could be a Tuesday or a Thursday. In other words, once upon a time, I would have consistent sales, most days, with a bump at the end of the week. Now I may have 3 or 4 days without a sale,including Sundays, and then one or two peak days.

Re: So quiet!!

twyngwyn — Sat, 04 May 2019 03:20:01 GMT

everyone shopping for Mothers' Day??

Re: So quiet!!

joztamps — Sat, 04 May 2019 04:39:35 GMT

@twyngwyn wrote:
everyone shopping for Mothers' Day??

And following 10 days' holidays for lots of families.

Re: So quiet!!

kopenhagen5 — Sat, 04 May 2019 05:45:40 GMT

...............and schools went back.

(Perhaps gentlemen are piped up............)

Re: So quiet!!

melinachristina — Sat, 04 May 2019 08:35:13 GMT

Ha! Or piped out Kopes.

Seriously though, it is a declining market and I’m pleased we decided to ‘unload’ when we did, albeit just a little bit late.

Whats got me untrigued with this lull though is the suddenness of it and the following steep dive in lookers. It’s as if all pipe-sters world wide decided, putting buying totally aside, “Nup, ain’t even gonna go lookin at pipes no more”. It’s just weird.

Never mind. That’s what thumbs are for - twiddling ... lol.

Melina.

Re: So quiet!!

pirie_online — Sat, 04 May 2019 10:05:09 GMT

I have found it has dropped off since I've changed everything to auctions after ebay changed their 30day BIN listings til GTC meaning I would incur huge fees. It seems people aren't interested/can't wait for auctions. Will reconsider how I list when they fall into unsold & may just have to maintain 40 BIN listings. A store just isn't worth it for me with my low sales (home seller only)

Re: So quiet!!

chameleon54 — Sat, 04 May 2019 12:07:22 GMT

According to the seller hub thingy, my largest selling account sales are down on the previous 30 days......

By 0.6 %...........

My second selling accounts sales are down compared to the previous 30 days.......

By 1.0 %.............

And my third selling id is up.............

By 19 %..........

Those first two accounts are eerily similar...........

I have noticed a drop off in sales in the last week or so though.

I hope it doesnt last too long as I have just inspected a bulk lot of stock today. It is some of the best stock I have come across for several years and is going to cost a lot of money and put us under a bit of pressure for a month or two. It is rare automotive stock from the 1930,s to 1950,s. It originally came from a well known city, car dealership and has been stored for two generations. The original owners son is now in his late 70,s and is cleaning the old stock up.

It is a bit scary to be buying in expensive stock when things appear to be on the slide, but the time to buy is when you find the stuff and the big, bulk lots of rare vintage car parts are becoming a thing of the past. The other thing is the tip off about the stock came from a network I have been working with for some time which is proving to be a valuable source of stock.

It is one of the local service clubs, staffed by retired, ex proffesional senior citizens. They all know someone who is cleaning up their lifes collections and they are looking for a buyer who will take everything and pay a fair price. . I need to keep buying from them at good prices in order to maintain the network.

The arrangement is working very well for all concerned and could be worth considering by other sellers looking at ways to access quality stock.

Re: So quiet!!

*tippy*toes* — Sat, 04 May 2019 13:43:59 GMT

@pirie_online wrote:
I have found it has dropped off since I've changed everything to auctions after ebay changed their 30day BIN listings til GTC meaning I would incur huge fees. It seems people aren't interested/can't wait for auctions. Will reconsider how I list when they fall into unsold & may just have to maintain 40 BIN listings. A store just isn't worth it for me with my low sales (home seller only)

I am still lucky enough to have the $1 weekends, which I take advantage of. All my listings start and end on the weekend. I run both auctions and BIN. Any BIN that is finishing within 7 days of next weekend is ended and relisted. Auctions are not set to auto relist, so are manually relisted each weekend to take advantage of the $1 FVF.

However, we all know that nothing ever lasts with eBay, so it's only a matter of time until the $1 FVF promo comes to an end. Once that happens, all my items will go back to being auctions, with the 8 free relists enabled. As I am concerned that buyers might not want to wait for an auction to end, I will be putting a note at the top of my description stating that I am happy to end the auction early if the buyers would like that, and to contact me. Majority of my auctions end with only one bid, so it's not like I'm going to miss out on a bidding war or anything.

I also list my auctions with a BIN option.

Re: So quiet!!

jellybirddesigns — Sat, 04 May 2019 14:19:05 GMT

There's no real rhyme or reason for the ups and downs we get as sellers.

When we were halfway through April I thought I was going to have a dismal month, but then suddenly in the second half things went crackers. I honestly thought that with school holidays and so many people away it was going to be a badly performing month, but at the end I was satisfied.

Like you, I also find it interesting how one particular model/design/fabric can do brillantly for months and months and then suddenly overnight the sales on that item completely trickles away to nothing. I still have some fabrics that I bought last year which sold like hotcakes for 6 months and then literally died overnight and now I'm sitting with some dead stock that I cannot move.

However, in general I see my stores, both here and on the other E platform trending upwards. Even though for sure I have had days where I'm twiddling my thumbs, fortunately they are few and far between.

Re: So quiet!!

kitschkoven — Sun, 05 May 2019 06:54:30 GMT

My latest invoice from Ebay was $0.00. I had sales every couple of days a month or two ago but it completely stopped. Will put some new things up. I think those were the ones that were selling. Books mainly.

