eBay

musicyouneed · ‎06-06-2017

Using markdown manager how often do you put items on sale? Do you put everything on? certain things? What percentage do you use?

It seems I have been having a sale every month for a week. I get some sales but get sales without it too, I haven't really noticed a great difference between when I have a sale and don't.

I was just wondering what you do or have noticed.

I do have on .com - that if a US buyer buys 6 CD's from me they get free shipping as I can send them media mail in the US and I will eat the shipping cost. I just started that about 1 week ago, so we will have to see if it works at all. Buying 6 CD's they save $24 in shipping. I have had several buyers in past buy more than 6, one person bought 63 CD's at one time and 24 the next.

hlmacdon · ‎06-06-2017

@musicyouneed wrote:
Using markdown manager how often do you put items on sale? Do you put everything on? certain things? What percentage do you use?

It seems I have been having a sale every month for a week. I get some sales but get sales without it too, I haven't really noticed a great difference between when I have a sale and don't.

I was just wondering what you do or have noticed.

I do have on .com - that if a US buyer buys 6 CD's from me they get free shipping as I can send them media mail in the US and I will eat the shipping cost. I just started that about 1 week ago, so we will have to see if it works at all. Buying 6 CD's they save $24 in shipping. I have had several buyers in past buy more than 6, one person bought 63 CD's at one time and 24 the next.

Only occasionally when there are larger shifts in the currency. Assuming your product is reasonably competitively priced I don't find it makes much of an impact at all as it doesn't really force much swing in the way of traffic. If you have a large email subscriber list it may be slightly more impactful. I have just under 600 followers but only a relatively small number of newsletter subscribers. The real goal is to get increased visibility on your listings overall, which is something I've been monitoring more closely over the last 6 months. Markdowns get no appreciable swing in sales or traffic while bursts of new listings timed around new product releases or when restocking items have much more of an impact. I'll routinely see 2-3x page views overall and considerably more sales of not only the new items but other items. For this reason when I have multi-quantity listings I regularly limit the quantity available then relist as they "sell out" which eats up free listings but I have enough extra anyways.

Between best match's preferences and people spamming/gaming the search rankings, most of the 30 day renewal listings that are typical for a store owner generally get poor visibility. Casual browsers will only notice your listing when it is on the first page or two of new listings in a category which is literally a few hours a month so you can either undercut the entire market to garner a sale or you can use new listings which generate more traffic and hopefully get people visiting your store. When I'm feeling particularly bored or have extra listings, I'll end some of the listings and use the sell similar function to reset the ranking and garner some increased visibility and sales from doing so. I find that reducing the prices on items with a reasonable number of watchers to be more effective as the watchers get targeted emails (I literally just sold one such listing as I'm typing this hah!) rather than a general seller newsletter which more often then not will just end up in the recycling bin. If you think about it you are discounting your product with no real call to action to draw attention to it.

reallynicestamps · ‎06-06-2017

I assume my items will be slow to move and don't bother with sales.

If an item gets too old (which really means when eBay tells me it has been up for 16 months) I take it down for a month or so, and then relist it, perhaps with a tweak.

But a tweak is not necessarily on price. It might be a new picture or an update in ISBN.

I do have an archive of turkeys which I probably will never list again.

ricarmic · ‎06-06-2017

Since early last year, I always have items on sale, I restart them each month.

I use the sales to increase traffic to the "old stuff" (I have items that have been running for 10 years now). Virtually everything that is older than a couple years is on sale.

When I first started the "eternal sale" I had a tremendous increase in sales overall. Since then it has evened out.

My method: (I am in the stamps category and have about 3,500 items running)

The oldest 50 items are 35% off

The next oldest 50 items are 25% off

The next oldest 200 items are 15% off

The next 1,000 oldest items are 10% off

I do have people that concentrate on the on sale items, I've also seen situations where an on sale item sells first, then some regular priced items sell to the same person afterward.

Because I use sales, promoted listings, and other factors to try to encourage buyers, there really isn't any way for me to know for sure how much of a positive impact the sales on their own generate. It does seem though that sales drop during the turnover days at the beginning of each month between the time the sales expire and I restart them.

pierrelebel · ‎06-06-2017

"Using markdown manager how often do you put items on sale?"

When I was an active seller with a store, I generally ran a new sale every week. Why? To remind buyers on my mailing list that my products were available. With a store, you can use eBay's mailing services free once a week when creating a sale through Markdown Manager. I found this feature well worth the store monthly fee.

Sometimes, I would only feature a few products for sale, other times a large number. Sometimes for only a week or two, at other times for up to 45 days.

cumos55 · ‎06-06-2017

Every once in a while I do get an offer for one of my listings.

My response is that...... a discount is only made if the price of an item is in the range of $50 to $75 and higher.

I have never had a sale of items... with a mark down in price.

Books have a value without any mark down... Over all my years of selling I have probably sold one copy of close to 75 % of my current inventory on eBay.... and continue to sell several copies of about 3 to 5 of the books ... and then more book, now and again.

I look to list at something called Fair Market Value.... a price at which people will buy.. Seller's price at which someone will buy.

However, there will come a day when I will plan to leave eBay and retire from online selling... I still have select inventory from the days before books became my 100 % on eBay.

I will continue to sell at my listed prices..... and eventually I will leave eBay.. and then everything will have to be re- considered, and more specifically in the months before I leave....

--------------------

The wildest round of offers on a book was for one listed at $95 US.

On Monday the offer was $45 US... declined because several copies had recently sold at $95.

On Tuesday The offer was $60 US... No response by me because I had to go shopping.

One Wednesday the offer was $60 shipping included..... To Maine USA.

My response was that the book sold at the listed price on Wednesday morning..... The buyer was from Maine USA

Was this a coincidence?...,Both the buyer and the person making the offer lived in Maine USA

-----------------------------------------------

Pricing for books can range dramatically.

I had a book I wanted to list at $20.

There were three listed at ... $5.... $10 and $15

Three weeks later the $5 and $10 books sold......

Then after four weeks more.. the $15 book had sold.

My copy of this book was listed for $20, and it sold within two weeks.

Many times I have sold books that are not listed at the lowest price on eBay....This is the world of selling books.

38e_avenue · ‎06-06-2017

All my items are ALWAYS on sale (2500+ items running). However, I change the discount percentage every 2 weeks: from 10% to 25%. I send the sale announcements to my subscribers every 3 months or so and only after I list 300-400 new items.

ricarmic · ‎06-06-2017

This reminds me I forgot to add that I only send sale announcements when something changes, as in I add a new batch of on sale items, so I rarely send announcements, maybe 2 times a year.