A lot of stationery sellers work on a very low mark-up and rely on volume sales to make their money. Ebay and b&m shops are completely different, especially when it comes to items with expensive postage. Some buyers may not worry about buying from the cheapest seller but a lot of the cheapest sellers (who are also extremely reliable) have a huge following and get a lot of repeat business, so you may find it hard to break into the market if you can't match their prices and service. Comparing yourself to Officeworks is irrelevant - you need to compare yourself with other ebay sellers of the same goods (sellers who get lots of sales).
REPLY - I HAVE TRIED TO COMPARE MY STORE WITH OTHER STATIONERY SELLERS AND, EXCEPT FOR ATEGORIES AND QUALITY OF PHOTOS I THINK MY OFFERING IS BETTER THAN THEIRS. AS FOR (sellers who get lots of sales) I DON'T SEE ANY STATIONERY SELLERS ON EBAY THAT ARE GETTING LOTS OF SALES. THE ONLY WAY I CAN ASSESS AND COMPARE IS BY ADDING UP THE VALUE AND ITEMS THEIR FEEDBACK SHOWS COMPARED TO MINE. I FIND THAT ONLY 30.26% OF EBAY BYERS LEAVE FEEDBACK ... THAT IS WITHIN 1% MONTH AFTER MONTH ... SO WHEN I BROADLY APPLY THE 30% FATOR TO FEEDBACK RESULTS AND COMPARE WITH NUMBER OF ITEMS OF OFFER BY EACH SELLER, THEY ARE ALL PERFORMING AT WELL BELOW 50% OF VIABILITY ... MOSTLY THAT SEEM TO HAVE RETAIL STORES AS THEIR MAINSTREAM BUSINESS AND EBAY IS AN ADD ON.
IS ANYONE PROFESSIONALLY SELLING ON EBAY AS THEIR ONE AND ONLY BUSINESS ACTUALLY EARNING EVEN $20 TO $25 PER HOUR, AFTER PAYING FOR THEIR STOCK PURCHASES AND RUNNING EXPENSES?
I'd suggest putting a weight for each item in the description so that people can work out postage for themselves. If postage is $7.45 and the item they're looking at weighs 230g they'll automatically know they can buy items weighing another 270g without it costing any more for postage. Just allow a few grams more for the packaging. You might think this is a lot of work, but if buyers emailed you and asked about combined postage you'd have to weigh the items anyway. Anything that makes it easy for the buyers will help get you sales.
REPLY - I WILL LOOK INTO THIS, BUT MY CATEGRIES AND PHOTOS MUST BE A 1ST PRIORITY.
I'd think seriously about your store name in the next four weeks. Names that have a message about bargains or cheapest or deals make me run a mile, for several reasons. One reason is that it sounds as though your products are cheap and therefore poor quality. If you're selling branded products why do you want to sound like a bargain basement type shop that sells unbranded products? Names like yours automatically make me think of a market stall with someone hustling passersby for sales. Because of postage costs you can never sell for bargain basement prices on ebay so there's no point in trying to sound like you can. I can't understand why you use a store name of Payless4 cash because 99.9% of people on ebay use paypal, and buyers don't trust sellers who insist on bank deposit (cash). It almost seems like false advertising to me.
YESTERDAY I CHANGED MY STORE NAME TO "AFFORDABLE QUALITY BRANDED PRODUCTS" AND TRIED TO CHANGE MY USEDNAME TO THE SAME BUT EBAY MADE IT ALL ONE WORD AND ALL LOWER CASE. APPARENTLY I CANT CHANGE IT AGAIN NOW FOR 30 DAYS.
The most successful sellers I know of in office supplies have simple names - names that people will remember so they can find them again. You need your products, prices and service to speak for themselves, and I always wonder what's wrong if a seller tries to promote themselves any other way. Why not call yourself something simple like "The Stationery Cupboard" - it tells people what you sell, they'll remember your name for next time, and it's easy to say. By the way, I'm glad you can at least spell stationery correctly! Paper = stationery.
