eBay

musicyouneed · ‎09-09-2016

Hi all you store owners. Looking for advice/hints/ideas/experience on sales/discounts.

What is your rationale/secret/reason you put things on sale in your store?

Can you just put certain items on sale or does everything have to be on sale?

Do you do it for a week, weekend, month?

If you can select individual items, do you do it by how long you have had the item? Whether someone is watching it?

What do you discount, free shipping, 5%, 10%?

Would you put items on sale that are near the end of the listing, say have 5 days left from 30?

Do you find a sale works for you? If so, how much of a percentage did your sales increase?

I did put everything on sale 10% for 2 days, and got a couple of sales but don't know if I would have got them anyways.

silverpinups · ‎09-09-2016

Just "add" Best Offer to your GTC Listings then you never have to worry about putting your items on sale.

This will help decrease your work load... let the GTC Listing with Best Offer work for you.

How many views do you think your items will receive if you put them on sale with 5 days to go in the listing... probably very little.

Newly Listed items get the most hits over the first week.

ricarmic · ‎09-09-2016

I believe on sale items get improved visibility = improved sales

I have almost 3,000 GTC items, some of them have been running for 9 years now.

I have an escalated discount schedule

-oldest 50 have highest discount (normal 30% experiment 35%)

-next oldest 50 a little less discount (normal 25% experiment 25%)

-next 200 oldest a modest discount (normal 20% experiment 15%)

-a bunch have a small discount (traditionally everything over a year old, about 1,500 items). (normal 10% experiment 10%)

I only run sales for a month.

This month I changed my experiment, I reduced the number of items with the smallest discount (down to 500) and increased the amount of the discount for the top one. So far the impact has been limited. More experiments will be conducted over time....

I believe running some discounts improves sales, the mechanism I was originally using seemed to contribute greatly to much much better sales than previous years for February (when I started the on sale stuff) through June.....

recped · ‎09-09-2016

First, this is a classic do as I say not as I do.........

@musicyouneed wrote:
Hi all you store owners. Looking for advice/hints/ideas/experience on sales/discounts.

What is your rationale/secret/reason you put things on sale in your store?

Because I'm tired of relisting over and over and over again, or I've got bills to pay and need more money NOW!

Can you just put certain items on sale or does everything have to be on sale?

You can cherry pick to your hearts content.

Do you do it for a week, weekend, month?

I would do it for a week or maybe a bit less, possibly a bit more. Most retailers run promotions that last a week.

If you can select individual items, do you do it by how long you have had the item? Whether someone is watching it?

I would select stale items but doing it on a listing with a good amount of viewers and watchers but no buyers is reasonable.

What do you discount, free shipping, 5%, 10%?

Not sure if "free shipping" is enough. I think 5% is a joke, even 10% isn't likely to motivate me. I'd recommend 25% or don't even bother especially when 25% is only a dollar or two.

Would you put items on sale that are near the end of the listing, say have 5 days left from 30?

Don't think it matters since we are basically talking about things which have been listed for several months at least.

Do you find a sale works for you? If so, how much of a percentage did your sales increase?

No data available

I did put everything on sale 10% for 2 days, and got a couple of sales but don't know if I would have got them anyways.

You'll never know for sure unless you survey your buyers, that's pretty much the situation with any kind of activity to increase your sales when you have such a small sample size.
One of the prime reason for using Markdown Manager is that watchers and even some people who have simply viewed your listing will receive an alert letting them know the price has been reduced. Not only can this turn a looker into a buyer but it can turn a "oh I forgot about that" into a buyer.

When I get an alert from eBay and it turns out the "sale" is a 5% discount, I usually snicker "nice try buddy but not a chance!".

The biggest problem with Markdown Manager is how clunky it is to use unless you just have a modest number of listings and/or you want to put everything in a single category on sale.

"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.

mr.elmwood · ‎09-09-2016

Running a sale has resulted is zippo, zero, nada, no increase in sales. It may covert 1 watcher out of 100 into a sale, at a discount.

To catch all watchers and surfers, run a sale or a month.

I have not run a sale in two years.

