Need honest advice on how to improve my listings to buyers

[daytekson]

I am a long time canadian seller of Lego sets mostly and have tried a few things to my listings to improve them.

Examples are:  

Offering returns at buyers expense

Sending offers to buyers

Lowering the prices of some sets

Offering free shipping on selected items (whenever I can due to high shipping costs to the U.S)

But I usually only get 0 to 3 sales each week and this is not a fast enough sell rate for me even when I do all this above.

I sell mostly to the United States.

Does anyone have any  honest advice on how I can improve my listings , to have a better sell through rate?

Are my listing descriptions too long? , are my prices too high?  , am I missing some keywords in my titles etc?

If anyone could please have a look at my listings and provide some feedback that would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

[brettjet38]

Because LEGO has a very active Auction market on eBay...

...so the pricing for complete sets is very competitive as are the parts. 

This is an INTERNATIONAL and very popular line for collectors...

Most LEGO sets I have sold go overseas, vary rarely in Canada or the USA.

[reallynicestamps]

Offering returns at buyers expense

A No Returns policy is not a No Refunds policy, so this is a Good Idea.

Sending offers to buyers

A Canadian seller has been experimenting with Promoted Listings vs discounts. Annoyingly, he finds the PL works better, at a lower cost, than customer discounts.
https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/experiment-with-almost-give-away-listing-pondering-probl...
#6 of 13

A 10% discount to a customer has the same impact on profits as a 10% Promoted Listings option.

But it looks like PL works better.

More important, it works better at a lower rate (even the minimum 2%rate) than discounts to customers.

EBay is our landlord not our friend, and everyone hates to give more money to the landlord.

But, it looks like it works.

In my experience, PL also brings customers to my Store, so the PL listing may not sell, but something else does.

Lowering the prices of some sets

I don't find going below the general market price is all that useful.

Too low and the customer wonders if there is something wrong.

Offering free shipping on selected items (whenever I can due to high shipping costs to the U.S)

As long as you understand that Free Shipping means you have included your cost (which may be lower than the customer's cost) in the asking price for the item.

Also, chitchat and stallion are forwarders. Are either available to you?

Your listings look good to me.

You might include the Model Number of each set in the title, ItemSpecifics and Description. Yes, all three.

I'd drop the Feedback part, because we never have any problems, do we? 😎

But keep the part welcoming questions before buying.

[ricarmic]

@daytekson  You don't mention using promoted listings.

Try an experiment, instead of discounting an item, set the same or reasonable promoted listing rate. For ease of math assume you were going to offer 10% off instead leave the price the same and set your promoted listing fee to 10% (it only costs you if it sells).

In my own experience it is sad because that 10% goes to eBay instead of the buyer but doing is vastly improves the sales rate at the regular price.

It costs nothing to try as the promoted fees for BINs only come into play if it sells. 

Note for real life scenario, if you were offering 20% off you don't need to put PL rate that high, err on the side of going just a bit higher than the recommended rate.

[flipistics]

I did notice when I looked up your BrickHeadz 41623 that you've sold it a few times over the last few months for $120 to $130 with free shipping, but you have it listed at $193 plus shipping right now (which is much higher than it's listed for on Amazon for example).

You could try modifying your titles slightly as an experiment. I've heard that the first 5 ish words are the most important for being picked up by search engines. Maybe try something like "Lego Brickheadz 41623 Ariel & Ursula Disney Retired Set New Factory Sealed".

[byto253]

Suggest a better photo set-up.  Maybe it is me, but when I see a $500+ item sitting on the floor it is not a positive look and I would rather buy from someone that takes more care with the listing.  Particularly when it is a commodity type item like legos.

This is cheap to do.  Even just get some dollarama white sheets of bristol board or foam boards and put them on the floor and against the wall.   I do that on a foldable table. 

Also try the background removal tool.

For prices, be sure to compare your prices to the price with shipping of sold items.  As our shipping from Canada to the US is higher, for common items we can end up netting less less as the buyer is looking at the price with shipping.   e.g.  $100 all in with shipping may only have $12 shipping from a US seller to US buyer but $30 from Canada to the US so your net is less.  And if you list expecting that buyers will pay the higher shipping, items will sit for much longer or not move at all.  

If selling mainly to the US, you can experiment with listing in US$ on .com.  That is best for items under 2 kgs that fit in to small packet dimensions as you need to provide a flat shipping rate.   

I do a good amount of used Lego, and as most things are not unique it is about a competitive price, and patience but pretty well everything does sell.