Why aren't my items selling

[meelo_darling]

Greetings, 
After many years selling on ebay US I am trying my hand at Ebay Australia. I am still learning about the prices things sell for here. 

I have many items listed for auction but so far my sales rate has been low. I seem to top out around $200/month (which I assume is too low to be due to sales throttling...?)

Would any of you be so kind as to tell me why you think my sales aren't going better? Are there any obvious changes I could make?

I would love to lower my prices further but since I offer free shipping, dropping my prices much more means I wouldn't make any profit. However, I am still interested in what you think about my pricing and any other reason my auctions aren't more successful.

Also, most of my items are only available for purchase in Australia. I could consider opening them up to international sales, but I am concerned about buyer fraud if I do so...

Thanks in advance for your thoughts! 

[meelo_darling]

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. I loved hear your advise on the photos and the descriptions.

I opened a store because I am planning to list a lot more items...if I decide that I want to continue selling on Ebay.

Tippytoes, I think you should educate yourself on Kerastase. Although I didn't really like the product, it sells for $45-$55 new, so my price is fair, IMO. Also, "Why aren't your items selling? Probably because no-one wants them at the moment." Quite honestly that is not helpful advice. No need to be salty.

[bakeandfry]

I dont think your open bottle of hair conditioer is going to be a big hit no matter on how you think a fair price is for it,
For example, how would the buyer know you have not tampered wuth contents and added something else, like watered down.
Im not saying you have done so, im simply using it as an example on how a buyer thinks.
Your kiwi necklace suggests to me that it is gold,
I know its not gold, but main listing wording could have someone thinking so, and yes it can happen

[lyndal1838]

You are certainly setting yourself up for INAD disputes unless you make it plain that your jewellery items are NOT silver and gold.

It is very misleading to see titles mentioning silver and gold and then seeing the prices.

You should call them silver tone and gold tone.

These days you will find it hard to sell cheap costume jewellery....people just are not spending their money on this type of item.

I agree with the others....you are wasting your money with a store at the moment.  Use your 40 free listings for now and then open a store when sales pick up.  I imagine that most of your profit is going on store fees.

BTW Tippy is no being salty....if she was she would be slapped by the Moderators as salty language is not allowed on the boards.

[*tippy*toes*]

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@meelodarling wrote:

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. I loved hear your advise on the photos and the descriptions.

I opened a store because I am planning to list a lot more items...if I decide that I want to continue selling on Ebay.

Tippytoes, I think you should educate yourself on Kerastase. Although I didn't really like the product, it sells for $45-$55 new, so my price is fair, IMO. Also, "Why aren't your items selling? Probably because no-one wants them at the moment." Quite honestly that is not helpful advice. No need to be salty.

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Ummm, I have and whether you like it or not, it is used. It's tampered with. No price is fair because it's not a saleable item. If it doesn't suit you, give it to a friend or family member. A lot of items can be sold second hand and still be really good. This isn't one of them. You're opening yourself up for a SNAD. A buyer only has to say they knew it was tampered with, but it smells funny, then you lose the money and the item. May as well give it away.

Salty? Really? Generally the reason why a particular item isn't selling, it's because buyers are wanting to buy that type of thing at the moment. There is nothing salty about that. It's fact.

[meelo_darling]

I am already incorporating some changes based on folks' advice! I will make my photos less cluttered and also take away some of the caps in the titles. Super great suggestions.

Also, I had no idea anyone would assume that my items are real gold or silver but I will make changes to make it more clear that they are not.

Regarding the conditioner, we will have to agree to disagree! When I was a broke student, I would have LOVED to buy such a product at such a discount--since that was the only way I could possibly afford it! Such items actually fly off the shelves on Ebay US, believe it or not. If it doesn't sell for a while my assumption is that I need to drop the price more, though.

[chameleon54]

Sorry, but I have to agree with others. Two of the main reasons items dont sell on ebay is simply because they are being sold into a saturated market ( cheap jewelery ) or buyers simply dont want them.

The self affimation slogans on your key rings may suit the U.S market, but Australians tend to be a little bit more understated and self depricating................ Its a cultural thing............. I could imagine they could be very suited to the U.S market, but may not generate the same interest in Australia. Having said that, I suppose they may fill a niche for the small minority of Australians who are into that sort of thing.