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musicyouneed · ‎09-09-2016

Hi Silver, thanks for your suggestion, but I personally hate best offer. I put a minimum on and with that get emails with ridiculous offers because of the automatic decline. One offered me by email $35 on a $300 item and another offered me $75, my minimum was $250. And the potential buyer was mad that I wasn't accepting their $35 offer. He sent me a nasty email. I only ever accepted one offer and it was 10% lower on a $99 USD and I accepted that.

I don't really like to haggle. I try to price my items fairly to the market so when someone offers me a lot less, I don't really like it.

It reminds me of a funny story. I had a table at a flea market and was selling a excellent condition leather wallet for $7 (price tag on it). A lady came by and offered me $5. I told her no, I felt that $7 was a fair price for a leather wallet. I explained that I had paid almost $60 for it brand new and it was in excellent condition. She kept coming by and kept offering me $5.00. Well I changed the price tag to $10 and she came by and asked me why I raised the price to $10. I said well now you can offer me $7.00 and you will have got yourself a deal. She finally bought it for $7.00 because it was a good deal at that price.

Although I hate best offer that is not to say I will not use it in the future, I am into selling and will do whatever although best offer might be my last resort.

musicyouneed · ‎09-09-2016

Hi Recped, great info. I particularly like the statement:

One of the prime reason for using Markdown Manager is that watchers and even some people who have simply viewed your listing will receive an alert letting them know the price has been reduced. Not only can this turn a looker into a buyer but it can turn a "oh I forgot about that" into a buyer.

When I was doing my research on pricing items, I listed them and then put everything on sale and I got an email about these items I recently looked at had been reduced in price, they were my items. I like that another opportunity to make a sale. When a buyer clicks through to see your item, they make a decision based on that either to buy, watch or move on. A lot of the time it is price or shipping cost. Having a sale, that may just convince the buyer to buy.

Most of my items are $10 and with free shipping so if I offer 10% off that is $1.00. I can't really do much more than that unless I raise my prices. On a $10 item, ebay fees $1.00 payal .60, envelope .40, new jewel case .40. postage, 3.10 - expenses total $5.50 not including the cost of the item.

silverpinups · ‎09-09-2016

Most of my items are $10 and with free shipping so if I offer 10% off that is $1.00. I can't really do much more than that unless I raise my prices. On a $10 item, ebay fees $1.00 payal .60, envelope .40, new jewel case .40. postage, 3.10 - expenses total $5.50 not including the cost of the item.

I forget that your average price is 10.00 and you will probably only have a very small margin to move on price.

I would just keep them at the price your asking.....

momcqueen · ‎09-10-2016

@musicyouneed wrote:

...It reminds me of a funny story. I had a table at a flea market and was selling a excellent condition leather wallet for $7 (price tag on it). A lady came by and offered me $5. I told her no, I felt that $7 was a fair price for a leather wallet. I explained that I had paid almost $60 for it brand new and it was in excellent condition. She kept coming by and kept offering me $5.00. Well I changed the price tag to $10 and she came by and asked me why I raised the price to $10. I said well now you can offer me $7.00 and you will have got yourself a deal. She finally bought it for $7.00 because it was a good deal at that price....

Excellent anecdote. Markdowns are kind of a game of smoke and mirrors. Mine run from 5 to 60 per cent off with the latter being used to stimulate sales during slow periods on items that I have multiples on hand. I have learned that I'd rather hang on to something than sell it quick for cash because what might be plentiful and low in value today will be hand to find and worth more in a year.

ypdc_dennis · ‎09-10-2016

@recped wrote:
One of the prime reason for using Markdown Manager is that watchers and even some people who have simply viewed your listing will receive an alert letting them know the price has been reduced. Not only can this turn a looker into a buyer but it can turn a "oh I forgot about that" into a buyer.

That price drop alert is true for any price reduction (store markdown or non-store price drop) -- I'm just not sure how big a reduction is needed to trigger the alert. So it can increase the second looks with alerts (but only if the item has viewers/watchers -- not going to help if no one has looked at your listing).

Got one today:

SAVE US $3.00 for a limited time.

