Right buyer finally found it, item listed since March 11 2006 just sold

[ricarmic]

This lot ran for just over 8 years! I think this might be a record for me, I have very few of the "early days" lots left, I wonder how many ebay changes this lot has been "grandfathered" through!!!

Anybody had anything listed longer than this sell?

[nan*55]

Wow! Congrats on the sale. LOL

[recped]

You know you really should be ending these old listings and then listing them again as new listings (not relists).

Do you understand how Best Match treats these very old listings that have not sold? They put them at the very bottom!

[recped]

Anybody had anything listed longer than this sell?

Not personally, I've never had a listing run more than 30 days.

I did see a listing a few months ago that had been running since 2004, the seller had it as a GTC, 5 cents per month time 120 months.......$6 in listing fees paid........price of the item........

$4.99 !!!!!!!!!

Crazy part was that the seller had tons of listings that had been running anywhere from 5 - 10 years and they were all sub $10 items.

[pocomocomputing]

Even after a few months as GTC listings, they start to die.

I use FP various durations (no GTC) and relist or sell similar depending on the quantity or the views.

I also add a twist to this and will move a listing from eBay.ca to eBay.com every few months if it is not selling and then back again. (If shipping allows me to use flat rate. If I need calculated shipping, then the items stays on eBay.ca). Switching sites will generate sales on slow movers sometimes.

[ricarmic]

This one had built in shipping ie "free shipping", which was a lot less 8 years ago! I never go back and change the prices as shipping costs rise - I figure raising the price won't help the old lots sell any faster if they are already having trouble moving!

I understand that the "old" stuff doesn't get much in the way of views, normally it is my repeat buyers that clean that stuff up, as was the case with this one.* see note below though

Contrary to how most folks view listing fees, I look at this "old school" - I treat the grand total as monthly "advertising" costs, and manage things that way. Of course if my "advertising" costs started to get too high, I would do things like ditch some of these old lots that weren't turning over. 

*I did run an experiment, I ran a search that raised 208 items. I have several items that matched that search, all "old" (as in listed in 2008). The first one showed up in spot #36 of the 208 items, and many others of mine were also ahead of auctions with less than 2 days left....most of mine were in the top half.... one thing the "old" ones have is high views (#38 had 505 views, 2 watchers).... I gave up years ago trying to figure out how the searches work, but at least for this example, my old timers aren't bottomed out..... I have no idea why though.....

[ricarmic]

Hmm an interesting observation, I did see one difference my lots had, I was about the only guy with free shipping..... I've always believed that "free shipping" boosts ones standing, in this case that must be what is doing it.....

[rose-dee]

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@pocomocomputing wrote:

Even after a few months as GTC listings, they start to die.

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I've always wondered about whether this can really be taken as a general rule, or whether other factors override it. 

For example, I had an item on GTC for over 18 months that always came up on the first page of searches in that category.  It didn't seem to matter how old it was.  It was, however, a very attractive and rather expensive item that got a lot of attention.  Like 'ricarmic', I simply considered it as cheap advertising, since it brought buyers to my store.  When it finally sold, my store hits and sales suffered for a while. 

I can say the same about other "feature" items I've had on GTC -- they all seem to have got up there on page 1 of searches, regardless of the number of weeks or months they'd been listed.  None had free shipping either.  I'm not so sure about the less expensive items, but I certainly found that running a free shipping promotion across the board helped. 

The mysteries of eBay placement...

[pocomocomputing]

From your listings, you get a lot of watchers so I think that overrides the general rule for GTC with OAAK item going down in search.

For many items, I think GTC with qty 1 and no watchers, low views, over 6 months running as GTC is not good.

What I would like is a GTC feature to run as GTC and auto end after a set amount of auto relists. Say GTC to run 6 relists and end on its own. Then a seller could reevaluate the listings to see if improvements can be made. Ideally, the seller can set how many relists.

I know if you have Selling Manager you can use automation rules to relist continuously until sold.  I know that Selling Manager Pro has more automation rules but I do not know if it has a fixed number of times.