Re: So quiet!!

lowanacrafts — Sun, 05 May 2019 08:02:28 GMT

List at the weekends, you can list as many as you like. thats what i am doing now, as i only had 40 on, and found like you, auctions didn't work.

Re: So quiet!!

pirie_online — Sun, 05 May 2019 11:55:56 GMT

This account isn't privy to the weekend $1 offer. Constantly using 40 free listings and have to watch carefully

Re: So quiet!!

gumleaf_goodies — Sun, 05 May 2019 15:11:05 GMT

@pirie_online wrote:
I have found it has dropped off since I've changed everything to auctions after ebay changed their 30day BIN listings til GTC meaning I would incur huge fees. It seems people aren't interested/can't wait for auctions. Will reconsider how I list when they fall into unsold & may just have to maintain 40 BIN listings. A store just isn't worth it for me with my low sales (home seller only)

No need to incur huge fees if using the GTC BIN listings.

Each week (usually on a Friday) I end listings that are due to finish within the coming week. Then on Saturday, i get the unlimited free listings with $1 FVF offer, activate it and from my Unsold list, use Sell Similar (as my items are one-offs, so don't need to worry about a buying history) to relist them.

You can also use the Relist button if you want to retain watchers or sales history. Both actions - sell similar or relist - can be done in bulk, so once you get the hang of it, it can be a fast process. One thing you need to remember is to remove the relisted items from the Unsold list (if you use the sell similar function - not sure if it is the same with the relist function).

Edit: just read through the rest of the posts after the one of yours I replied to, and (1) see that Tippy does something similar to me (although also uses auctions) and (2) you don't get the free listings offers??? Wonder why?

Re: So quiet!!

wide-world-of-stamps — Sun, 05 May 2019 19:44:29 GMT

@gumleaf_goodies wrote:
@pirie_online wrote:

Edit: just read through the rest of the posts after the one of yours I replied to, and (1) see that Tippy does something similar to me (although also uses auctions) and (2) you don't get the free listings offers??? Wonder why?

It seems to be random - we have a couple of non-store accounts - 1 gets the $1 offer every weekend, the other has never received it.

Once you have it, you seem to keep it but if you don't have it, you never get it (I'd love to be proved wrong with our 2nd account but won't hold my breath!).

Re: So quiet!!

*tippy*toes* — Mon, 06 May 2019 01:12:54 GMT

@gumleaf_goodies wrote:
@pirie_online wrote:
I have found it has dropped off since I've changed everything to auctions after ebay changed their 30day BIN listings til GTC meaning I would incur huge fees. It seems people aren't interested/can't wait for auctions. Will reconsider how I list when they fall into unsold & may just have to maintain 40 BIN listings. A store just isn't worth it for me with my low sales (home seller only)

No need to incur huge fees if using the GTC BIN listings.

Each week (usually on a Friday) I end listings that are due to finish within the coming week. Then on Saturday, i get the unlimited free listings with $1 FVF offer, activate it and from my Unsold list, use Sell Similar (as my items are one-offs, so don't need to worry about a buying history) to relist them.

You can also use the Relist button if you want to retain watchers or sales history. Both actions - sell similar or relist - can be done in bulk, so once you get the hang of it, it can be a fast process. One thing you need to remember is to remove the relisted items from the Unsold list (if you use the sell similar function - not sure if it is the same with the relist function).

Edit: just read through the rest of the posts after the one of yours I replied to, and (1) see that Tippy does something similar to me (although also uses auctions) and (2) you don't get the free listings offers??? Wonder why?

Using the relist option doesn't retain watchers or sales history. Only the GTC listings do.

Using the relist function removes them from the unsold list, but as you said, if you use sell similar, then you need to manually remove them so they don't get relisted again accidentally.

Yes, you are correct, I pretty much do the same thing. Any BIN that are due to roll over within 7 days are ended and relisted on the weekend using the $1 promo. Using the bulk relist option saves a stack of time.

If you have auctions and don't want them all ending at exactly the same time, you can bulk relist, use the scheduled start option and set them to start 1 minute apart.

Of course, what we do is no good for those that don't have the $1 promo.

Re: So quiet!!

pirie_online — Mon, 06 May 2019 11:46:10 GMT

This account never gets the weekend $1 offers. Opened new id after the change and that account has been getting them for the last month. Kick in the gutz for long time sellers who have built up reputation/feedback but ebay leaves them to scrounge for crumbs

Re: So quiet!!

brerrabbit585 — Tue, 07 May 2019 05:16:02 GMT

For most of the year (since July) I've been running at two-thirds my normal sales, or below. Since April I've been selling about twice my usual amount. I just put it down to ebay giving me my turn at being visible for a few weeks before things slow down again. Hopefully it'll last long enough to bring my yearly total up to its normal level.

In my seller metrics it shows that the market (for what I sell) is down 4.5% compared to the previous month but I'm up 109% (over double last month), and the market is down more than 10% compared to the same time last year but I'm up over 40%.

A friend of mine said it seems the only thing I can rely on with ebay is that I'm on a rollercoaster - it's either way up or way down!

Things slowed down even more when the new GTC listings came in but picked up again once I'd got a few sales and ebay started showing my items more. I never look at best match but I believe it's the ads on other listings where I get the most sales from because I often sell the same thing a few days after the first sale.