You viewed this at US $32.99. It was just discounted to US $29.99.

for one of the items I looked at -- but I'll note that eBay does not check to see if the viewer is also the seller -- because this one was for a listing of mine that I had decided to reduce the price on yesterday. Still I it's an eBay marketing effort I appreciate.

-..-

Store markdowns will increase exposure to those searchers who have "Sale Items" marked off in the advanced search. Although I'm not sure if bargain hunters are the audience desired -- still, a sale is a sale.

-..-

momcqueen · ‎09-10-2016

You're right, those are good messages to get. Like you, I often receive them for my own items. As to which listing triggers that email? It seems completely random to me.

rose-dee · ‎09-10-2016

@silverpinups wrote:
Just "add" Best Offer to your GTC Listings then you never have to worry about putting your items on sale.
This will help decrease your work load... let the GTC Listing with Best Offer work for you.

How many views do you think your items will receive if you put them on sale with 5 days to go in the listing... probably very little.

Best Offer and % discount sales work in very different ways. In my view, Best Offer is really most effective on higher priced items that tend to attract a lot of interest and (ideally) competing offers. Sales are best for items that are stale or need an activity boost.

To the OP: I'd say the best thing to do is to experiment with Markdown Manager, running sales of different lengths over the course of a few months, some short (1 or 2 weeks), some longer (3 or 4 weeks), to see what works for your particular items and customers. Personally I don't think any sale under 10% is worthwhile -- as a buyer I just scoff when I see 3% or 5% off items.

If most of your products are listed at around $10 each, markdowns may be problematic. Discounts of 20% or higher are best, but you might need to raise your regular prices and leave them for a while first to establish a reasonable margin. There is a marketing theory that claims that raising your usual pricing but offering regular markdown sales is better than keeping all your pricing at your acceptable minimums.

One thing there seems little point in doing is marking down products that usually move quickly at your asking price. Experiment with markdown sales on items that have sat for a while, on items with a lot of watchers but few sales, individual items, or on specific categories within your product line. Over time you'll find which strategy works best, or perhaps that all of them work for you.

I think you'll find that discount sale strategies need to be tailored to your specific category(ies) of items and your type of customer. What other sellers find successful for their products may not work for yours. Test the waters over time.

One caution: if you're listing fixed price items with a time limited listing period, they will drop off the sale once their listing period ends. I'm not sure that's the case with GTC -- if I recall, they auto-relist along with the % discount, but my recall may be wrong there. In any case, try to set up your markdown sale at a point where most of the items will run long enough to make sense. Also remember that Markdown Manager won't allow you to put an item on sale if it's too close to the end of the listing (you'll get an error message if that happens, and you can then relist the item(s) and add them manually to the sale).

reallynicestamps · ‎09-10-2016

Well I changed the price tag to $10 and she came by and asked me why I raised the price to $10. I said well now you can offer me $7.00 and you will have got yourself a deal.

Ah yes. The Sears discount.

Sears used to do that a lot. Maybe they still do.

The 'regular' price would last about a month then for the rest of the year the product would be sold at a 'reduced' price.

The Consumer Board (whatever they were/are called) prosecuted them for this regularly and Sears just paid the fines as a business expense.

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2016

Winners gets into periodic trouble for their Compare At tag pricing too.

For whomever it was that asked earlier, when GTC listings 'end' or 'renew' mid-markdown, they stay on markdown until the markdown ends. Despite the item listing page saying 'this sales ends in 1hour 3 minutes' or whenever that GTC listing is due to renew, it will, in fact, stay on sale once it does reach renewal.

rose-dee · ‎09-11-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:

For whomever it was that asked earlier, when GTC listings 'end' or 'renew' mid-markdown, they stay on markdown until the markdown ends. Despite the item listing page saying 'this sales ends in 1hour 3 minutes' or whenever that GTC listing is due to renew, it will, in fact, stay on sale once it does reach renewal.

I was the one who brought it up, and you're quite right. This is why I can never seem to recall afterward how sales function with GTC, because it's confusingly both -- eBay displays the sale as ending for expiring GTC items, but they do in fact rotate back into the original sale when they renew.