Concerned over Store Buy-It-Now new policies

[boneshakerscards]

As a card collector that both buys and sells over Ebay, I have a concern over Ebay's new store listing policies that I'm wondering if anyone else in the same boat might have a problem with as well.

My concern is that no longer can you list a Buy-It-Now item under $1.00 in your store! The concern is that for card dealers (and others in the same boat) is that many of these cards, specifically insert cards are not worth at least $1. Sure a complete set of them might be worth $10-$20 or so for all 25 of them, but the majority of them are only worth .50 cents or .25 cents!

Someone might come along and need 3 or 4 of them to complete their set, but they don't want to overpay for those cards and they shouldn't have to either! They should have the choice of paying just 25 cents or so for each of them and being able to do so. Just the same as if they were buying cheaper rookie cards in order to complete a full set.

When I began selling on Ebay you could list them for that amount and alot of my business (and traffic to my store)came from such listings. Sure it might not seem like much, but when each person buys maybe 5-10 of them each time, it adds up! Plus, as they do so, they might take advantage of combined shipping options and buy more items that are more expensive! Now that feature has been taken away from us as both sellers and buyers.

I personally believe that while most of Ebay's recent changes are positive, this is one that has been negative and doesn't do anything to help, but only hinder sellers such as myself. Does anyone else have a problem with this new listing policy as well? And if so, anyone with a bright idea as to how to fix it?

[bare_bright]

Perhaps change your style of listings, Something Like Buy any 5 cards for $2.99 and have them specify what cards they want from your price list of diff, groups,

something along those lines, this way you will always sell 5 cards at a time! or whatever you setup, it's not like they can go and buy a card somewhere else on ebay for .25 cents, man you must go through a lot of stamps lol
think it would be better to sell for a few bucks rather than 25 cents.

:)

[dipmicro]

How about listing them above $1 with lower shipping cost or include shipping in the price?

[recped]

List them at $1 and see what happens, you might be surprised.

List them at $1, offer in your listing a healthy discount for multiple purchases, either off the price or off the shipping.

Some of these methods will result in slightly higher eBay FVF's, the amounts will not be big and you should be able to devise a way to have the buyers carry the cost.

Maybe buyers will end up accepting that those 25 & 50 cent cards are going to cost them an extra nickel or dime (or even a dollar?).

There are many other marketing techniques you can use to comply with the new rules while not chasing away your buyers...some of them will end up putting more money in your pocket.

Take this opportunity, some similar sellers will simply toss in the towel, this will give you an opportunity to free yourself of some competition.

Personally I don't "get" the concept of selling under a dollar items. The only way it seems feasible to me is if you are making all your profit on handling (fee avoidance) or depend on multiple item purchases which may still be viable if you offer incentives as in my second example.

[dipmicro]

Personally I don't "get" the concept of selling under a dollar items.

What's there not to get? We are making sales of over $100/day and half of it is $1-$2 lots, previously listed as separate cent items. Buyers are now forced to buy the whole lot even if they need just one part.

How come dollar stores survive? Dolarama seems to be thriving.

[recped]

Dollarama are not selling via mail order!

What's not to get is that every listing and every order requires time, time equals money. Another thing, I realize that store listing fees are very low but if somebody does a $2 order and uses PayPal the fees from PayPal alone are about 18% add in FVF's and about 30% of your revenues go to eBay.

Just seems like a lot of effort for a very small return and that's the part I don't "get".

[pierrelebel]

"Just seems like a lot of effort for a very small return "

I still have hundreds of listings in my eBay store under $1.00

Lot of effort? Yes

Worth it? Yes

When selling to collectors, they typically do not buy only one item but an accumulation, depending on their collecting interest.

Do I make it up on shipping charge? Not really since I offer FREE SHIPPING on all combined purchases exceeding $25.

Yes it works as 97%+ of my transactions exceed $25. Folks love to save the shipping charge! ;-) .

[recped]

$25 orders (combining maybe 40 or 50 items) sounds reasonable especially if as I presume the item really don't have much potential to ever be worth much more than 50 cents.

Cheap items that add up to individual sales of "$1 - $2"???

Not for me, I feel bad enough with my $4 items.

On the other hand If you are selling or not, making money or not, earning minimum wage at best or not, if you like what you are doing then you have no need to listen to my gibberish!

People sometimes say to me..."you sell what? vinyl records? that's kind of silly isn't it?" They might be right but I keep on keeping on.

