Auctions experiment, a big FAIL | Selling

ricarmic · 2024-05-22T21:19:10.673000Z

I thought it worthwhile to share this one to see if other's experience is similar or different. Experiment was to "re-run" auctions because I noticed auctions were generally getting more views than BINs in the hopes it brought more eyes to my auctions and BIN material. My normal approach is run item at auction for 7 days then move to BIN. Note that starting price for the auction is the same as would be the case when it is moved to the BIN. So the experiment was to run each unsold item repeatedly for a month, so repeat 3 more for unsolds. Each time I used relist. After the month, as usual gets listed at same price as BIN via sell similar. Normally auctions sell in the 10 to 20% range. At my best the "normal way" I've got 50 to 70 auctions running. During the experiment was typically running 200ish concurrently. Sell rate was down in the 2% to 3% range. I've long felt that auctions don't cause sales when they're being put in. In far too times to be coincidence stuff sells whilst I'm listing BINs. While relisting 20 or 30 items a day over several weeks nary a sale while relisting auctions. (Still sales happening whilst doing the BIN listing which is a sell similar). so I think this confirms at least in my stamp world the algorithm doesn't "count" auctions in the favour the seller list, originally or when relisted. The impressions counts of the auction reruns were abysmal, 0 or 1 or 2 predominantly. So I put the exhorbitant recommended standard promoted level on them for the last week. So far not one sale on a promoted auction. View counts are higher, sometimes higher than the first week but no sale. As the quantity of rerun auctions grew, with generally low views, it seems that the new, first week auctions are also "depressed" in terms of views too. So my theory is that the bots see my auctions aren't popular and are lowering my visibility on them all and perhaps the store too. I do see that bids definitely attract more views and bids. I had rerun items with zero bids sell signficantly above start price the 2nd or later run when there was an early bid. Still not enough to provoke me to retry a 99c start experiment. So this has been one of my worst experiments, short summary of my beliefs (which may or not be true): Listing auctions doesn't foster more sales during listing (whether original or relisted) Listing BINs does foster more sales during listing Rerunning auctions using relist doesn't spur more views/sales Bids on an item does cause increased views Running too many auctions with very low view counts may depress views for auctions and BINs The results were abysmal enough that the question as to whether relist or sell similar would make a difference I probably won't try until I've exhaused other future experiments. Interested to know how these beliefs align with other's experiments, experiences.

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Auctions experiment, a big FAIL | Selling | eBay Canada EN