eBay

sllgc123 · ‎02-04-2021

Selling and buying sports cards on Ebay.ca or Ebay.com which is better, I have been selling sports cards for a few months on Ebay .ca only cause I live in the Toronto area , but I am not getting the volume from buyers as I think I should ...I have 320 cards on line but have only sold 27 , should I be using Ebay.com instead?

ricarmic · ‎02-04-2021

My mantra for selling is:

List on the site of most likely buyers:

Ie for Canadian teams who are most likely to sell to Canadians, list on .CA

For US teams who are most likely to sell to Americans, list on .COM

PS number of cards listed is only a wee part of the picture, there are likely millions listed so 320 is .0000001% of them.....compare your statistics, prices, etc with competitors selling the same cards, look for things they do differently from you, particularly ones selling more than you and see what makes sense for you to do.....

recped · ‎02-04-2021

You are probably not going to sell very many to the US because of your shipping charges.

You really need to send these low value cards by Lettermail without tracking. Sellers in the US ship these cards for less than a Dollar. Your listings say "LetterPost" but you are charging $10.99.....why?

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

reallynicestamps · ‎02-04-2021

Might I make two suggestions?

First is that you use LetterPost rates for shipping on your low value cards* reducing your shipping costs from $4.00 to $1.30-$1.94.

LetterPost is not tracked.

Second is that you use Free Shipping.

DON'T PANIC!

Free Shipping means you put the cost of shipping into the asking price of the card.

Which is cheaper a $2.00 card with $3.99 shipping or a $5.99 card?

You might also experiment with a shipping charge on the first item but $0.00 charge for transactions with multiple cards.

One $2.00 card plus $1.99 shipping or 5 x $2.00 cards with $1.99 shipping.

Shipping is the hardest part of mail order.

BTW you cannot buy shipping labels for LetterPost online.

But you can use stamps and you can buy those on eBay at a discount.

Two other notes.

Buyers hate to pay more for shipping than for the actual item.

Search the term "Cookie Jar Insurance" in the Boards.

* You decide what is the cutoff between low value and high value.

doc-holmes · ‎02-04-2021

You seem to have a mix of stuff, but mostly hockey. I'd say. dotCA is the way to go.

sllgc123 · ‎02-08-2021

Hi thanks for the reply, I have adjusted my listing ....pls look at 353381203052 and let me know if is ok...Thanks...

sllgc123 · ‎02-08-2021

Hi thanks for the reply...I will put all my hockey cards on CA and Baseball/Basketball etc on COM...Now having said that right now they are all on Ebay.ca....but still show up on Ebay.com...Do I have to convert them over or leave it cause they are showing on Ebay.com....

kawartha-ephemera · ‎02-08-2021

There's not a standard yes or no answer for the "should I list on ebay.ca or ebay.com debate". Each seller's situation is different from others whether it be product, location, seller rating, history etc. The best advice I think would be to experiment with various approaches on both ebay.ca and ebay.com simultaneously.

There is not a way that ebay.ca listings can be "converted" into ebay.com listings. To list on .com you must create them from scratch using the .com listing form. If a listing exists on .ca you can cut and paste the title and other information from there, the photos will need to be uploaded again.

Personally I wouldn't recommend going to the trouble of recreating them all over again just to change listing site. As you have noticed ebay.ca listings rank just fine on .com. The critical bits have more to do with pricing including shipping, presentation, seller performance and marketing then listing location.

Going forward I'd be inclined to experiment with selected new listings on .com. Be prepared to change-up your approach as you go along. Whatever ends up working for you may be different from what works on .ca.

If you've been put into MP it will be more expensive to sell in USD on .com because of the instant currency conversion. On the other hand if you're still on PayPal it can be quite advantageous to hold a USD balance.

reallynicestamps · ‎02-08-2021

Leave your current listings where they are.

Put your new ballsports cards on dotCOM.

Don't forget about currency exchange.

kawartha-ephemera · ‎02-08-2021

Re: 353381203052

I had a look at this listing and have a few thoughts. Please keep in mind I know very little to nothing of the sports card market but I do sell lettermail items.

Shipping. I'm in Ontario. I noted shipping was quoted at 3.99 + 13% HST. Seems awfully high, the tax bill would likely be enough to turn me away. If you are GST/HST registered I would recommend incorporating tax into the selling price thus eliminating GST/HST as an additional cost.

I must say 3.99 on its own seems high. Is a card like this heavier than I imagine, more than 30g? More than 50g?

In my experience the top end price that buyers will pay for a 30g lettermail item is considerably less than 3.99.
Domestic would look a lot better at 1.99, even if the difference were added to the selling price sales might increase.
USA and International buyers can be persuaded to pay more provided their home market isn't completely flooded with domestic options. This might be a problem with sports cards, they're everywhere in large quantities.

One method of overcoming shipping cost hesitancy is to introduce automated combined shipping discount rule or rules. For instance, paying shipping on the 1st item, additional items ship free or nearly free encourages multiple item orders. This has been proven to work and eliminates most but not all of the messaging and sending of invoices that is required to manually combine items. A lot of buyers are not interested in fooling around with requesting invoices, if there's a no hassle option available to them they're much more likely to go that route. There are a few buyers that for whatever reason that will not use the shopping cart which defeats discount rules.

doc-holmes · ‎02-08-2021

I sell cards as well, and $3.99 for shipping isn't that outraeous. I charge $3.00. The cost of shipping in a bubble mailer is $2.20 after tax. I pay about $0.47 per envelope, and you also have to factor in the top loader (rigid case for the card). I think after all is said and done, I come away with a cool $0.20 or so extra.

pjcdn2005 · ‎02-08-2021

Re the Ontario tax that you are charging. Are you registered with the government to collect tax? If you do have a business number so that you can collect gst, then you should be collecting hst in some provinces and gst in other provinces. If you aren't registered to collect it, then you cannot collect in at all.

It isn't necessary to register until you have gross sales of $30,000 within a 12 month time period.

sllgc123 · ‎02-08-2021

Thanks for the reply ...as it seems I have been charging to much compared to the everyone else...I can revise my listing for Domestic to Canada to $2.99 and USA to $3.99 ....as far as the actual listing itself...the major of them are on EBay.ca but they can be viewed on Ebay.com thru the Standard Intl shipping....does everyone recommend to leave it seeing that it can be viewed in the USA .....Thanks I am still new at this , but still learning...

ricarmic · ‎02-08-2021

A couple others already said this but what I did when I decided to have stuff on both sites is I left everything on .COM and listed new Canadian oriented or expensive to ship to US stuff on .CA (I only started listing on .CA in 2018).

I cannot be sure, but it still seems that something likely to sell to Americans is more likely to sell to them from .COM than .CA and vice versa.

The suggestion to experiment is a very very good one. Most of the best stuff I do now I experimented to determine the best way for my stuff in my categories, and many of the ideas for the experiments came from stuff I read on this board.....

regs43 · ‎02-10-2021

I think that your not getting any sales because your prices are out of proportion for what your selling.

Example Powerplay Sergei Fedorov Tall Boy single is worth about $1.00 and you have for $5.50

Example Sergei Fedorov Powerplay Tall Boy insert Gamebreakers is worth about $2.00 and you have listed for $9

Also both of these items listed above are not desirable cards and are very long tale items with low probability to sell.

Another example would be your $30 Dominik Hasek Pro Set that is probably worth about $1 to $2 and is MASSIVELY overproduced and basically junk

I would consider checking sold comps when listing items to see the selling market/if there is one or be prepared to wait for these long tale items to sell.