Another problem with very cheap items is that you have to sell an awfull lot of them to get any sort of return. The time to actually pick and pack them, along with managing disputes, returns, book keeping and stock control means unless you are buying them for a few cents delivered, they dont give the return on time to generate real wages. I have a cut off point of around $5. Anything I sell for that price I get for free. My average item sale price is $38 and work on 300-400 % profit margins. This gives me a real return on my time and allows me to make genuine wages from ebay.  

The basic problem is you are targetting a segment of the market that is flooded with cheap Chinese carp. Never a good position to be in when trading on ebay Australia.

[bakeandfry]

Fair enough about the open bottle of conditioner, after all it is yours and you can do with it as you please, but just bear in mind you are not selling to the usa market, your trying to sell in australia,
Some of my products sell really good here but if i tryed to sell them in usa market i would come to a screaming halt

[*tippy*toes*]

As I said last night, you should look up the relevant policy to see if you can list the used product. I was just in the help pages, so took the liberty of doing it for you while I was there. You can't list it. Open and not used is OK in some situations, opened and used isn't. If someone reports it, or eBay find it, you risk a sanction on your account. That could be a 7 day suspension, it could be a lifetime suspension. It depends on what mood eBay is in on the day.

It's your call what you choose to do about it, but I will tell you there are quite a few lurkers on these forums who have never posted. They like reporting listings that violate policies. They like to do their bit to keep eBay clean. I don't know who they are (others do), but I know they are there. You know that you've tipped some out, thought I don't like it and then closed the lid again, but buyers are brutal.

Someone only has to say they got a rash or something else totally unrelated that they can blame it on and you're toast. Not only would you be dealing with eBay and a disgruntled buyer, the buyer could set the health department onto you. Extreme, yes, but don't put anything past buyers these days. They are a law unto themselves. EBay have placed them high onto the can do no wrong pedestal. 

Then there are the buyers who scream "fake". How can you prove it isn't? As soon as they scream fake, you lose the item and the money and there's not a single thing you can do about it. You have no proof you didn't empty it, then fill it up with a Coles brand 99c egg cream shampoo. I know I'm probably starting to sound extreme, but when you've been around these forums as long as a lot of us have, you've seen it all.

We've seen the excuses buyers come up with to get a refund but keep the item. Time and time again we've seen sellers get screwed over because they couldn't prove their Chanel bag (or other expensive name brand) was genuine, so they've lost their genuine item and the money. While we might sound harsh, we are trying to save you from yourself......and the eBay shoplifters. Believe me, the shoplifters are rife and ebay is encouraging it.

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/used-cosmetics.html

[davidc4430]

A Koala is not a 'bear'

[chameleon54]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

The main products I sell through my stores have fallen in popularity over the last few years. This is partly due to technology changes and cheap Chinese copies being illegally produced and sold on ebay in breach of copyright laws. I believe the stores are also subjected to ebay monthly sales averaging, so I cant really increase sales.

My non store account is still doing reasonably well and was going gang busters while it was recieving the free listings offers earlier in the year. Basically my sales are still holding up reasonably well and are in multi - four figure sums each month, so definately of interest to the ATO.

There are still buyers on ebay for unique products that cant be purchased anywhere else.

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Just another thought on this and the OP,s question of " why arnt my items selling".

My most popular sellers are a line of around twenty products that I designed myself. These are to fill a need for obsolete products that are no longer available, but still required by the market. I have them manufactured by a local company ( simple process when you have the equipment )  and then sell them through ebay. They have views in the thousands and come up as the number one search on google, both in description and google images. This results in them being steady reliable sellers.

If I was to stay selling on ebay long term I would expand the range of these products into the hundreds as I regularly get enquiries asking if I can supply similar items. The market is too small for the counterfieters to copy, so truly a unique, niche market. Unique, Niche products that people still need, is certianly the sweet spot for small sellers on ebay, rather than trying to compete in the overcrowded bulk commodity products that the Chinese sellers specalise in such as electronics and cheap trinkets..