topic Re: Dealing with a bad sales week in Selling

Dealing with a bad sales week

sophisto81 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 12:46:08 GMT

How often do you just have a bad week? Or is it usually for a reason you have yet to discover?
I haven't had a sale ALL WEEK! I'm by no means a large volume seller but don't recall the last time I went 5 days without a sale. I've just up graded to a store last week but in the same week of doing so sales were great, just this week they suck. So many dramas with ebay lately too; non payers, cancelled auctions, ebay glitches causing items to come up as free postage, potential buyers engaging in haggling wars over $3... Sometimes it just feels too hard!

I think this post is more of a vent than anything else. Thanks for listening.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

chameleon54 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:07:57 GMT

I had a shocker of a week last week. It would be my worst week for six months. THEN YESTERDAY I had my best day in twelve months, selling more than double my total sales of previous week in the one day. My theory is that some-one at ebay forgot to turn the switch off for my visibility like they normally do after a few sales. I have to admit after the shocker last week, I spent a full day listing and made some good sales of the new items. I have noticed before that when things are slow, new listings do seem to help.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

davewil1964 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:12:10 GMT

I don't do auctions - no point when you have a store.

I have had several weeks when I sold nothing, but not in the last 12 months.

I have the occasional NPB, as all sellers do, but certainly not out of the ordinary.

So far this month I have sold about 50% of my monthly average, so I only need ordinary over the next 24 days to realise expectations.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

chameleon54 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:31:31 GMT

@davewil1964 wrote:
I don't do auctions - no point when you have a store.

Dave - I still do a few auctions through the stores. Occasionally I get an item that is hard to value. ( no recent precedents, rare or unusual. ) I have a couple of these auctions going at the moment. One item I started at what I would normally list it for and it has already recieved multiple bids and is way above my expectations and looks like going higher. Around a year ago I had a vintage Victa lawnmower owners manual set. I new it was good but couldnt really price it. I started it at $19.95 and it ended up selling for $275.00. ( and yes they did pay for it ) . I also run a few auctions when things are slow. I list popular items with a realistic start and even if they dont sell, I find it helps drive traffic and sales through the stores. A bit like advertising or window dressing. I think auctions can be a usefull addition to the sellers tool box. Not to be used all of the time, but they have their place.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

digital*ghost — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:39:48 GMT

When things are slow, I just try to take the time to focus my attention on other things - new stock, tweaking titles, updating photos, descriptions. Sometimes these things seem to help, sometimes I'm sure it's just filling time, but IMHO never a waste of time to try different things or make improvements.

NPBs can be a nuisance, but I just try to make sure they take up as little of my time and attention as possible (which I personally do by sending one enquiry around day 4, a firmly set time-frame for extra days if they respond and ask for it, or open the UPI if no response to my enquiry after around 36-48 hours.

I have a pretty clear-cut MO - as it were - for things I am or am not prepared to do, so whenever a customer enquires about things like discounts and I'm not prepared to offer any (I am able to provide some items in bulk quantities, so will occasionally be able to offer a discount), if not, then I respond with a simple message that lets them know I am not offering any discounts on the item price, but they are welcome to take advantage of the combine postage discounts I offer. (<<<had to edit in the wink ).

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

davewil1964 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:39:01 GMT

Fair enough.

I don't do auctions as I have found them a waste of time and money. If I'm not sure of value for xxy books I usually put a best offer option on. The last xxy book I sold sold for full price, even though I had best offer on it.

Horses for courses, I suppose. But a week without any sales is still nothing to panic about.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

thecatspjs — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:42:56 GMT

Auctions always get me more significantly more views and sales than buy-it-nows for particular listings.

It all depends on your markets.

I would never say that one was better than the other overall across stores or otherwise. There is no one size fits all format.

Healthy to vent OP. It is a most erratic time for many sellers.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

chameleon54 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:59:12 GMT

@ untill they finishdavewil1964 wrote:
Fair enough.

I don't do auctions as I have found them a waste of time and money. If I'm not sure of value for xxy books I usually put a best offer option on. The last xxy book I sold sold for full price, even though I had best offer on it.

Horses for courses, I suppose. But a week without any sales is still nothing to panic about.

You are right about the money thing. If you are putting up 40 or 50 auctions at $1.50 each, you need to be fairly sure that some of them are going to hit a home run. I have got 17 auctions running on my private account ( from 40 monthly freebies ) that I expected to do fairly well. Currently not a single watcher or bid on any, and only one day to go until they finish. . It would hurt if I was paying $1.50 each for those.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

sophisto81 — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 14:41:51 GMT

Well whadaya know, I made my first sale for the week within the last hour! Wahoo!

I find a combination of both auctions and BIN work for me. More $ ultimately comes from BIN but occasionally I'm shocked at how high an auction goes to which evens out the smaller sales. I've now got 2 sites, one for each format. I wish the basic store catered for both.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

bamkapow — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 06:27:32 GMT

Since I got a store a few weeks ago sales have really slowed down for me. Had 3 sales this week which is not good. Have put a bunch of new stock up so I am hoping that this brings in more eyes and sales.

It is strange, thought sales would increase with a store but it looks like I will have to withstand this dip before that happens. In the meantime I continue to push my commerce store, social media and preparing to go into the Carrara Markets.

Keeping busy 🙂

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

2106greencat — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 08:13:04 GMT

I have a lot of bad weeks, months, years....

and I am not even selling anything

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

amber-eyed-girl — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 09:25:05 GMT

Greencat...

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

helenm777 — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:41:56 GMT

I have 1 sale over 3 sites one being a Store. When checking Views there are hardly any even on Designer Brand name items. I also offer BIN Best Offer

I would also like to state that on listing items Ebay automatically lists that the item has been viewed by 2 people !!!! I have listed hundred of items and after listing i immediately check the listing and there is always 2 views..even though I know there could not have been viewed within thei time frame.

Therefore, many of my items have not been viewed at all!

Last year I was selling at least 20 - 40 items per month.. now I am lucky to sell 10 over the 3 ID's

Very dissapoiting given I many spend hours every day uploading items and trying to revise listings to see if there is a reason the items are not being viewed

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

dylan11235813 — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 11:47:33 GMT

I find that usually at the start of a month I have lower sales and at the end higher. Someone posting on the forums had a theory about ebay limiting sales once a seller had reached a level. I usually have really good weeks and then really bad and very rarely consistant.

The last couple of weeks I have noticed a slowdown in sales. Also when I have an overly large number of unique vistors to listings sales will drop over the following couple of days. Which I think is basically the best match system at work. Increased visitors generally means more sales, but not when there is a spike in views.

Feedback has been lower than normal as well, the number of feedback I was recieving plumetted over about 3 months then pick up over the last month and then has slowed again.

Re: Dealing with a bad sales week

putney32 — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 22:53:16 GMT

all retail in australia is hurting at present , none moreso that clothing.

many retails stores are springing 50% off sales for 24 hr or the weekend or Wednesday or whatever just to generate some cashflow,

ebay is no different

aussies are scared to spend money at present given the way the govt. is