REPLY - COMMENTING ON LAST BIT FIRST ... I ALWEAYS REMEMBER IT AS E = ENVELOPE = STATIONERY (LOL)
I HAD CONSIDERED CHANGING MY STORE NAME TO SOMETHING LIKE "THE STATIONERY CUPBOARD" BUT I HAVE ALMOST LANDED A WHOLE NEW SUITE OF DISTRIBUTORSHIPS THAT ARE NOT STATIONERY SO I WILL NEED TO WAIT FOR THAT TO BECOME A REALITY (OR OTHERWISE) BEFORE I MAKE MY STORE NAME DECISION ... ANYWAY, I CANT CHANGE IT FOR 30 DAYS BECAUSE OF EBAY'S RULES.
The categories could be done very quickly if you use bulk edit. Set your selling page to show 100 items and tick all the ones that belong in a particular category, then click Edit down the bottom and do them in one go. Then tick everything from the next category and do the same with them. If your dearest items are all in the same category, sort your selling page by price so that they're all fairly close together.
If you have to take photos of everything, why not weigh them at the same time? You could sit the scales next to your computer so that you could weigh them as you upload the pictures and put the weight in the description while you have that listing open. It would save double handling the listings (to edit them).
It's hard to see how much others have sold because of each listing having multiple items. They don't show every sale in completed or sold listings if it's a GTC listing with multiples. I wouldn't rely on your method of checking feedback because one seller's buyers may leave more feedback than another seller's buyers. On one of my IDs I get 75% leave feedback, on another ID only half leave it - a lot depends on the type of product. You might do better by checking the feedback they leave for others - the bigger ones have it set to automatically leave feedback straight away and you'd get a better idea of how much they sell. I'd also spot check a few products that you'd expect to be your best sellers and then check the selling history in the opposition's listings.
I buy my sticky tape from a huge seller whose name I won't mention (not allowed) but they sell a lot of poly mailers, envelopes, bubblewrap, labels, etc. They appear to sell a LOT and they rarely get bad feedback (unusual for a high volume seller). Because of their high volumes they may buy at better rates than you can get, but I doubt they'd be doing it if they weren't making money from it. They have a good range of products but they've stuck to the more popular products and that may be the key to their success. They wouldn't have to search among thousands of different products to find the right one to mail out.
If you're likely to be selling other types of goods then select a name that doesn't mean anything in particular - and keep it short! Your current name is way too long and cumbersome. Ebay doesn't allow spaces or uppercase in usernames and I'm not sure they allow hyphens (it wouldn't when I tried recently), so pick a couple of words that are okay when run together, eg. onlinesupplies (just an example as I'm sure it'd be taken), or jonesonlinesuppliers. Another example is bestbrandsbestprices - it's four words but it's relatively short and it runs together okay.
Trying to use your username to promote yourself isn't always going to work - it'll attract some but turn just as many others off, so keep it neutral. That's what I was trying to say about using the word affordable, bargains, etc, in your username. How many b&m businesses with "bargain basement" type names are still around after 5 years, or even 1 year? Unless they're a $2-type shop they're usually gone pretty smartly, so that sort of name can have connotations of fly-by-nighters, or clearance outlets that are only temporary - but you want repeat customers because that's the best way to make money. When I want to buy something I compare prices and I can easily see who's cheapest. I don't take any notice of a username that tells me they're the cheapest, though those usernames are useful in telling me who to avoid because they're quite often sellers with lots of negs.
Just one more point. A lot of your printer cartridges don't have the word printer in the title. I know the characters are limited but check out what words other sellers use. When I search I use the words printer cartridges (not ink, not laserjet, etc etc) and the cartridge number. If I didn't know the cartridge number I'd probably put the model of the printer but most people would know or be able to look up the cartridge number.
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