[dipmicro]

recped, if your ultimate goal is to sell on eBay, you are right. I am using eBay as a starting point. eBay is excelent advertising media. I tried niche magazine advertisement, paid $350/month for a little add for 3 months and it did not convert ... nothing.

$1 items are practically a loss, gross profit on those is approx 50% less eBay and PayPal fees and if I had only $1 orders, my wife would pack approx 15-20 of them per hr, that would be about minimum wage. I will continue doing $1 items because they are great advertising. Those people are actually PAYING me for sending them my catalog 🙂

[dipmicro]

I tried niche magazine advertisement, paid $350/month for a little add for 3 months and it did not convert

Forgot to add ... my current eBay invoice is lower than that and sales are close to $2.5k (excl. S/H) and other sales from return customers that ordered from our own website.

eBay is excellent marketing, much cheaper than Google Adwords. $1 items are excellent opportunity for customers to try out a new company before they "approve" us in their supplier list.

[westernstargifts]

recped,

Don't you ever have any Roy Orbison, Connie Francis or Brenda Lee?....lol (My all time favourites)....Yes, it dates me....Doesn't bother me a bit!...and I do have lots of vinyl records and a turntable too. I also still have a record player/radio/8 track player that we bought in 1973. It still works better than any of the ones we have bought since then and the sound is better too.

Judy

[boneshakerscards]

Some great ideas here guys! Although I would like to address some of the things brought up.

How about listing them above $1 with lower shipping cost or include shipping in the price?
Actually this is exactly what I have done with limited success. The status quo for card dealers is $2-3 for the first item and 50 cents to $1 for each additional. So my 50 cent cards I have raised to $1 and offered free combined shipping with it. Essentially it still is the same amount as I would normally charge(.50+.50=$1), but when people search an item, they see my listing at $1, and someone else's older listing for 50 cents and go there instead not realizing THEY still charge a combined shipping rate that may even make that item more expensive if the combined shipping rate is more than 50 cents. I'm even sending out flyers with my orders to help people realize this, but still, it has been largely ineffective.

Something Like Buy any 5 cards for $2.99 and have them specify what cards they want from your price list of diff, groups
Again, another idea I have tryed in the past. If each card is worth let's say 25 cents, offer them their choice of ten out of twenty cards for $2.50 or maybe even less! The problem with that, is that most people type in specifics about what they are looking for, and with Ebay's new "Best Match" features, it severly limits your visibilty on listed items. I'll have to list the Set name and year that it is along with what kind of card (base, insert, memorabilia), but the consumer, they'll just type in player names, or card #'s and it is impossible to list all of those available in just an item title. Hence, most of those listings don't ever even get looked at, let alone sell very well.

Cheap items that add up to individual sales of "$1 - $2"??? Not for me, I feel bad enough with my $4 items.
I agree that it may seem pointless at first, however, working in retail for the last 8 years has taught me one very important lesson. "You need cheaper items to get people into your store!" Alot of my business and traffic comes from people who are just looking for a couple of those 25 or 50 cent rookie and insert cards they need to complete a full set, but when they see that I offer alot of the memorabilia cards at much less than their book value with combined shipping discounts, they will buy a $20-25 card, or a couple $5-12 cards as well. This is where I make the profit, and to be honest, boosted my memorabilia card sales to almost double what it was before, but since I can't do that anymore, sales on them are starting to slide!

Just a few things I thought I could add to the conversation. I did come up with a possible great idea and solution to this with a buffy of mine earlier tonight, but this response is already too lengthy. I will wait for another time before passing it along and getting some feedback about it. Thanks again guys!

[momoftwingles2]

I'm glad that April 20th is fast approaching because that is when ALL of the under $1.00 items should be changed by all store owners to at least $1. It's been an unlevel selling field since February 20th when the changes were originally supposed to be done. Then eBay gave a 2 month grace period. Great for those who hadn't changed their prices...but harder on those of us who did to compete.

I've not noticed a bit of difference in my sales since I've raised the .99 cent prices mostly to $1.25 or the paper that was .50 each...now is $1.10 for two. I've not changed shipping either. Well..actually, I have noticed a difference...my sales are growing stronger every day!

Scrappers are in some ways like card collectors. Some times they only want one sticker set or one sheet of paper and other times they purchase a lot. But, most definitely having items in varying price ranges is advantageous to my eBay store.

Susan
momoftwingles2

[pierrelebel]

"April 20th is fast approaching because that is when ALL of the under $1.00 items should be changed by all store owners to at least $1"

My undderstanding is it will not happen on April 20th. It will be phased out over a one month period as GTC listings come up for renewal. .

