eBay

ricarmic · ‎07-30-2021

Figured a light hearted thread was in order.

An item sold today that had been running as a GTC for 11 years now. I think that's a new record, I've had 10 year ones in the last while but this is the first 11 year I ever remember!

Sometimes it takes a "while" for the right buyer to come along!

I could tell by the pictures that it was an oldie when I pulled it, don't have very many this old still running, and a number of the oldies have sold during the COVID times with lots or returning or new buyers on the scene.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-30-2021

Congrats! Not only a personal record but it might be an ebay record too!

You're much more patient than I am. 🙂

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎07-30-2021

@ricarmic wrote:
Figured a light hearted thread was in order.

An item sold today that had been running as a GTC for 11 years now. I think that's a new record, I've had 10 year ones in the last while but this is the first 11 year I ever remember!

Sometimes it takes a "while" for the right buyer to come along!

I could tell by the pictures that it was an oldie when I pulled it, don't have very many this old still running, and a number of the oldies have sold during the COVID times with lots or returning or new buyers on the scene.

Have you calculated the listing/relisting costs for that 1 listing? Fortunately you have a store. If you are able to do the math, please let us know how it turns out. 🙂 Now we know why so few buy ads in newspapers. Is that still a thing? Fortunately having patience pays off in the end!!

-Lotz

As a side, i've had 3 of 4 vintage tech items sell all in 6 days. 3 separate transactions. They've been up and running for probably 2 + years.

ricarmic · ‎07-30-2021

@pjcdn2005 whilst I do consider myself patient, that's not really why I leave items running "forever".

Sitting beside me while I type are somewhere around 500 items ready to be pictured and listed (I've made progress a couple months ago it was 800ish). From a priority perspective, why would I spend time "renewing" 100 items that even renewed will be slow to move whilst I can spend the same time listing 100 "new" items that will be about 50% gone in the first year.

Probably more telling is that I HATE beyond HATING redoing stuff. It will be the very last thing I do. I just hate beyond hating revisiting already "done" stuff!!!!

Fortunately when they sell from time to time that just supports my practical and emotional "let them run forever" mentality!

hlmacdon · ‎07-30-2021

Dead stock is the new vintage. Ebay should get hip to this and stop trying to bury old listings. 😂

ricarmic · ‎07-30-2021

@lotzofuniquegoodies Well as is often the case I look at the world a different way from most.

Remember that I'm old school, trained in the "before the internet" days - in fact I am still running print ads if you can imagine! They are not producing nearly what they should to be fiscally warranted, but I've been advertising in that same paper for 43 years and I'm doing it now more from a loyalty and supporting the print industry than a fiscal one.

Back to the topic at hand, so I look at ALL my ebay costs like "advertising" costs, so my store monthly fees, my selling fees, my item upgrade fees, my promoted listing costs all comprise what I think of as "advertising" costs. In the before the internet days, if I could keep my "advertising" costs under 20% I was happy, if I could get them down to 10% that was amazing and rarely achieved. As a note to do this internationally, 20% was a dream, normally it was prohibitively expensive to find and keep folks in the US and more notably overseas, at least for me.

These days my "advertising" costs run in the range of 15% to 20%. They would be better if I didn't take about 8 weeks "vacation" each year because fixed costs like store fees don't stop when I am on vacation and that drives the overall % up.

It is also worth noting that if one looks at "advertising" costs the way I do, despite all the wherewithall the other sites purport to be cheaper than "feebay" they're just as expensive if not more expensive than here, because "attracting" customers, no matter where you list, even worse for your own site, costs money, just as it did in the pre-internet days. I think far too many folks think that just "listing" something is all one has to do, generally that won't work in and of itself.

So that was a very long and oftentimes distracted answer to your question, a more concise one would be that yes it costs me about 17% of the sale, if I use my advertising costs perspective.