@jt-libra wrote:
"These are small ticket items -- under $10. They do sell eventually, but they're not worth 30 cents a month since some of them are listed for months and months before they sell. But, when they are viewed, I think it leads to potential buyers viewing my other items and could generate a few additional sales."
This has been exactly my experience too, even though we sell in very different categories. I can no longer justify paying listing fees for all the lower-priced items I would like to sell. They wait for the promotions.
"Because sales have been so poor the last few months, I can't afford to purchase more inventory so I have fewer items for sale."
I think this must be the unfortunate irony of the current situation on eBay for many, many "boutique" sellers. Fewer sales = less money to spend on offering more items or more variety = fewer items to list = fewer sales, and on and on in a circle.
In my own case, I'm reprinting my sold out or low inventory patterns less often. I used to reprint every 3 or 4 months, now I can only afford it every 6 to 8 months. As a result, the more popular designs (which tend to sell out first) may have a listing "gap" of several months, resulting in a sales deficit.
You know, while we're all reminiscing about the "good old days", I agree completely with 'pococomputing' that even though I paid more a few years ago for listing just about everything, and there was no such thing as a listing promo, I had a reliable overall turnover of nearly 100% in 3 to 4 months -- and I was listing fewer items then too, usually only 70 to 80 at a time.
Now I'm regularly listing between 130 and 180, yet so far 2015 has been extremely poor in comparison to previous years. I actually didn't think it could get slower than it was in 2014, but here I am, doing worse yet working harder at it (and this is the case despite having hung onto my TRS and "clean" seller record). Items that used to sell within literally a few days up until mid-2013 are now languishing for weeks or months, even though those types of items are still getting higher views and "watchers" than anything else I sell. Is it just that people are less willing to make discretionary purchases these days?
The question is whether regular listing promos are actually making the situation as a whole on eBay worse or better. With fewer actual buyers, is it better to have floods of inventory or not? I get the impression eBay has been experimenting with promos to see what the effect will be, since they keep changing the parameters and restrictions.