[recped]

boneshaker

Glad I've helped in a small way to spark some ideas for you. Your comments on the reasons you do the cheapo items make a lot of sense.

My comments on the futility of selling cheapo stuff were more directed at sellers who do this exclusively and as their base business model rather that as a marketing device to further sales (on or off eBay). They are the ones who post that they paying more to eBay then they get to keep for themselves. No question that used properly eBay can be very good value as an advertising tool. If I weren't so lazy (unmotivated) I would be harvesting tons of customers for off-eBay transactions.

[dipmicro]

Something that came to my mind that is related to the cheapo stuff .. I noticed that if I make a $0.99 auction on semi-desirable item, it is likely to sell. If I make that same auction starting at $0.01, it is likely not to sell. Weird?

Another observation ... I raised my prices on some items from $1 to $1.25 to give me room for occasional sale. No difference in sales on those items. Perhaps it helps that I am one of very few sellers on eBay offering those particular items in such a selection?

Yet another observation ... don't be afraid to offer your stuff in mixed lots. More people will be likely to get interested in mixed lot and justify the ship cost than trying to understand your combined shipping policy 🙂 I used to have everything in $1-$2 lots and had clear combination by weight policy. I started listing bigger $5-$10 lots with some 5-10% quantity discounts and now the sales are coming mostly from the bigger lots.

Just my 2 cents

[dipmicro]

And another observation - if you sell consumables, people like to stock-up if there is even insignificant saving and even if they have no immediate need for the quantity. Important thing is that unit cost is lower, it does not matter that 1/2 of the purchase will never get used 🙂

[boneshakerscards]

Again some great points micro, and I told have noticed that you can list the same item at .99 and at .01 cents and amazingly, the .99 cent ones will sell 5 to 1!! The only thing I can think of is that the buyer must surely thing something is "wrong" with the item for it to be so cheap.

As far as a new idea, here's one I have and just thought that I would throw it out there.

Let's say you did have a high number of items to sell to all at under $1. In my case in would be sportscards, but another person might have plastic drinking glasses, or hair clips... all at 50 cents whatever the item is. When you make your listing, you could make a lot of them, and have 10 of them for $5, but by doing so your taking choice away from the consumer.

Instead, (and we'd have to sweet talk Ebay into this) but have a listing that you could make a choice listing and list all those individual items. Just like when you select a quantity number (which could also be included) you would make a choice listing that let's say had 20 or so items in it. Each with their own title to distinguish it from the other. In my case, card numbers, or if it was drinking cups, which colour and so on. The buyer would simply check off in a box which item they wanted and how many. When they hit the submit button, BOOM! you get a sale of "XX" amount of items from that chioce listing, and can easily send the buyer an invoice for it. This would keep happening until all the items from it was sold, and you could do it with as many individual items as you want, as long as at least $1 worth of items existed in it!

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this would solve my problems in a big way, and help out alot of other seller's as well! Plus, the added bonus of choice would be great for buyers! Just a thought, but wanted to throw it out there.

[dipmicro]

Something like 170211409637 ?

Select 100 resistors from the values listed below
Each value is available in multiples of 25
You can pick up to 4 different values
Send a message or leave a note during payment of required values

I seen something like this many times.

[lina-mallows]

Has anyone considered eBay rules prohibiting CHOICE listings?

Choice Listings




A choice listing is a listing where a seller allows buyers to choose from a selection of items. Choice listings are generally not allowed and will be ended.


Exceptions:
Listings may offer custom-made items or services that are created or customized to the buyer's specification. All offered options must be provided at no additional charge to the buyer.
Multiple quantity listings (Multiple Item Listings, multiple-item fixed price or Store listings) may offer a choice of color in otherwise identical items. However, the seller must be able to fulfill the entire quantity of every listing in any offered color even if every winning bidder makes exactly the same color selection. It is not permissible to state: "The highest bidder gets first choice." Choice listings may not be offered "subject to availability" or require the buyer to contact the seller to see which colors are available or what quantity is available. This exception for choice of color does not apply to single quantity listings
---------------------------------------
So- would "Select 100 resistors from the values listed below
Each value is available in multiples of 25
You can pick up to 4 different values" be a violation of the eBay rules?

More relevant- Are cards within a SPORT SET the SAME- or substantially similar so as not to allow/permit a CHOICE LISTING?