topic Sales when you first started in Selling

Sales when you first started

tackledfishing — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 03:35:40 GMT

Hello fellow ebayers... Just out of curiosity how many sales did you average (if any) in the first month you started selling on ebay ? ( if you can remember that far back , as you are all doing so so well).

Thanks guys! 🙂

Re: Sales when you first started

trulyspecialgoodies — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:56:44 GMT

Can't remember how many I averaged in the first month but I know that ANY SALE AT ALL was greeted with much jubilation and celebration - it wouldn't have been more than 2 or 3 a month in the beginning 🙂

It's only a couple of years since I started but seems SUCH a long time ago and I've learned so much during that time - mostly from the Discussion Centre here and from the Q & A.

I still try to treat each buyer as if he/she is the only one I deal with and make them feel special and looked after.

Re: Sales when you first started

shypansy — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:42:27 GMT

For me it will be coming up to 12 years, I do remember pretty much everything I listed sold. only about 5% of buyers were from Aus, most were from the US, I confidently listed stuff at $9.99 US knowing fair well it would get multiple bids. and last minute bidding wars were common events,

I was a simple hobby seller, listed household bits and pieces and some collectables, not unusual to make a grand a week, in the first month I recall taking in about $1500, a lot back then, it just got better from there.

Payment was at times an issue but we got around it, I even had buyers send me US cash which I exchanged at the local travel agents.

Were able to communicate with buyers and sellers, just to chat and make friends, the O/S buyers loved to ask about we Aussies, many are still in touch. But things were simpler then, and buyers and sellers worked more on friendly and courteous service, there was the odd buyer who wasn`t the best, but very few and far between, that just made it interesting and more determined to succeed.

Sorry, what was the question? got a bit carried away with the reminiscing 😄

Re: Sales when you first started

kopenhagen5 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:55:07 GMT

Them's were the days. It was good being able to communicate with any member and ID's weren't disguised.

I even had fun bidding wars with a couple of regulars where we were bidding the smallest amounts in races near the end of auctions. Then having a laugh about it later.

You could message bidders notifying them the item is a replica when obviously they didn't realise.

Helping in so many ways was possible and saved ebay a lot of time by not receiving the problems as reports or questions. I guess it was used and abused by some turning bidders off auctions they themselves wanted to win.

Sales - As a hobby seller I was excited with a few.

Re: Sales when you first started

cathy1971 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:03:22 GMT

I started my shop around 3 years ago. Of course sales were slow at until I doubled my listings. I always got very excited when I had a sale. They were all important to me. I enjoy selling and hope to make nay business bigger and bigger.

Re: Sales when you first started

davewil1964 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:47:21 GMT

When I started selling, my first month's sales were quite good. Volume wise about what they are now.

The only issue was that they were all 99c auctions for $15-20 books and most sold for 99c. I was only trying to make room for acquisitions by getting rid of books I was never going to read again, so the money really wasn't an issue. The space was.

This gave me the bug for book selling. I'm much happier now with my business strategy, even though it means I have far more books than I have ever had before and the space issue wasn't resolved.

Although I still get affronted when I get offered 23% of what I have a book listed for.

Re: Sales when you first started

a_beautiful_room — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:10:50 GMT

Oh shypansy those were the days. Paying $30 for something at an auction and watching it sell for over $300. Crazy days! Many Sunday nights (which were the nights my auctions finished) I took over $10,000. I'd be up at 5.30am packing, packing, trying to get everything done before my baby woke up, and then up till 11 every night still working like mad.

LOL, common sense prevails now .. I don't work quite so hard, but the money is just enough. I guess I could charge less and do higher volume but I don't want to work such long hours now.

The best sale I ever had was $11,000 for a bedroom suite which I paid $2500 for. Just the dressing table went for over $7000. My husband couldn't believe it.

Re: Sales when you first started

i-once-was-bump — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:13:00 GMT

I used to sell my items in an Art Gallery and a few of my items made it overseas so when I started on ebay, way back when, I sold everything I listed and was limited by my ability to produce the items.

It was good then because buyers paid you by bank deposit and overseas sellers paid by Paypal (which was all in US dollars) and no one seemed to rip off those using bank deposit.

At first it took at least 6 to 12 months before the copies appeared on ebay but after about 3 years my items were copied by chinese fraudster and on ebay within 2 months and the same was for everyone else but now they only need 2 or 3 days to have a copy on ebay.

It isn't worth the time or trouble of creating ones own designs and then making and knitting and/or felting hats these days.

Re: Sales when you first started

shypansy — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:10:38 GMT

LOL yes ABR, sleep deprivation was an accepted condition back then, I even admit to a few all nighters. especially when I was at the time catering more for the US buyers, but Sunday nights were great for antiques and collectables, I always admired your auctions and the effort you made to show them off so beautifully, (and still do)

Not my highest sale, but had one item that received over 140 bids, ebay attached a rocket logo to the listing with the words Hot Item.

I can pretty much guarantee we won`t experience anything quite like it again.

Re: Sales when you first started

thesoulyearns — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:11:13 GMT

Most people probably start similar to you, tackled. A few sales here and there to spur things on until you get repeat customers and build a nice little brand for yourself.

I'm just a casual seller and have the odd sale here and there. Looking back at my feedback beings back some good memories, even if the sales were sporadic and not the highest price in the world. Funnily enough, arguably my best sale was when I really didn't even care about making any more than a few dollars from it. Didn't check to see its value, just listed it, took some nice pics, added a fun description and off it went!

Lately I've not been selling as much but it's alright; mostly just getting rid of stuff which is the same for alot of casual sellers.

Re: Sales when you first started

punch*drunk — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:50:43 GMT

lol, the good old days!! When ebays "list at 99c auction to create interest" was good advice.

I sold everything I listed at 99c starts, and for a good profit too. That lasted a few years until ebay tried to bring in paypal only and geared the site to favour BIN listings instead of auctions. Then I stopped selling for a few years.

When I started up again a couple of years ago, with fixed price listings, I sold 27 items my first month. I have increased my range and I sell roughly triple that now.

You should do well as long as you offer great customer service and quality items. I have saved you to my favorites, we just bought a boat and hubby will probably be wanting fishing gear for his birthday 🙂

Re: Sales when you first started

tackledfishing — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:59:32 GMT

Wow guys.. I love reading your stories! Thanks for sharing! Just wanted to grasp if my sales as a beginner were slow, reasonable or great! Well congratulations to you all for continually growing and persevering ! Hopefully I will be around a while to share stories like yours! 🙂

Re: Sales when you first started

sillysillysheep — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:43:27 GMT

For us, thinking back to the beginning was easy since it was only about 18months ago . We discovered Ebay by accident, an injury saw me having to leave my workplace and we literally had to sell nearly all of our possessions to survive and pay bills. Then all of a sudden we started to see a pattern and we were getting a lot more sales, it finally reached a point where I said to my wife " This is crazy why don't we try a store" She hated the idea at first but as we established a return customer base and found niches that existed parallel with our own it quickly exploded.

We started off with about 25 listings in our store in the beginning, and managed at least a sale a day, I look back at some our my early listings now and just cringe lol.

Now we average about 250 sales a month, and its all smiles from here 🙂

Re: Sales when you first started

tackledfishing — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:40:23 GMT

Now we average about 250 sales a month, and its all smiles from here

Wow thats great sillysheep! Thats an impressive average! Well done and lucky for you ebay helped you out when times were tough.