The problem with automation rules is that they relist at any time after the listing ends and the time gap can be hours later if you have many items ending at the same time. Most of the time it is within minutes of the end time. But if you are trying to end at 11 pm in the evening or on a certain day of week, this time creep can be an issues after a few relists.

Also relisting a fixed price will retain the original quantity which is not a problem for a quantity of 1 but is a problem with a quantity of more than one and sales as it will relist at the original quantity.

[recped]

If you go back to the start of Best Match (a "smart" search known as "relevancy" on other sites) the key factor for ranking was the Views/Impressions ratio.

Move along a few years and eBay has tossed dozens of other factors to the list of things that influence ranking in Best Match.

Thing is, all those other factors are still secondary to the primary ones, views/impression, watchers, bidders (in the case of Auctions), previously sales (in the case of FP) and of course PRICE.

Your TRS status, your handling time, your feedback, your dsr's etc etc etc. are actually rather meaningless and are mostly just used (if at all) to rank the top of the list which is made up of things that got there because of the primary factors.

An old listing that has been sitting for years, gets no views, has no watchers, no previous sales history goes to the bottom because everything indicates "buyers are not interested in this so we won't even show them unless they really drill down through all the other stuff".

Traditional retail would sometimes put dead inventory front and centre in hopes of moving it out. eBay doesn't carry inventory, they don't care if we are stuck with junk, they want to put stuff that buyers actually want right up front because that creates sales. They will still let you list your non-selling junk but they are not going to give you prime space to display it.

Then of course there are those buyers that don't use Best Match, for those buyers all this ranking stuff is irrelevant.

[ricarmic]

Hi! Yes I've given up trying to understand what drives the best match, and to be honest, as long as my monthly "advertising" costs stay in line, I don't really care about the old stock, it seems to eventually sell..... and when it does that is a bonus... certainly being able to list or easily review old stock would be helpful. I've been experimenting with sale prices, it would be good to be able to put everything listed longer than a year on sale...

I can hardly keep up to the rate stuff is selling, unfortunately, at least in my world (stamps) the quantity of items selling is actually higher now than last year, but I'm selling a lot more $12-$20 items and a lot fewer $100 and up items.....which is lots more work.... and total sales is flat if not lower.... sigh.....

[recped]

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@ricarmic wrote:

Hi! Yes I've given up trying to understand what drives the best match, and to be honest, as long as my monthly "advertising" costs stay in line, I don't really care about the old stock, it seems to eventually sell..... and when it does that is a bonus... certainly being able to list or easily review old stock would be helpful. I've been experimenting with sale prices, it would be good to be able to put everything listed longer than a year on sale...

I can hardly keep up to the rate stuff is selling, unfortunately, at least in my world (stamps) the quantity of items selling is actually higher now than last year, but I'm selling a lot more $12-$20 items and a lot fewer $100 and up items.....which is lots more work.... and total sales is flat if not lower.... sigh.....

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You should move up from Turbo Lister!

Seriously, you should be using an all-in-one management tool like SixBit, it will cost you some money, +/-$500/year, but it would be well worth it to manage the quantity of listings you run and it would definitely save you time and make you more productive.

I don't like spending money on software but I think of it as an instant payback if I can sell one or two extra items a month or avoid just one order screw up.

[ricarmic]

Hi Recp, I took a quick look at sixbit, I've looked at other tools in the past, I believe that because of the way I process/store/ship there isn't a lot of time savings for me by using the other tools. I have my listing format down to an art in Turbolister, most of the time I'm reusing the listing, and only changing the pictures. I generate my own receipts (because I sell on more than ebay) and as you know I'm a "stamps on the box" shipping guy.

I'm also worried that adding another player into the process means I depend on yet another company to make sure the linkage etc with eBay is working correctly. I've seen sellers have problems with other vendors in the past, and unless there is a big advantage to me to migrate, I'll plod along as I have been doing.

At least that's how I feel today, every day seems to be a new adventure so I might be asking Sixbit questions a week from now!!

I do appreciate your thoughts though and for mentioning Sixbit, I hadn't looked at it before, but I haven't looked at anything for a couple years or so...